Norman Richard Bassett (Jail)

Norman Bassett was convicted of the murder of his mother Eileen Nellie Bassett. in 1968. In 2014 he was convicted of attempted murder which he carried out in 2004. 

He murdered Eileen Bassett on 5 September 1968 by stabbing her in the neck whilst she was in bed. Then with her blood he wrote on the wall 'You who were once my mum, how lost am I'.

After the murder he went to Bootle Street police station in Manchester at 1.35am wearing a khaki coloured combat jacket and knife armed with a sawn off shotgun and fired into the charge office. When the police went to investigate he threw down his gun and they rushed at him and arrested him.

The crime was apparently motiveless and he did otherwise get along with his mother. He had just got back from a holiday on the continent. He said 'My nerves have been playing me up. I had been on holiday on the Continent and I have not been sleeping well. It came to a head and I just did it.'.

When the police arrested him in Bootle Street police station he had a sawn off 2 bore Snipe shotgun, a double edged sheaf knife, a single edged sheath knife and belt, a cartridge belt with 24 cartridges and a half belt with 10 cartridges.

At his home they found:

• Air rifle
• Samuri sword
• Part-made crossbow
• Machette and sheath
• Rubber truncheon
• Toy Lugar pistol
• Air pistol
• Stilletto knife with yellow plasticene handle
• Stilletto knife with blue plasticene handle
• Knife with skeleton handle
• Knife with tape on handle
• Flick knife
• Two leather knife sheaths
• Studies in Zen by D T Suzuki
• Those about to die by Daniel P Mannisc
• Karate by Bruce Tegner
• Swords and daggers by Ferderick Wilkinson
• Complete book of self defence  by Bruce Tegner
• Yoga by Ernest Wood
• Buddish scriptures by Edward Conze
• Kill or get killed by Col Reg Applegate
• The teachings of the compassionate - Buddha by E A Burtt
• The sentence is death - legal methods of death throughout the whole world by George Bishop
• Myself and I  by Constance A Newlands
• The spirit of Zen by Alan W Watts
• Fighting arts of the world by John F Gibbey
• The secrets of karate by Ed Parker
• A red backed note book containing notes on knives and daggers
• Cassells French/English dictionary bearing stab marks
• Envelope containing notes and plans of a gun
• Cellophane bag containing hair
• Cut ends from a cartridge belt
• Bowie type knife
• Twleve bore shotgun cartridges
• Shot gun cartridge belt containing 12, 12 bore cartridges

He had about 300 books ranging from 'The Man From Uncle' through to 'The Ministry Of Agriculture Nutrition Guide'.

Eileen Bassett had seven stab wounds on the front and left side of her neck. One would had cut the arch of the aorta and another had almost completely severed the descending aorta. She also had eleven stab wounds on the left side of the upper back which had penetrated the lung, heart and diaphragm in to the spleen, left kidney and stomach.

First three pictures are of the bedroom where Eileen Bassett was murdered and the writing written on the wall. The Other three are of the charge office at Bootle Street police station in Manchester where the shot was fired.

He was released in 1982.

In 2014 he was convicted of attempted murder after he stabbed a neighbour in 2004. At the time he was considered unfit to plead and was detained. He told police he had been 'instructed to carry out the attack by the head of MI5 special branch because the victim was an android alien'. For the attempted murder he was initially sentenced to life but at an appeal the sentence was replaced with a hospital order.