A murderer who shouted 'yahoo' as he fatally shot his landlord and former friend, before entering into a seven-hour standoff with police, has died in prison.
Peter Grass killed dairy farmer William Kenyon by shooting him twice from behind with a shotgun, leaving him in agony for five minutes before firing a third and final shot. Grass had known his victim for more than a decade and lived for seven years, on a cottage on Mr Kenyon's farm in Radcliffe, near Bury.
The pair had fallen out in the weeks leading up to the killing and Grass had been ordered to leave the property, Manchester Crown Court heard. A judge called it a 'cowardly and shocking attack' and handed him a life sentence in December 2006 with a minimum term of 26 years after a jury found him guilty of murder.
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Fifteen years into that sentence he died, reports LancsLive. A report into his death was carried out by the Prisons and Probations Ombudsman and has now been published 16 months after his death in October 2021.
It says that Grass died from cancer after years of suffering health issues including lung disease, diabetes, heart disease and circulation problems. Grass had spent almost his entire prison term in HMP Garth in Leyland and declined to move to HMP Preston after his diagnosis with terminal skin and bone cancer despite it having a hospital wing.
He died in his prison cell around four months after his diagnosis, during which time he had received palliative care. Concerns were raised in the report over the use of double handcuffs during hospital visits given his poor mobility.
Sentencing Grass in 2006, Mr Justice Henriques said: "You shot him in a cowardly and shocking attack. You have deprived a large, loving family of a fine man and a young daughter of a devoted father.
"I have detected not a jot of contrition throughout the trial, and the facts demonstrate you are exceptionally dangerous. The last five minutes of William Kenyon's life must have been pure agony."
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