Alex Davies death: Mum's shock after killer moved to hospital

Alex Davies was killed in an attack in 2019

The mother of a murder victim has described her "shock" at learning his killer was moved to a psychiatric hospital after "two hours" in jail.

Brian Healless, 18, murdered Alex Davies, also 18, on Parbold Hill, Lancashire, in 2019 after they agreed to meet through the dating app Grindr.

In 2020 he was sentenced to jail for a minimum term of 24 years but was taken to hospital on the day of sentencing.

The government has apologised for not "promptly" updating Mr Davies' mother.

Healless, from Chorley, had told openly gay Mr Davies, from Skelmersdale, that he was "not out yet" and suggested a "discreet spot" halfway between their two homes for their first meeting.

He stabbed the teenager 128 times at the remote woodland area, dragging him through the mud while he was still alive and covering his body with branches and leaves.

Brian Healless was transferred to a mental health hospital on the day of his sentencing

Psychiatrists who examined Healless agreed he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the killing.

But jurors rejected his defence that his responsibility for the killing was diminished by his mental state.

Healless, from Chorley, also tried to set up similar outdoor meetings with four other men on Grindr in the days after the killing.

The judge said it was "extremely fortuitous" that he was "arrested before anyone else suffered the same fate".

Before his conviction, Healless was treated at Guild Lodge Hospital in Preston and was returned there on the day of his sentencing, after a request from the doctor overseeing his care - who also gave evidence for the defence at the trial.

'Brutal murder'

Beverley Davies said she was "shocked" to learn weeks later of the move.

"I was told he was off to prison and it was only weeks after, when the Probation Service got in contact with me, I was told he was only in prison for the two hours and then he was swept back to Guild Lodge."

She said she felt "justice has not been served on a sadistic murderer and a potential serial killer who should never be released into society".

"I will never be a grandmother. I am the one who has to live with the facts of my son's brutal murder," she said.

"He is so dangerous. Why is he not in a high secure hospital?

"I have asked for a general impression of what life is like in Guild Lodge, but there just seems to be a barrier where the public are not allowed to know about what the conditions are like in a medium secure hospital."

CCTV captured Healless riding away from the scene on his mountain bike

Mrs Davies was told in a letter from Alex Chalk MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, that officials had relied on assessments from four independent psychiatrists, which confirmed that Healless continued to suffer from a mental disorder requiring hospital treatment.

Mr Chalk said the transfer on the same day - which was "not usual but by no means unprecedented" - was not a matter for the sentencing judge and "did not in any way subvert the life sentence he had passed".

He added that Healless was a "restricted patient" and the clinicians treating him had assessed a medium secure facility was appropriate for him concerning "his mental disorder and the risk he presents to others".

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "We have listened to Mrs Davies' concerns and apologised for the fact she was not updated promptly.

"Prisoners may be transferred for treatment in mental health hospitals, based on assessments by expert clinicians, but will return to serve their sentence in prison once they are fit to do so."

Julian Hendy, from the Hundred Families charity, said he believed the judge's decision to imprison Healless "has now been overturned, not by the justice system in open court but by doctors deciding in secret".

"There are surely serious questions to be asked about the decision to transfer him so quickly from prison to hospital, and whether justice has been truly served."

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