Two prison inmates who murdered a convicted double killer in his cell after being “ordered by God” to attack him have both been handed life sentences.
Billy White, a Christian, and Gary Lindley, a Muslim, prayed after the pre-planned killing of 25-year-old Brett Rogers, which they said they believed would “exorcise a demon” and “cleanse” him of his crimes.
White, 24, was given a whole life term for the killing, which was carried out while he was already serving a life sentence for the murder of his partner in Hayes, west London.
Lindley, 42, was told he would serve a minimum term of 17-and-a-half years for killing Rogers. He had been serving an indeterminate sentence after being jailed at Nottingham crown court in 2007 for his part in a violent burglary.
The killing of Rogers at the high-security Long Lartin prison was the fourth homicide there in the past five years.
Judge Robert Juckes QC said White and Lindley, who pleaded guilty to murder, had admitted during police interviews that they had decided to kill Rogers about a week before his death.
Explaining his reasons for handing White a rare whole life term, the judge said: “This is his second offence of murder. This was a determined and premeditated killing of a particularly cruel kind of a man in his own cell by two men who overpowered him. They picked on him because of what they had come to believe about him.”
Rogers, from Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex, was jailed for life last year with a minimum term of 32 years for the murder of his mother and her friend.
Benjamin Aina QC, prosecuting at Worcester crown court, said prison officers found Rogers’ body on 7 June after he failed to collect medicine.
Paramedics pronounced Rogers dead and while the wing was in lockdown Lindley passed a note to a prison officer reading: “I was ordered by the lord my God to free Brett Rogers. I know you will not see it this way but that is between you and God. I am of sound mind. Please can I speak to the governor.”
During their police interviews, Lindley and White, who worked as cleaners at the jail, said they had tried to “snap” Rogers’ neck and then suffocated him with a pillow. White then used a blue marker pen to draw yin and yang signs on the dead man’s cheek.
Before the sentencing, Lindley tried unsuccessfully to withdraw his guilty plea, citing mental health issues.
Former milkman Brett Rogers, 25, was jailed for a minimum sentence of 32 years for killing his mother Gillian Phillips, 54, and her friend, 60-year-old David Oakes, in 2015.
The jury at Rogers’ trial was told how he was found at his mother’s home after the attacks, laughing and covered in blood. Phillips had been stabbed at least 41 times in the head, neck and torso. Oakes suffered 56 wounds to his head, face and neck and died of severe head injuries.
During his trial, Rogers attacked a male and female dock officer in front of the jury during evidence by a forensic expert.
