Three brothers who smoked legal highs before killing a vulnerable woman with WWE and Ultimate Fight Championship wrestling moves have been jailed for life.
Scott, Adam and Joshua Knight performed ‘rainbow flips’, ‘T-bones’ and ‘FUs’ on Delyth Andrews for seven hours inside her home after taking ‘Spice’, a legal high.
The kind 54-year-old who took the trio in when their mother became homeless suffered a host of fatal injuries, including a broken back and broken ribs.
A jury took three days to find the boys guilty of murder at Canterbury Crown Court.
Today they were jailed to a minimum term of 23 years but warned they may never be released from prison.
Scott, 23, Adam, 20 and Joshua, Knight, 19, all of Ramsgate, remained impassive as they were told their fate by Judge Adele Williams.
She said: “You treated Delyth Andrews with the utmost cruelty and callousness and terrorised her – what you did was slow torture over many hours.
“Your mother must bear responsibility in a moral sense, if not a legal one, for her own cruelty, her own dishonesty.
“She also failed to summon help for many hours on that night.”
Delyth’s sister Sian Brown wept in court as the verdicts were read out.
Delyth, who suffered with bi-polar, weighed less than eight stone and was just 4ft 11in, was found brutally injured in her own bed in November last year.
She was taken to hospital and the brothers arrested. But she eventually succumbed to her injuries and died a month later.
Philip Bennetts QC, prosecuting, said that Delyth’s neighbours had described her as “too trusting”.
The trio had denied murder but Joshua and Adam had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and all three admitted causing grievous bodily harm with intent before she died.
Delyth had gotten to know the brothers’ homeless mother, Elaine Morely, through a friend and eventually offered her a place to live.
But within weeks, Morely had moved her terrifying sons in and they stripped the semi-detached home which they sold to buy drugs
Delyth’s home was soon wrecked, with friends and neighbours commenting that it had begun to look like a “drug den”.
Mr Bennetts said: “Joshua moved in as well and as time progressed Elaine Morley’s other sons, Scott and Adam, also moved into Ms Andrews’ home.
“Elaine Morley and her sons dominated Delyth Andrews’ home. Joshua Knight took a handbag containing Ms Andrews’ Disability Living Allowance and spent the money.”
He told the court that Delyth had received nightly phone calls from her friend across the road. He said the pair would discuss that evening’s soap operas.
But soon after Morely and her sons moved in, they would answer the phone by saying: “Elaine’s residence.”
The family were “noisy, anti-social, playing loud music which was going all times of the day and night,” he told the jury.
The prosecutor said by the summer of 2015 the brothers had smashed the living room, punching holes in a door and Morley put her foot through a glass panel.
Neighbours described Morley and her sons as “aggressive and intimidating” who had bullied Delyth.
Mr Bennetts told how on one occasion a neighbour saw her standing in her living room as one of the brothers pulled down her trousers and: “Look at the div now.”
In November 2015, the emergency services were called after Ms Andrews was found lying injured on her back in bed, complaining: “They were jumping all over me”.
Mr Bennetts said: “An X-ray revealed she had multiple rib fractures, fractures to her sternum and her pelvis.”
It was then she claimed she had been controlled by the brothers who had taken her TV and jewellery before performing body slams on her.
In an interview with police, which was played in full to the jury, Joshua told how the three of the brothers had performed WWE moves on her.
He also revealed that he had been selling her belongings to buy ‘Spice’, a legal high.
Mr Bennetts said: “He told police how Joshua and Adam had begun the assault, jumping on Delyth and rainbow flipping her onto her bed.
“He told officers that this had broken some of the wooden slats and his brothers encouraged him to join in.
“He described the assault continuing for hours, from 8pm or 9pm through to 3am with the brothers following her wherever she went in the house.
“He said the moves he and his brothers performed, saying they jumped onto her from the sofa and did rainbow flips, T-Bones, Cliffhangers and FUs.”
Scott told police “his mother was out during the assault but observed that she didn’t care as she wasn’t really Delyth’s friend and didn’t even pay rent to stay in the house.”
