When is murder justified?
Different people have different answers. Some feel the state should be able to murder those who have, themselves, murdered. Others think vigilante killings of murderers, rapists, and others of the worst of humanity are justified.
But is it still justified when you’ve got it wrong?
Killer: Alexander Lewis-Ranwell
Victims: Anthony Payne, Dick Carter, Roger Carter
Date: 10th February 2019
Location: Exeter
Method of Murder: Bludgeoning
Timeline 08.02.2019 | Lewis-Ranwell is arrested in Barnstaple 09.02.2019 | Rearrested after attacking John Ellis 10.02.2019 | Death of all three victims 11.02.2019 | Final arrest after hotel attack
When police arrested Alexander Lewis-Ranwell on the 8th of February 2019, they were taken aback by the bizarre behaviour he exhibited.
They’d been called to attend a scene of disruption after the 28-year-old had broken down fences, broken into farm buildings, and released animals from their holdings. It seemed like the actions of an eco-warrior - or someone bored and wanting to cause a bit of havoc. At the outside case, you might suspect a personal grudge against the owner of the property and animals, but none of these things appeared to ring true.
He was seen by mental health professionals at the station and admitted that he had been sectioned twice before.
The mental health liaison officer recorded the following notes: "I was unable to identify evidence that Alexander is currently engaged with mental health services. He has previously been diagnosed with psychosis and had a history of substance abuse."1
There was plenty of evidence that something was not right with Lewis-Ranwell during his time at the police station. He urinated into a cup and then poured the contents around his cell. He asked to be given a hen that he could eat. He declined food and then called his mother for a conversation that became abusive. His mother got in touch with the police herself and told them that her son should not be released.
However, he was not given a full mental health assessment2. Instead, the police dropped him off at a homeless centre in Barnstaple in the early hours of the morning.
While at the Freedom Centre, he threatened to kill a member of staff, resulting in him having to leave the premises.
"He threatened to kill me and threatened to kill my cats, even though I don't have cats,” reported Andrew Gammon, the manager of the shelter3.
Lewis-Ranwell was now out of custody and off the radar, but that was far from the end of his story.
Three days later, he would be arrested for murder - the murder, he claimed, of three paedophiles4.
It was 8:30 in the morning after he was taken to the homeless shelter. It’s not clear it Lewis-Ranwell got any rest that night, but it seems unlikely. What seems more likely is that he simply roamed the streets, coming at last to a farm owned by Maureen Ellis, 77, and her husband John, 825.
Maureen saw a man letting their alpacas out of their enclosure and rushed over to stop him. She was arguing with him when her husband saw them and went over to ask what was going on. Lewis-Ranwell was holding two potential weapons in his hands: on one side, a double-handed saw intended for use by two men, and in the other, a four-foot-long stick.
"I saw him holding a saw and he started to approach me," John Ellis later said. "He was verbally abusing both my wife and I. I can't remember what he said because I was aware he was holding the saw, coming towards me and swinging it. I told my wife to phone the police now and she ran back. The male was swinging the saw around as I was backing away.
"He got very close to the point where the saw was head hight. I saw the blade coming towards me and thought 'this isn't good'. I instinctively put my hand up as I thought he was going to have my head off or cut my throat."
Lewis-Ranwell chased after Ellis and hit him with the flat of his saw blade. When Ellis got behind a gate, Lewis-Ranwell jabbed him in the chest with the stick - possibly a rehearsal of a stabbing motion - and a struggle between the two men ensued. Though Ellis defended himself, by the end, he had suffered a serious wound to his wrist from the saw.
"He asked me if I was a paedophile," John Ellis added. "He seemed quite well educated and seemed calm and collected."6
By the time the police arrived at 10am, Lewis-Ranwell was letting sheep out of their pens at a neighbouring farm. They arrested him for a second time and took him in.
During his second arrest, it was very clear that his mental state had deteriorated even further. He asked officers where his unicorn was and seemed distressed that he had lost it. He agreed and even requested to see mental health professionals, but then changed his mind and accused the staff of abusing him - a process which he repeated several times.
After he tried to grab a taser, Lewis-Ranwell was handcuffed and put on the phone with Mental Health Liaison and Diversion. After this 12-minute call, the recorded notes stated: "Potential psychotic symptoms present including paranoid beliefs including thinking that food has been tampered with, that I had stolen his food. He believes I am stopping him from carrying out his duty of care which is to protect all animals and sentient beings in the universe."
