Gwynedd man accused of murdering father blames stepmother, court hears

Tony Thomas, 45, of Penrhyn Isaf, Minffordd, Penrhyndeudraeth, is accused of killing Dafydd Thomas, 65, at the property on March 25, 2021.

He has pleaded not guilty to two charges; the murder and manslaughter of his father, who lived roughly 500 yards away from him.

At Mold Crown Court today (January 24), Thomas gave evidence from the witness box, interviewed by Gordon Aspden KC, defending, and Gordon Cole KC, prosecuting.

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Thomas said he received an email notifying him of the impending movement of pigs from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, and suspected his father had purchased the animals.

Previously, the court had heard how Thomas had been in dispute with his father regarding the ownership of his home and the keeping of pigs.

His father had not long retired, having been a director of Gwynedd Environmental Waste Services Limited, and had turned more of his attention towards farming.

Thomas made three phone calls in quick succession shortly before 1pm that day, attempting to cancel the impending movement, but failed.

Thomas then walked to his father’s house to find out if he was responsible for this, admitting he was “angry”.

But his father was not at home, with his stepmother, Elizabeth, suggesting he may be in the shed adjacent to their property.

Thomas admitted that he then stopped his father as he was about to return home in his pickup truck, talking to him through an open window of the vehicle.

He said: “I asked if he was responsible for the pig movements, then we discussed a virus called Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS).

“I was concerned in general about him bringing in diseased pigs to the same environment as my pigs. I’d spent the last few years trying to eradicate disease from them.”

Thomas told the court that his father “didn’t care”, before he then opened a vehicle door, put him to the ground, and kicked him on the right side of his torso.

He admitted stamping on him once but denied punching him at all, describing his attack as a “reflex action” with “no intention”, and lasting “10 to 15 seconds”.

Thomas said that he was “overwhelmed with anger” and felt “like a fuse (was) blowing in my head”.

He said he left his father positioned parallel to his vehicle on the ground, but “about 3-4m from where he was found by an ambulance”.

Thomas added: “It was my stepmother who killed him. On the ‘find my phone’ app data, that’s her pretending to look for my father.

“He was moved 3-4m from where I left him. All of the blood was after I had left the scene.”

After the attack on his father, Thomas washed his Wellington boots and clothes, admitting both were blood-stained.

The clothes he was wearing at the time of the attack were found in a bag for life when he was arrested later that day.

At the time of his father’s death, he was living in a section of a farmhouse, Penrhyn Isaf, having been there for some years, with his cousin and his partner living in the other.

The farmhouse had been the home of his paternal grandmother prior to her death in 2013.

Both houses and the farmland surrounding them were said to be owned by his father.

Thomas said the relationship between him and his father had deteriorated in the weeks leading up to his death.

He said: “He was bringing cattle in, and telling me to leave with my pigs, which was fair enough.

“But what he was doing was making it impossible for me to leave because of quarantine rules.

“I was trying to tell him he couldn’t do those things, that we had to co-operate with each other.

“I was angry, initially, when I was at home. I calmed down a bit then, and then it seemed to come in waves. When I was speaking to him, I got more angry.”

After going to look for him, Mrs Thomas used a “find my phone” feature on her own mobile at 1.24pm and 1.26pm, where she discovered that her husband’s phone was down the road from their house.

When interviewed in court last week, she said she made her way down to the location by car, and while looking for her husband, she saw Thomas, who was walking from where she was heading in the direction of his own home.

Thomas believes his stepmother kicked his father to the head after he had left the scene, and as such was the cause of his death.

He said that, while he did not check his father’s pulse after the attack, he “just knew” he was still alive at the time he left the scene.

Thomas added that a pathologist concluded the attack lasted about one minute in total, and so, given he assaulted his father for “10 to 15 seconds”, another party caused his death.

A provisional cause of death was given as inhalation of blood due to severe blunt trauma facial injuries, and Thomas was arrested at roughly 3.30pm that day.

