Brian Healless, an 18-year-old who lured Alex Davies, 18, to a remote location in Lancashire, UK after agreeing to a romantic meeting on Grindr and then fatally stabbed him and left him to die, has been jailed for 24 years to life.
The Guardian reports: “Healless, from Chorley, tried to set up similar outdoor meetings with four other men on Grindr in the days after the killing, Preston crown court heard. He had told Davies, from Skelmersdale, he was ‘not out yet' and suggested a ‘discreet spot' halfway between their homes for their first meeting. The defendant stabbed him 128 times at the top of Parbold Hill and dragged the Home Bargains worker face down by his collar in the mud, while still alive, and covered his body with branches and leaves. Healless was then captured on CCTV on the afternoon of 29 April last year calmly riding away from the scene on his mountain bike with his victim's rucksack on his back.”
Said Judge Mark Brown at the sentencing: “Alex was a kind-hearted, gentle and hard-working young man who would never have harmed anyone. You lulled him to his death and executed the killing in a savage way. You were undoubtedly setting him up to kill and you are a manipulative, calculating and devious person. It is extremely fortuitous that you were arrested before anyone else suffered the same fate.”
Jurors rejected a defense of paranoid schizophrenia and convicted Healless in less than an hour.
