Retired gas fitter strangled his wife and bludgeoned their daughter with a hammer 'after having a bad reaction to cancer drugs'

A retired gas fitter dying from cancer strangled his wife and bludgeoned his daughter with a hammer after reacting badly to cancer treatment, a court heard. Peter Redfern, 70, had lived an exemplary and quiet family life with his wife Jean, 67, and Sarah, 33, at their bungalow home in Wath upon Dearne, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire. But after he was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer he was put on chemotherapy with a combination of drugs including corticosteroids which can lead to 'drug-induced adverse psychiatric events'. His barrister Mark George QC told Sheffield Crown Court: 'He was a man who would never have acted in the way he did had it not been for the reaction of the taking of these powerful drugs.'

Redfern admitted the manslaughter of his wife on the grounds of diminished responsibility and the murder of his daughter on July 22 last year. After killing his wife in the bedroom he lay in wait for his daughter as she came in from work and bludgeoned her to death with a hammer in the kitchen so she could not see her mother’s body. Redfern wept in the dock and held his head down in shame as the facts of the tragedy unfolded. Graham Reeds QC, prosecuting, said Redfern had been diagnosed with incurable cancer and it was recognised that using corticosteroids in a small number of cases could lead to 'drug-induced adverse psychiatric events' of which this was one. Medical experts had concluded that the pensioner fell into the one per cent of the population who would suffer adversely from such treatment and it was likely to have been reponsible for his behaviour on the day.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2539957/Retired-gas-fitter-strangled-wife-bludgeoned-daughter-hammer-having-bad-reaction-cancer-drugs.html