A 24-year-old man has been sentenced to indefinite detention after pleading guilty to stabbing a profoundly deaf vicar to death outside his vicarage.

Geraint Evans will be held at Ashworth Special Hospital after admitting the manslaughter of Father Paul Bennett.

He was killed near St Fagan's Church, Trecynon, Aberdare, south Wales on March 14.

He lived at the vicarage with his wife Georgina, children Emma and Nigel and grandson John.

They were at Cardiff Crown Court to hear Evans, of Maes Rhydwen, Trecynon, plead not guilty to a charge of murder but admit manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The prosecution accepted the plea.

John Jenkins QC, prosecuting, told the court that Father Paul was attacked within two minutes of stepping outside to put the rubbish out.

He said: "It is apparent he immediately ran away from the direction of the front door in the direction of the gate that leads to the churchyard. He probably did that to protect his family.

"His son Nigel, who was in the living room, saw his father running that way with the defendant in pursuit.

"The defendant stabbed him in the back while he was trying to run away. He had six stab wounds in his back."

Mr Jenkins said the vicar's wife Georgina heard screams and went outside to find her husband on his back with Evans on top of him stabbing him.

She tried to pull him off, but Evans raised his knife and stabbed her husband forcibly through the heart. Mrs Bennett then rushed back into the house to dial 999, while Evans sat on a bench outside the vicarage.

Mrs Bennett came out of the house, he said, holding a kitchen knife, but the defendant told her to go back inside as he did not want to hurt her or her son, telling her: "I've done what I had to do."

Mr Jenkins said the defendant then scattered ten computer CDs on the driveway, saying: "It's on there, he wouldn't listen, it's all on the tapes."

He said Evans then started swearing and speaking of God and the devil and said he had spoken to Father Paul previously.

Mr Jenkins said: "He also spoke to her of the attack, saying, 'I stabbed him through the heart, I stabbed him through the eye'.

"In a gloating voice, he said 'You have to forgive me now'."

Mr Jenkins said three psychiatric reports on Evans all said he was suffering from mental illness in March and the most likely diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia.

The report said Evans's use of intoxicants might have disinhibited him but his mental illness was a highly significant factor.

Toxicology reports revealed he had traces of alcohol, cannabis and by-products from butane gas in his body, and Judge Nicholas Cooke QC said Evans admitted long-term cannabis use.

In interviews after his arrest, Evans said he stabbed Father Paul in the head, adding: "He deserved it. I tried to preach to him. He had it coming. I am here because I came with the intent to kill and I executed it."

He told the psychiatric examiner who was interviewing him that he drank alcohol before the stabbing because "it's not the nicest thing to do".

Evans had been watching Father Paul from his flat before the attack, and said in interviews: "I love it when I lose control. My job is justice. Sometimes just ice-cold revenge."

In computer discs found at the scene, Evans claimed Father Paul had tried to have him sectioned under the Mental Heath Act and referred to "making him pay".

The discs also revealed that Evans believed he was God, and that any member of the clergy was a false prophet.

Psychiatric reports revealed Evans to be suffering from "extreme and disturbing illusions" and that he believed he was Jesus, God and the Anti-Christ, and that he would save the world from nuclear Armageddon.

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