Joshua Parfitt
A BRITISH pensioner who took a hammer to his sleeping stepson’s head has been jailed following a court hearing on the Costa Blanca.
Robert Ulph, 72, fractured the skull of his stepson, 20, before turning the hammer on his wife and then suffocating her as she rushed to her son’s side.
Ulph was sentenced yesterday to 25 years in prison following a trial at the courts in Denia.
The Brit initially denied all charges, claiming he ‘couldn’t remember’ the attack despite recalling his arrest by police while covered in blood and holding a hammer at the family’s home, also in Denia.
In their written sentence, however, the three judges dismissed the defence plea that Ulph was not guilty due to mental faculties being temporarily annulled.
Both son and mother, who was 49 at the time of the attack, have sought psychological help for post-traumatic stress disorder and testified alongside professionals for support.
The pair were allegedly told they were ‘parasites’, ‘trash’ and ‘pieces of s***’ during 10 years of verbal and physical abuse.
The mother told the court her husband repeatedly called her son ‘a little shit’, ‘a waste of empty space’, ‘worthless’ and that he would ‘never amount to anything’.
