Murder of Sir Richard Sutton
Sutton was stabbed several times by Schreiber in his home on his Moorhill estate in Higher Langham, near Gillingham, Dorset.
[7] The Lord Lyon pub in Berkshire was named after a Sutton family winning racehorse, that in 1866, won the 2000 Guinea Stakes at Newmarket Racecourse.
The Georgian mansion by the River Kennet was enlarged, with the original design being made by Henry Holland, set amongst parkland laid out by Capability Brown.
After Sutton inherited his title, the house, with provision of 30 rooms, was sold in 1982, alongside 140 acres of land, for approximately £1 million (£4,352,294.15 in 2023).
[5][11]Previously, in the Sunday Times Rich List in 2004, Sutton had ranked 321, with an estimated fortune of £120 million.
[7] Anne Schreiber, a Danish-born physiotherapist, owns a clinic in Milborne Port, a village in the Sherborne area of Dorset.
David, a translator with a military background, fell for Anne and on leaving his first wife, the pair married in 1982.
Those who knew the family stated that Anne and David 'poured love and affection onto Schreiber and his two older sisters'.
They lived in a Grade II listed farmhouse in Stalbridge Weston, Dorset, nine miles away from the Moorhill estate.
After separating from David, Sutton invited Anne and her children, Thomas and Rose, to move into his home at his £2m Moorhill estate.
David refused the offer and died on 7 April 2013, after suffering 'severe drink problems', that included liver damage.
[7] Following the end of his parents marriage in 2002, aged 16, Schreiber, who was incredibly close with his father, took sides with him, after Anne and Sutton started a relationship.
[7][9][20][21] In his late teens, Schreiber attended school and college in Denmark, then moving to London to study music technology.
[22] Since a teenager, Schreiber had struggled with low self-esteem, with a history of 'major depressive disorder and alcohol misuse'.
[20] In March 2019, a therapist found him to be a 'deeply hurt man' and a 'lost child' who 'felt abandoned by his parents', 'financially imprisoned by Sutton', with alcohol exacerbating his problems.
[7][9][20][23] Schreiber felt he was treated differently by Sutton and Anne compared with his sisters, in particular, in relation to money.
[21] In terms of violence within the family, Schreiber had been violent to Anne during the summer of 2019, where he punched her and pulled her hair, after she had called him a 'leech'.
[7][25] In November 2020, Schreiber punched one of his sisters during an argument about the inheritance of a chandelier, leading Sutton to break a walking stick across his back.
[14] On April 6, the night before the attacks, Schreiber searched 'how to overcome deep-seated desires for revenge' online.
[24] After visiting the grave, Schreiber then spent the afternoon working on an abstract painting in a makeshift studio in the snooker room of the house, before he had chatted with Sutton about his late father.
Schreiber retorted that he was not drunk (although it was later believed at the time of the attacks, he was three times the drink-drive limit, having had large gin and tonics during the day whilst painting, with Schreiber later describing himself as "tipsy but not drunk"), with Anne storming off out the room.
[22][23][27][21] Anne was the only eye-witness to the attacks and her account was taken at the end of June 2021, due to medical advice around her injuries.
Schreiber later stated that a voice in his head had shouted 'attack, attack', to which he had picked up the knife and started stabbing Anne.
He washed himself and one of the knives he had used, before allegedly going to the annexe in the property where he lived, collecting belongings, including his British and Danish passport, before he fled in Sutton's Range Rover from the address.
He was seen at approximately 19:00 BST by a friend of Sutton's daughter, who recognised the car he was driving and saw Schreiber at the wheel.
[15] At 20:41 BST, officers smashed the rear patio doors, entering the address where they firstly discovered Anne.
[15]After the attack, Anne was left with life-changing injuries, being paralysed from the neck down and at one stage, breathing with a ventilator.
[23] Police forced the vehicle to stop on Chiswick High Road, in Hammersmith, West London at approximately 22:45 BST.
Schreiber was taken for treatment for superficial injuries of chest wounds at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington.
[10][19] Schreiber argued that he did not want to kill Sutton or Anne, but 'demons' rather than himself were to blame for the attacks, with his state of mind affected by "long-running family tensions and the stress of the Covid lockdown".
