"Family" of Blue Lagoon man all found guilty

I started to write about this when I first heard about it in February but never finished the article; yesterday the court found all of the perpetrators guilty so I’ll summarise it now. I know I don’t normally do crime but this is an exception because it’s so horrific.

There once was a 26 year old man named Michael Gilbert, and he lived in Luton. Michael was ‘naïve and vulnerable’, and apparently had a habit of going off on his own.

When he was 15 he met a boy named James Watt at a childrens’ home. He then moved in with the Watt brothers and their girlfriends, who enslaved him and set about a 10-year course of bullying, torture and eventually murder. They assaulted him for entertainment and kept him as a slave for his benefits money.

The Watt family were a black cloud over every neighbourhood they moved into and it wont come as any surprise to discover that all of them apart from the mother had criminal records and all of them apart from the 60 year old father were on benefits. The boys always carried weapons and set about terrorising local residents until eventually the family – including Michael Gilbert – was either moved on or left of their own will.

Michael Gilbert was – and this is not an exclusive list by far – forced to sleep handcuffed next to James Watt’s bed; led around the house like a slave using locking pliers attached to his genitals; attacked with a baseball bat; stabbed; shot at with an air gun; forced to goad an exotic lizard until it stung him; forced to stand in boiling water; chained to a bed and set upon by pitbulls and subjected to a vile game whereby the family paid each other money to assault him (£5 for a slap, £15 for a kick, £25 for a headbutt). He was also regularly assaulted by James Watt’s girlfriend with a hammer and Watt often threw snooker balls at him.

Many of the assaults carried out on Michael Gilbert were filmed on a mobile phone.

He attempted to escape on numerous occasions, but the Watt family telephoned the Department for Work and Pensions and were told where he was claiming his benefits. This led to his recapture every time, and the violence against him became more brutal.

Even the police knew about his plight: in 2007 he and Watt had been arrested and he told them about his abduction, but because he would not press any charges they were powerless. Gilbert said “it would only make it worse for me in the long run” if he had.

He was right. Mr Gilbert’s broken and battered body finally gave up during the latest method of torture, which was to do sit ups leaning on a piece of wood across his mouth and jump on his stomach with both feet. One of those that did this was Robert Watt who weighed a massive 21 stone at the time.

Michael Gilbert died between the 21st and 22nd of January 2009, following which the Watt family hacked his body into pieces, placed the various bits into different prison bags weighed down with stones from the Watts’ patio and dumped them into a private lake in Arlesey, Bedfordshire.

I don’t know why, but as a member of society I feel partially responsible for this. Society has changed and cases of extreme violence like this are becoming more common, but society did nothing to help Michael Gilbert. It left him trapped with the Watt family suffering ten years of misery, humiliation, pain and culminated in murder. Was anyone surprised these people already had criminal records for violence? Not in the slightest. How about that their careers of brutality were state-sponsored with benefits? Didn’t think so.

Everyone that visited the Watt family home witnessed violent assaults on Michael Gilbert, but not a single person did anything about it. Society is devoid of social responsibility; nobody cares about anyone else and this is illustrated clearly by this case.

Four years ago a similar case occurred whereby 16 year old Mary-Ann Leneghan was horrifically stabbed to death in a park after being abducted and subjected to “a concentrated sequence of controlled acts of violence and degradation”. Her 18 year old friend was shot in the head following the same ordeal but miraculously survived to give evidence and put the 6 perpetrators behind bars.

Mary-Ann was forced to strip, was raped, was attacked with a pole, cut with knives and forced to take heroin and crack cocaine before finally being told she was going to die anyway and taken to a park, held down with a pillow over her face whilst one of the perpetrators stabbed her 40 times.

Unsurprisingly, the perpetrators were all serving community sentences at the time of the murder. Some deterrent.

And local to home, don’t forget the recent case of Kieron Whitfield who was left paralysed after a violent, unprovoked knife assault on St. Annes Road, Blackpool. The rabid attackers selected Mr Whitfield at random, chased him down and assaulted him with headbutts and punches before butchering him with a knife. They then continued their frenzied stabbing, kicking and stamping despite him lying motionless on the floor whilst one filmed it on a mobile phone. The violent chavs that did it then simply left him for dead and received very lenient 9 year sentences and one accomplice who was there and did nothing to prevent the attack or report it afterwards unbelievably escaped jail.

In cases where people are inherently violent and feel no remorse for their actions, I think the sentence should include some form of corporal justice meted out. Perhaps not the death penalty and certainly nothing in public that would increase their notoriety, but jail in its current form is not a deterrent and additional punishments are required. The only reason the killers of Michael Gilbert have been prosecuted is because the body was found. The only reason the killers of Mary-Ann Leneghan were jailed is because her friend survived a bullet in the head.

There are some bad people out there.