Couple Stabbed Neighbour’s Son to Death While Sleeping

Couple let neighbour sleep on sofa – then he crept upstairs to butcher their four-year-old son… before curling up beside mother’s bed

The mother of a four-year-old boy savagely murdered by a friend who was allowed to sleep on her sofa has said she felt ‘so much guilt’ over letting the ‘monster’ stay with them.

Sharon Smith and her partner Guy Earwaker had thought psychopath Anwar Daniel Rosser was a harmless neighbour and allowed him to stay at their house when he asked after turning up after a night out.

In the early hours, the 33-year-old sneaked upstairs armed with four knives and stabbed Riley Turner to death.Read more...

He then crept into another bedroom where the boy’s mother and her partner were sleeping and curled up to sleep on the floor.

In a victim impact statement read in court Miss Smith said: ‘I wish I had told the monster no that night when he asked if he could sleep. He said people were outside his house and were going to beat him up and I believed him. I didn’t want him to get beaten up, but all along he had a knife in his pocket, plotting to hurt one of us, or all of us.

‘I feel so much guilt that my poor son had to go through such horrific things because my kind heart didn’t want to let that monster get beaten up. Now my kind heart cost me my son’s life.

‘I don’t feel like ever being nice to people at all except my family. The guilt eats me away every day. What he’s done is unforgivable, he’s ruined our lives.’

In the morning, following the attack, the mother-of-three, 26, was shocked to find Rosser curled up in a ball on the floor next to her, and ordered him to leave.

Moments later her partner, Guy Earwaker, noticed Riley’s light on and went to check his room – only to find it covered in blood and the boy semi-naked and dead on the bed with his throat cut.

Riley had been strangled, repeatedly stabbed and attacked in a sexual manner. Chillingly, Rosser had waited downstairs to hear the anguished screams. He escaped, but was arrested later by police.

Yesterday Rosser, a former soldier with a history of being violent when drunk, admitted murder at Bradford Crown Court. Experts agreed he was not mad but was a psychopath who could commit more ‘acts of sadistic homicide’.

Mr Justice Coulson branded him an ‘exceptionally dangerous man’ who had shown ‘appalling savagery’. He jailed Rosser for life and there were emotional scenes in the public gallery as the judged ordered he remain behind bars ‘for the rest of his natural life’.

Victim impact statements read in court showed how the family’s life has been devastated.
Miss Smith described Rosser as a ‘sick monster’ and said she had been frightened to go outside since the murder.

‘I get in a panic when a man walks past. I don’t trust men at all.’

She said Riley was a ‘happy, bubbly, caring and loving’ child and she was enduring a ‘bad nightmare’ without him. ‘This monster has hurt us so much, we will never ever recover from this.’ Riley’s identical twin brother Mackenzie regularly asks why he can’t ‘go to the sky’ to play with his brother.

The court heard Rosser had gone to the family’s house after spending the evening in a local pub. He asked to stay overnight – telling the couple he feared people he owed money to were waiting for him to return home and would beat him up.

Miss Smith and other relatives left the court when prosecutor Paul Greaney, QC, detailed the horrific nature of the ‘sadistic’ murder, which had a ‘strong sexual component’.

The court heard that Miss Smith and Mr Earwaker, 23, had been friends with Rosser for a few months, and had shown ‘considerable kindness’ by helping the part-time chef to furnish his nearby flat. There had never been an argument between them.

Rosser had turned up at Riley’s family home in Keighley, West Yorkshire, on January 19 last year after spending the evening drinking. He was described as ‘intoxicated’ but in control, the court heard.

Riley, Mackenzie and 18-month-old brother Tyler were asleep in separate rooms upstairs when the couple went to bed, leaving Rosser to sleep on the sofa.