It was clear that he could be a risk to the public if he was released. However, getting him properly assessed was proving to be problematic. The call-out service didn’t have time to get there; the on-duty professional wasn’t allowed to assess him until someone else had done; and he continued to resist attempts to talk.
A Forensic Medical Examiner from G4S was called in to pick up the shortfall. Anyone from the UK who knows the name G4S is probably groaning now, realising what the logical outcome must have been.
Yes; after 19 minutes on the phone, Dr Pichiu decided Lewis-Ranwell didn’t need a full Mental Health Act assessment and instead could be released back to the public7.
He was released on bail at 9:30am8 the next morning and told not to enter the village of Goodleigh as part of his terms.
He went to Lidl first, where he spoke to a cashier and told her she had been a victim of abuse, resulting in his being escorted from the premises.
He then took a 30-minute drive in a taxi, in which his behaviour was increasingly worrying to the driver. He reported fearing that he would be strangled after Lewis-Ranwell grabbed a necklace of rosary beads hanging from the mirror and jumped into the backseat with them. The driver then dropped him at Copplestone train station, where Lewis-Ranwell caught a bus to Exeter.
That was where things really turned bad.
At 12:25pm, outside Exeter station, he accused a taxi driver of trying to abduct a woman. An employee at the station told him there was nothing wrong, so Lewis-Ranwell left angrily.
He walked along Bonhay Road. At number 65, he stopped.
“I remember thinking I was working for the police. It’s really confusing, they’re all linked, they’re jumbled,” Lewis-Ranwell said later. “When I left the train station I thought they [police] were with me, following me. I thought the moment they knew what I was doing and that I was helping them find the girl… It’s like I’m an investigator, a finder. I guess like a search dog. I was trying to find the missing girl for them. I can’t remember her name but I saw her in a magazine. She’d been missing for about 25 years.
“I was just following my nose, following what I came across. I was on a wander. It was anything, it was sort of like the path of least resistance. I knew that would be the path that would take me there.”
“I was walking down the street. I went to a house. There was a sign on the door about a man and a cat, something like that. I wanted to talk to the man but then I saw the outline of a dead dog on the carpet. It looked derelict like nobody would be in. It looked the sort of place that someone would be hidden there and nobody would know. I thought the girl might be there at first.
“He came downstairs. I asked him a few questions. What he was drinking – cider, I don't know why I added that in. I hit him on the head with a hammer.
“He had a selection of knives and scissors out in a ring, at least I remember it being a ring. I knew he was using them to torture the girl. I also saw a really old birth certificate and thought it was hers and he was keeping it as a souvenir. At this point I didn’t really ask him any questions as far as I remember I just lashed out. I was worried about the girl being tortured when he wouldn’t answer my questions. I didn’t think I would kill him and then I did.
“I believed they were keeping people prisoner like Fred and Rose West. There’s a connection between Kent and Surrey, Shipman and Gloucester and Torquay and police and Yewtree. Then I left. He died. There was no arguing. I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t know what I wanted. I wanted him to stop doing what he was doing to stop the abuse. Someone had taken my mobile so I had no means to call for help so I had to stop him.
“The main thing was to stop the girl being abused, that’s what I was thinking about. He needed to be out of the way so I could get her.
“I checked the whole house after I killed that man but I couldn’t find anything so I left and went around town for a bit then. Somehow I went to the other house. I walked. I don’t know what led me, a feeling. I was trying to get to Haldon Hill. I thought I would go to the racecourse to meet my mum. For some reason when I get unwell I’m attracted to horses. There’s something in my subconscious."9
Tragically, the note that 80-year-old Anthony Payne had left on his door was simply a request for anyone to rehome him and his pet, as he knew he would have difficulty finding a new place to live that would allow them to stay together.
Lewis-Ranwell wandered through the town making various citizens extremely worried and afraid because of his behaviour. It was clear that he was unwell. Several people contacted the police, but he was not stopped before he reached the home of 84-year-old twins Dick and Roger Carter.
“I walked up through town, this is a hazy patch, I remember I found another house. It was just by chance, a hunch, I was meant to find that house because it was linked. There was abuse happening there, a horse called Sugar. Tate & Lyle smile, they used to make the chimps grin. See, it all links with torture, paedophiles and bestiality,” he said. “There was something about this house and its state of dereliction. I saw it and thought it would have a cellar or basement or coal bunker, where you could have someone without someone else finding out. I started off thinking there was a high chance a girl could be in that house. That’s when I realised I needed to go there and rescue her.
