The heir to a £230m pie company fortune is to be jailed for life after being found guilty of the “frenzied” murder of his best friend last Christmas Eve.
Loner Dylan Thomas, 23, stabbed William Bush – his only friend – in a pre-planned knife attack at the rented home the former school classmates shared.
The body of Mr Bush, 23, was found lying in a pool of blood outside the newly-built house, owned by Thomas’s grandfather Sir Gilbert Stanley Thomas, a Welsh tycoon behind a business empire including Peter’s Pies.
During a “sustained attack” he had “fled for his life” down two flights of stairs before collapsing on the patio having suffered 37 stab wounds in total, including 21 to the neck.
Thomas had admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility but denied murder ahead of the trial. But after a week-long trial at Cardiff Crown Court he was found guilty by the jury.
Sir Thomas, the founder of Peter’s Pies, whose net worth was estimated to be £230million in 2013, sat in court throughout the trial.
Trial judge Mrs Justice Steyn said she would pass sentence on December 16, and Thomas was remanded into custody. He will be jailed for life with the judge to set the minimum term he must spend behind bars.
The trial was told how neighbours heard “screams of horror” coming from the property on the morning of the murder
The pair met at £18,000-a-year Christ College school in Brecon and subsequently lived together in a shared terraced house in the Welsh town of Llandaff.
Computer programmer Thomas, who is being treated for schizophrenia, had argued the incident was manslaughter by means of diminished responsibility.
But Gregory Bull KC, prosecuting, told jurors that whilst they accepted he was “mentally unwell” the murder had been pre-planned.
He said the killer told his friend a month or two before the incident: “I thought about killing you, I just wanted to see what would happen if I do certain things.”
Mr Bush’s girlfriend told police the threat had been taken seriously by the deceased, who had barricaded his door while he slept but was caught unaware when Thomas, wielding a large kitchen knife and a flick-style knife, launched his deadly attack by stabbing him in the neck from behind
When arrested Thomas told the police he stabbed Mr Bush in self-defence, insisting his friend had been “having an episode”.
But the court heard how prior to the stabbing Thomas had searched on his computer for the anatomy of the neck and messaged Mr Bush telling him: “I need to see you before you go.”
