THE mother of a convicted killer spoke out this week against the lack of police and health service action she believes could have saved the life of the man her son killed, reports Andy Bloxam.

Karen Rogerson's son Daniel, 20, was detained under the Mental Health Act without limit of time on Tuesday, for stabbing his grandmother's neighbour Richard Hodgson to death at Nether Kellet in July, 2003.

Mrs Rogerson, of Sand Lane, Warton, said the police failed to respond to her pleas to arrest her son, who had become obsessed with carrying a knife and was increasingly violent.

"That man would probably still be alive if they (the police) had acted on the fact that he needed a knife with him," she said.

Mrs Rogerson has contacted a solicitor to write a formal letter of complaint to Lancashire Police.

She said the National Health Service should also have done more to help.

Mrs Rogerson said she warned the police several times about her son's behaviour that included: heavy drinking and drug use; making a petrol bomb; throwing a brick at his father; and carrying a knife at all times, including a large kitchen knife and ones with curved, serrated blades.

Events came to a head when she said her son stabbed a neighbouring farmer's cow. She said she contacted the police but claimed they did not do enough to stop her son's violence. Two weeks later, Mr Hodgson was dead.

The very night Mr Hodgson died, police and dog handlers came to Mrs Rogerson's house and asked for directions to find her son. She said they intended to arrest him for tyre slashing.

But by the time Daniel Rogerson was put in a police cell, Mr Hodgson was lying in a shallow grave a few hundred yards behind his house in Shaw Lane.

Rogerson pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at Preston Crown Court. He denied murder and his plea was accepted.

The court heard that at 7pm on July 3, a neighbour saw Mr Hodgson, a keen gardener, cleaning a lawnmower. He was never seen alive again.

Prosecuting, John Jones, QC, said Mr Hodgson was killed some time between 8pm and 9.15pm: "It was a frenzied knife attack. There were eight significant stab wounds to the body."

The prosecution said Rogerson was wearing a homemade mask cut from a pair of underpants when he attacked Mr Hodgson.

Forensic evidence showed that the knife used in the killing was the same one Rogerson had used to damage six tyres.

The body was found when a police dog scratched up spectacles, the court heard.

No Lancashire Police or National Health Service representatives were available for comment as the Gazette went to press yesterday (Thursday).