Inquest finds paranoid Brit stabbed wife, daughters in Gibraltar

GIBRALTAR: A “disturbed” British man stabbed his Spanish partner and her two daughters to death before cutting his own throat, an inquest into killings that shocked Gibraltar concluded Friday.
Liverpool-born John Shannon, a 31-year-old habitual user of cannabis and steroids, thought he was being pursued by Lebanese contract killers threatening to kill him and remove his organs, the inquest heard this week.
He also thought his partner had tried to poison him and that he was not the natural father of their baby, whom he feared would be “pimped” by his imaginary pursuers, according to evidence from Adrian West, a forensic clinical psychologist.
The four bodies were found on March 30 in a locked rented flat on Boschetti’s Steps, a narrow alleyway in the heart of Gibraltar’s old town.
The killings led to the largest murder investigation in the British territory’s modern history.
The family had been living in Estepona, on Spain’s Costa del Sol, and had been in Gibraltar just a few days on their way to Britain.
The Coroner’s Court heard that Anarda De La Caridad Perez Friman, a 37-year-old Spanish woman of Cuban descent, died from a stab wound to the heart likely sustained while she was lying in bed.
Her daughters Amanda Kristoffersen Perez, a four-year-old from a previous relationship, and six-week-old Eve Shannon Perez — Shannon’s daughter — also died from stab wounds through the heart.
The court was told neighbors heard a woman’s high-pitched, panicked screams and the desperate crying of a little girl on March 28, the night they were killed, without being able to identify where the noises were coming from.
All had been repeatedly knifed and the mother and toddler had deep defensive wounds, indicating they had tried to fend off their attacker.
The court heard that Shannon died two days later on March 30 from a deep, self-inflicted cut across the neck that punctured his jugular vein. Police found eight knives and a blood-soaked corkscrew in the flat, along with evidence of extreme violence in several rooms.