A 41-year-old Ipswich man who murdered a fellow guest house resident has been told he will have to serve at least 15 years of a life sentence.
Sentencing Warren Atkinson, who appeared on a prison video link after refusing to attend court for the hearing, Judge Martyn Levett described the murder of 37-year-old Steven Povey, who suffered 62 separate injuries, as “ grotesque, callous and brutal”.
He said Mr Povey’s murder was a “devastating loss for his family in terrible circumstances”.
Atkinson, of Norwich Road, had denied murdering Mr Povey at the Beaumont Guest House in Norwich Road on July 9 last year but was convicted by a jury last month after a nine week trial.
On Tuesday (December 6) Judge Martyn Levett jailed him for life and ordered him to serve a minimum of 15 years before he would be eligible for parole.
He rejected Atkinson’s claim that Mr Povey had a knife and said this was a lie told by Atkinson to justify his actions in assaulting him.
During the sentencing hearing, Peter Gair, prosecuting, said Mr Povey was alcohol dependent and was seen staggering into the Beaumont Guesthouse less than an hour before he was killed.
“We accept something caused Mr Atkinson that afternoon to attack Steven Povey, a drunk and we say vulnerable person, who wasn’t capable of defending himself,” said Mr Gair.
He said there was an element of humiliation of Mr Povey by Atkinson throwing his cap out of a window and placing a coffee table in his “prone and dying body”.
Christopher Paxton KC for Atkinson, who is a white Rastafarian, said there was no evidence he had thrown Mr Povey’s hat out of the window or placed the coffee table on him as “ an act of humiliation”.
He asked the court to accept that Atkinson was suffering with a mental disorder or disability that lowered his degree of culpability for the killing but this was rejected by the judge.
During Atkinson’s trial, the court heard that Mr Povey was found lying on the floor on his back in a small top-floor communal kitchenette at the guest house, with a wooden coffee table standing on top of him and a large amount of blood spattering on the walls.
When he was discovered by the landlady, who had gone upstairs to investigate after hearing banging, Mr Povey appeared to be unconscious and his face was “battered, purple and swollen”.
She called the emergency services but despite the efforts of paramedics, Mr Povey died at the scene.
The court heard that there were no witnesses to the incident and there was no history of difficulties between the two men prior to the murder.
Pathologist Benjamin Swift said Mr Povey had died as a result of traumatic brain injury and blunt force injuries to his neck, which could have been caused by punching, stamping or compression.
He said Mr Povey’s injuries included two black eyes, a possible fractured nose, brain damage, a missing tooth, lacerations to his lips, a fractured larynx and areas of bruising to his face, head, ears, arms and body.
Giving evidence Atkinson claimed he was scared he was going to die after seeing Mr Povey holding a knife.
He admitted punching and kicking Mr Povey but said that some of his 62 injuries had been caused by him falling over.
Last week Mr Povey’s family described the devastating impact the killing has had on their lives.
In a victim impact statement read to Ipswich Crown Court, his sister Kayleigh McLaughlin described the attack on her brother by Atkinson as “atrocious and grotesque”.
She said she wanted Atkinson to understand the effect the murder had had on her and her family who’d been left traumatised by imagining the pain her brother had endured in the last minutes of his life.
Mr Povey’s father David Povey said nothing in his life had been the same since the day of his son’s “cowardly” murder.
He said he had tried to understand why his son was murdered but was as much in the dark now as he was on the day he died.
“Only Warren Atkinson knows what really happened and what caused his to launch such a frenzied and sustained attack."
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