15-year-old detained for hammering mother to death
Daniel Bartlam, a 15-year-old boy who murdered his mother with a hammer and then set her on fire, has been detained for a minimum 16 years.
Bartlam denied the charge of murder, but admitted to the manslaughter of his mother Jacqueline after an argument at their home in Nottinghamshire.
Nottingham Crown Court was told that she was struck several times with a claw hammer, fracturing her face and skull. A soap opera murder plot, in addition to violent video clips, was found on his computer.
A gag order on the Press was lifted after his sentencing. Jacqueline Bartlam was found by fire crews at her home in Redhill, Nottinghamshire on 25th April 2011. After being beaten, her son wrapped her body in paper, doused it with petrol and set light to it.
It was revealed that in addition to fantasizing about the Coronation Street plot in which John Stape kills a woman with a hammer and leaves her body in the wreckage of a tram crash, he had also watched violent horror films since he was eight, and had seen the film Saw just hours before murdering his mother.