"I went inside and there were two old men in there. To begin with, I didn’t say anything to them. I went outside again and looked around, then I picked up a spade before going in. That was after I realised that the girl was definitely there. I didn’t know what it was that I saw, something about the state of the house and I had a realisation nothing had been moved for years and years and the fact there were two of them and I knew there was a cellar.
“I was convinced they had kept someone and her life was in danger and that’s when I hit them with a spade. I went upstairs and went through all the rooms into the garden. I thought the police would come after I had left and they would search it. I thought they would let people know I was working for them. I thought they would let people know because I was saving the girl from torture. I was working for the police.
“They were definitely connected. I couldn’t work out the last bit of the puzzle. I believe there was some sort of tunnel where there was some kind of bunker. I didn’t have the training. They tried to set the dog on me but it wouldn’t attack.
“Anyway I was convinced they had kept someone and her life was in danger and that’s when I hit them with a spade. I went upstairs and went through all the rooms into the garden. I thought the police would come after I had left and they would search it. I thought they would let people know I was working for them.”
“I was convinced they had kept someone and her life was in danger and that’s when I hit them with a spade.
“I went upstairs and went through all the rooms and into the garden. I thought the police would come after I had left and they would search it. I thought they would let people know I was working for them. I thought they would let people know because I was saving the girl from torture. I was working for the police.
"It was a while till I was arrested. I tried to go to the racecourse to see a horse in the field."10
Incredibly, this was still not the end of Lewis-Ranwell’s rampage. He only ran once during his entire visit to Exeter, as captured on CCTV; the rest of the time, he simply walked around. Why would he run when he thought what he was doing was right?
He spent the night in the ruins of Exeter Castle, which must not have been a comfortable place to sleep. He said he saw the ghosts of bears which had been killed in a bear pit, and was bitten by a snake.
With this state of mind still ruling his consciousness, he woke in the morning and left the ruins. At 5am, he walked into the Rougemont Hotel in Queen Street. There, Stasys Belevicius was the night manager on duty.
He asked for breakfast, only to be told that it was not served for another hour. At this point, he again turned violent. He launched a glass bowl at Belevicius’ head, threatening to kill him and all the guests in the hotel. Belevicius shouted at the night porter to run away and save herself.
"He hit me with something, something very sharp in my head. My head started to bleed. Then he was ready to hit me again so I punched him in the neck one time, I punched him in the neck a second time,” said Belevicius. Lewis-Ranwell then began to chase him with a knife. "I ran to the basement and he was running right behind me. He was trying to catch me with the knife."11
Belevicius had managed to call the police. They arrived to find Lewis-Ranwell weilding a lamp stand as a weapon. When he refused to drop it, they tasered him, arrested him, and sectioned him.
It was only later that they would discover the man in custody, between two arrests, had killed three people. Belevicius or anyone at the hotel might have been the fourth.
Lewis-Ranwell did not know any of his victims. Still, his delusions had convinced him they were all child abusers who needed to die.
The footnote to this case has to be the fact that there were several layers of severe failures on the part of the police, the mental health professionals involved, and particularly G4S.
At the trial, the foreman of the jury handed over the following note to be read aloud: “We the Jury have been concerned at the state of psychiatric health service provision in our county of Devon. Can we be reassured that the failings in care for ALR will be appropriately addressed following this trial?”12
He was found not guilty of three counts of murder by reason of insanity, and will be held at Broadmoor High Security Hospital until it is possible for him to be released13.
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/inside-story-insane-alexander-lewis-3613650
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/02/killer-of-three-elderly-devon-men-found-not-guilty-due-to-insanity
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/inside-story-insane-alexander-lewis-3613650
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/20/man-who-killed-three-pensioners-believed-they-were-paedophiles
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-50591491
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/inside-story-insane-alexander-lewis-3613650
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/02/killer-of-three-elderly-devon-men-found-not-guilty-due-to-insanity
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/02/killer-of-three-elderly-devon-men-found-not-guilty-due-to-insanity
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/inside-story-insane-alexander-lewis-3613650
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/inside-story-insane-alexander-lewis-3613650
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10608535/Insane-killer-suing-NHS-police-failures-says-led-beat-three-men-death.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10608535/Insane-killer-suing-NHS-police-failures-says-led-beat-three-men-death.html
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/02/killer-of-three-elderly-devon-men-found-not-guilty-due-to-insanity