Killer Laughs While Telling Police He Warned His Neighbors He Would Kill Them, Claims His Childhood Teddy Bear Told Him To Do It

A man who knifed his neighbor 27 times and attempted to murder another in a row over parking claimed the voice of his childhood teddy bear told him to kill.

Can Arslan, 52, said he heard the noise in his head, but expert forensic psychologist Dr. John Sandford told a court today he did not consider him to be mentally ill and he did not need to be in the hospital.

He instead found he had a personality disorder, which he described as applying to people with 'a personality outside of the normal range'.

It comes after footage was shown to the court showing the grinning defendant laughing when he learned the father-of-three had died, before insisting he warned police a year earlier he had planned to murder him.

Arslan also told the officer pinning him down on a Gloucestershire street last October he was a 'mother f***er' with a bounty on his head, adding: 'You are next - more people are going to die tonight.

He fatally stabbed father of three Matthew Boorman on his front lawn in Walton Cardiff in Gloucestershire on October 5 last year. He then forced his way into the home of Peter Marsden and knifed him eight times.

Arslan had subjected his neighbors to years of verbal abuse and threats and was on the point of being evicted from his property when he launched his attack on them.

He has admitted the attempted murder of Mr Marsden, and causing grievous bodily harm to Sarah Boorman, Mr Boorman's wife, whom he sliced in the leg when she tried to pull him off her husband.

Arslan also admits a charge of affray and is now on trial at Bristol Crown Court where he denies murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

The defendant is being brought from Broadmoor maximum-security psychiatric hospital every day, accompanied by six psychiatric nurses.

On Thursday, expert forensic psychologist Dr Sandford told the jury he did not consider Arslan to be mentally ill and that he did not need to be in hospital.

He instead found he had a personality disorder, which he described as applying to people with 'a personality outside of the normal range'.

Dr Sandford said: 'Sometimes you can help them but in some cases you can't because that is just what they are, it's their character.'

The witness explained that people suffering a psychotic episode or prolonged mental illness will tend to have a 'package' of symptoms, including paranoid delusion and auditory and visual hallucinations.

He said people who are hallucinating are often very distracted, will respond to the voices they are hearing and find it hard to differentiate between the person talking to them in real life and the voice.