Earlier today, Dr Yasir Kasmi, a consultant forensic psychiatrist based at The Spinney mental health service in Manchester, said Thomas was suffering from schizoaffective disorder at the time of his father’s death.

This disorder, which has similar symptoms to schizophrenia, meant Thomas was “unable to exercise self-control or form rational judgment”.

During his four interviews with Thomas, Dr Kasmi said he told him that his parents divorced when he was still a child, that his mother was a “heavy drinker”, and that her new partner subjected her to aggression which he witnessed.

On weekends, he would stay with his father, who he described as “psychologically violent”, while he labelled his stepmother “a bit weird”.

Dr Kasmi took the view that it was during the late 1990s, at the time when he began reading animal science at the University of Leeds, that the onset of his mental illness occurred.

Thomas has since been admitted to psychiatric hospitals on multiple occasions and spent large periods of his time spent in Leeds in an almost catatonic state.

When he spoke to Thomas further about his father, he said Thomas told him: “He was just horrible to me from day one.

“People think I’ve got a mental illness, but I was abused for 44 years, and yes, I flipped.”

Dr Kasmi said Thomas called his father a “narcissist” to him, that he had “no positive memories” of him and described the abuse he inflicted on him as “so subtle”, such as when he did not invite him to his grandmother’s 60th birthday party.

Thomas has also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, with Dr Kasmi adding that he has previously held grandiose ideas about himself and struggled to sleep properly.

It was also heard that Thomas would stop on a dual carriageway, laugh inappropriately at the cinema, spend lots of money, and drive erratically.

On November 23, 2014, Thomas was said to have self-harmed in an attempt to avoid what he feared would be “a slow, painful death at the hands of extremists”.

Dr Kasmi said: “At the time, Mr Thomas believed he would be tortured and beheaded.

“The incident was exceptionally concerning; in my view, he was acutely mentally unwell.”

Thomas had also claimed he had invented a COVID-19 vaccine five years before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

He told Dr Kasmi that he had upcoming appointments on the matter with Dr Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England and chief medical adviser to the UK Government.

Dr Kasmi added: “Mr Thomas had stated that he paid what I believe is an Italian company to sequence his own genome.

“He said his pigs had been genetically modified, and was working on the farm to eliminate pathogens, talked about the depopulation of pigs in China, and that his ‘team’ were involved in this.”

Thomas was initially remanded in HMP Berwyn following his father’s death, but was moved to The Spinney after a number of incidents while in prison.

On June 11, 2021, Dr Kasmi said, he confronted a community psychiatric nurse.

He said: “She attended his cell, and he came out dressed in his bright green duvet cover.

“The nurse asked him to return to his cell to dress, and he said: ‘You can’t get me to do anything, but (pointing to another officer nearby) you can’.

“He put his duvet cover around his head and neck, akin to a hat. She then left the wing, and he arrived dressed shortly after, dressed, banging on a door she had locked, before picking up a fire extinguisher, and banging it against the door.”

Dr Kasmi said prison officers restrained him and moved him to a segregation unit, where he described the nurse to the prison psychiatrist as “Miss Marple”.

He claimed she had been sent to his room to pleasure him sexually, and was adamant that his father was not dead, repeatedly requesting to telephone him.

Thomas also compared the conditions in HMP Berwyn to a prison in Iraq, and said officers derived pleasure from humiliating him.

He told Dr Kasmi that they “stripped me of my clothes, put the smallest underpants on (me), and I had to do twirls for them.”

Thomas also said he had seen papers saying his father wanted him to kill him so that he would go to prison.

He also told Dr Kasmi: “After gran died, I lived in a pig shed for seven years,” a home Thomas described as a “form of “modern slavery”.

Dr Kasmi was the third and final consultant forensic psychiatrist to give evidence, following Dr Andrew Shepherd and Dr Irfan Rafiq.

The jury is expected to return its verdict by the end of the week.

The case continues.