He confesses to the murder of his 94-year-old grandmother, Mary Gregory , during a “truth or dare game” almost a year after the funeral. Tiernan Darnton, a 21-year-old English student, was convicted of murder by Preston Crown Court in northwest England and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum sentence of 15 years.
The death of the elderly woman, which dates back to 2018, appeared to be an accident. The woman died after 4 days in agony following a house fire in Heysham, Lancashire.
Young man kills his grandmother and confesses in a game
Tiernan Darnton revealed her “darkest secret” to friends during the game. Until then, the common belief was that the 90-year-old woman had been the victim of a tragic fire in her bungalow.
During the trial, the young man claimed to have set the fire because he did not want Mrs.
Gregory to “suffer any more from dementia.” Investigations revealed that the 21-year-old set fire to a tent with a lighter, while in the first reports the police, excluding murder, had imagined that the fire had been started by a cigarette.
Not only that, during a ‘counseling’ session in 2019, the student had again talked about the episode: from there it triggered first the police report and then the arrest.
Police scans on Darnton’s phone and computer unearthed internet searches made after the fire, which included “I’m a killer,” “I’m a monster and I’m going to hell,” and “I need to kill again.”
Darnton had also made a blueprint of his murderous enterprise , with an accurate map of his step-grandmother’s house , on which locations and routes had been marked where to hide and escape once the crime was committed.
There were labels on the map marked as “good hiding place” and “quick exit” as well as references to the need for a “good alibi”. A package of cookies and a can of Coca-Cola were also discovered at the scene, purchased by Darnton at a nearby gas station less than two hours before the fire.
