Killer left mum's ex-partner to die in a pool of blood

Murderer is told he could spend rest of his life in prison

- CHRIS SLATER

A MURDERER who stabbed his mum’s elderly and “defenceless” former partner to death in his own home “for no discernible reason” has been told he will likely spend the rest of his days behind bars.

Andrew Hall, 59, knifed Geoffrey Ives four times in a “frenzied” and “savage” attack at Mr Ives’ flat in Heywood where he left him to die in a pool of his own blood.

Hall, who the court heard was drunk and “possibly under the influence of drugs”, then went to an offlicence where CCTV showed him laughing and joking with the shopkeeper and “acting as if nothing had happened”.

Still armed with two knives, including the murder weapon, he then smashed his way into his former partner’s home in Middleton before being bravely tackled by her son, restrained and arrested.

In his police mugshot, Hall is sporting a black eye and bruising he suffered during the struggle.

Hall denied murder and aggravated burglary but was found guilty after a trial. He was this week sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 26 years and seven months. Given his age, the judge said it was “possible he will spend the rest of his life in prison”.

Mr Ives was previously in a relationship with Andrew Hall’s mother Mary, who died around 2006. The relationship between Geoffrey Ives and Andrew Hall, described by prosecutors as a friendship, was “generally a good one” the trial heard.

But on the night of January 27 last year, Hall left his sister’s home on Crown Road in Heywood, where he had been living, armed with two knives, a “Stanley-type” knife and a “vegetable knife”.

Filled with “pent up anger and frustration” he walked to Mr Ives flat on Hardfield Road where Mr Ives let him in just before 10pm. Once inside he “repeatedly stabbed him to the face and neck with force”.