A former soldier and his mother who murdered his 84-year-old grandmother ‘for kicks’, have been jailed for at least 11 years each.
Barry Rogers, 33, smothered former nurse Betty Guy at her home in Pembrokeshire on November 7, 2011, after her daughter Penelope John, 50, fed her a cocktail of pills and whiskey.
The pair, who were found guilty after a trial at Swansea Crown Court, nearly got away with the killing but came under suspicion in 2015 after one of Rogers’ ex-girlfriends reported him to the police.
Police bugged John’s home and recorded the pair speaking about the killing after they were arrested in October 2016.
Barry Rogers, 33, and Penny John, 50, are said to have killed his grandmother for ‘kicks’
Mrs Guy was murdered at her home in Pembrokeshire in November 2011. But detectives began investigating only after Rogers’s ex-partner came forward with her concerns four years later
An ex-girlfriend of Rogers went to police after he told her he had killed his grandmother
It emerged that the former technician in the Royal Corps of Signals had told three former partners he had killed his nan by putting a pillow over her face.
Police arrested mother and son in November 2016 and placed a bug in John’s home which recorded them discussing the killing, including Rogers saying to John she had nothing to worry about because ‘it’s me that’s the one that’s done the act’.
Paramedics were called to Mrs Guy’s home in the early hours of November 7 2011 by John, who said her mother had died and had been suffering from cancer.
Medics believed Mrs Guy had died from natural causes and her body was cremated days later but the trial heard there was no evidence she had cancer or had been terminally ill.
Sentencing them both to life with minimum terms of 11 years on Thursday, Mr Justice Lewis said: ‘You each had your role to play. You, Ms John, decided that the time had come to kill your mother.
‘You arranged for your son to come and carry out the killing, you gave your mother drugs, intending to sedate her.
‘You, Barry Rogers, were the one to place the pillow over Mrs Guy’s face and to suffocate her.’
No post mortem was carried out on Mrs Guy, and her daughter chose to have her body cremated days after her death
Penelope John arriving at Swansea Crown Court. She was today jailed for at 11 years
The judge added: ‘Mrs Guy was not terminally ill. She did not have any form of cancer. Mrs Guy had mobility problems but she was not bedbound.
‘She was in pain and had been prescribed a painkiller but there’s no evidence at all to suggest that Mrs Guy was suffering unbearable pain… you did not therefore kill Mrs Guy because she had, or you believed she had, a terminal illness.
‘Again this was not a case where Mrs Guy was suffering or you believed she was suffering in unbearable pain and you wanted to bring that pain to an end… you believed Mrs Guy was old and ill and wanted to die and you believed that you should end her life.’
Earlier the court heard a victim impact statement from Mrs Guy’s daughter Lorraine Matthews who said her mother ‘loved life’ and ‘loved a little giggle.’
The statement read by Jim Davis, for the prosecution, said: ‘We grieved once after her death and now we have to go through a different kind of grief.’
Rogers is said to have used a pillow to smother Betty Guy (right) after her 50-year-old daughter Penelope John (left) had plied her with whisky and pills
Ms Matthews said she was ‘shocked that a member of my own family is capable of committing such a despicable act on an old lady’.
She added: ‘My mother was in no way ill enough to warrant a mercy (killing).
‘I had spoken to her doctor some months before and was reassured of her health… I find it difficult to come to terms with the fact that her life ended before it should have naturally.’
Nadine Radford, QC, for John, said her client suffered from PTSD as a result of an ‘extremely abusive, extremely violent’ relationship of 22 years with her ‘first love’ who she met aged 16.
Ms Radford said prison would be more difficult for John because of her condition.
She said: ‘There’s no motive for this, there’s no motive whatsoever.
‘There’s no question there was some sort of violent motive… there’s no financial motive, quite the contrary, there’s every emotional reason for it to go the other way.’
Ms Radford urged the court to conclude that Mrs Guy’s death may have been a killing based on ‘care and love’.
Christopher Henley, QC, for Barry Rogers, said the ‘only way of explaining what happened is as a mercy killing’.
He said Rogers loved Mrs Guy ‘deeply and truly’.
‘There’s no direct evidence of this but there appears to be a solid basis to believe that Betty Guy was a participant in discussions about what happened,’ he added.
Mr Henley urged the court to act with ‘a degree of compassion’.