Beryl Purdy obviously was a much loved, valued relative, friend and neighbour – she was a church warden in her village for over 20-years and lived with her husband of 60-years, Peter. She died in March 2023 after David Parish broke in to her home and attacked her. At the time, Mr Parish had absconded from a mental health unit where he had been detained under the MHA and the hospital had reported him missing to the police a few hours before the attack.
At Bristol Crown Court today, he was sentenced to six years in prison for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and all of this justifies a post because there are a few points of interest here and things still to be settled about this most tragic of incidents.
- Those who plead guilty to manslaughter (diminished responsibility) are usually sentenced to detention in hospital under the Mental Health Act, so why hasn’t that happened here?
- Mr Parish was absent without leave (AWOL) and reported missing, so where does that leave the NHS and the police in terms of their organisational responses?
- What will happen next?
DIMINISHED RESPONSIBILITY
I was surprised to find the sentencing remarks for this case were fully published so we can read exactly what the judge said in court today. This is important as well because there has been no trial here – Mr Parish pleaded guilty to an offence and the prosecution accepted the basis of the plea so there was no murder trial. As Mr Justice Saini said in the judgment, this is the first time the full facts of this sad case have been made known to the press and the public.
In order to establish a partial defence of diminished responsibility, there needs to be psychiatric evidence that the defendant’s reasoning was substantially impaired because of illness and two psychiatrists gave evidence of this. Those assessments relate to mental state at the time of the offence. The reason Mr Parish has been sentenced to prison, not hospital, is because further psychiatric reports were commissioned about his mental state now, in order to determine sentencing.
Two psychiatrists who examined him were not agreed so a third report was commissioned and that imposed a quite astounding delay to sentencing. Mr Parish pleaded guilty to this offence in January 2024 and here we are in May 2025 learning the sentencing. Nevertheless, Mr Justice Saini determined his mental state does not currently require inpatient hospital treatment or detention, so an order under Part III MHA is not required and that is the reason a prison sentence has been imposed – because doctors are not agreed he requires further hospitalisation. As such, he’ll go to prison to serve his sentence as any other prisoner for manslaughter would and if during his time in prison, his mental health deteriorates, he can be transferred to hospital under s47 MHA.
AGENCY RESPONSES
The NHS and police are relatively tight-lipped about their contributions to this incident so we don’t know much and there is more process to come. Somerset NHS Foundation Trust has made its standard claim about “learning lessons” and making changes; Avon and Somerset Police has said less because they referred themselves to the Independent Office for Police Conduct whose investigation will not be concluded or published until the conclusion of Coronial proceedings, which will be at some point later this year. The IOPC has state their conclusions will be made known only after the Coroner’s findings are made.
It’s interesting to wonder why the police referred themselves to the IOPC: we know they had received the report from the NHS to say Mr Parish had absented himself from s2 detention and was therefore AWOL – it might just be that, but I admit to wondering whether someone realised the police had been involved in a previous response to Mr Parish prior to him being sectioned which involved him threatening to use a samurai sword, thus nodding towards violent intentions / tendencies.
We won’t fully know until after the inquest and will have to wait for the IOPC conclusion to see what it says. It was made clear by the Crown Court judge the it should not have been possible for someone detained under s2 MHA leave and we know Mrs Purdy’s family have found this point the most difficult to comprehend: that a door was left unlocked and now a wife, mother and friend was killed.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
There still needs to be an inquest in to Mrs Purdy’s death and because Mr Parish was a s2 MHA patient at the time, it’s likely to be Article 2 ECHR inquest which will look at the broader circumstances as well as the narrower question of how Mrs Purdy died. Depending on that inquest and on any internal or IOPC investigations, there is some potential for misconduct proceedings if someone thinks they are necessary and justified.
This one still has a way to go and there is much left we will need to know to understand all this.
As many of you know, I’m now doing a PhD research on mental health police contact deaths and actively building a database of cases since the year 2000. Mrs Purdy’s quite avoidable death is on my list and highlighted in yellow (which means it’s an ongoing case I still have to monitor because there is further legal process to come.) It’s one of several cases related to “AWOL” or absconded patients where we can wonder about whether obvious background affected police actions to the point of under-response and where there is definitely an obvious NHS context to a police contact death.
Winner of the President’s Medal, the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2025
I am not a police officer.
I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current. Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.
Government legislation website – www.legislation.gov.uk
Mental Health Cop 