Keith Jones was a loner and oddball who displayed violent and bizarre behaviour in the years leading up to the murder of Jack Carter. Liz Lamb reports

Weird, strange, emotionless, callous. These are all words used to describe Jack Carter's killer by those who know him.

A social outcast, Jones was ostracised by his family and friends and taken into care in his early teens after his parents, Thelma and Brian, could no longer cope with his violent outbursts.

Born in May 1971, he suffered from a deformed right leg that had to amputated below the knee. He was later fitted with a prosthetic limb.

He was regularly teased by schoolmates about his disability, something he found very hard to bear.

It is ironic that, years later, Jones would inflict such terrible injuries on a defenceless man who himself suffered from a disability that also had had a profound effect on his life.

But Jones did not care about Jack Carter or the brutal way he attacked him. He has never shown any remorse for the murder.

Dr Kim Fraser, a psychiatrist who interviewed Jones to discover why he had killed Mr Carter, said the defendant appeared to be emotionless, except for when he recalled his childhood experiences surrounding his disability - then, he became very distressed.

His uncle, Colin Jones, recalls that his nephew was a happy child but he began to go off the rails after the amputation.

He said: "He was a nice lad. I believe his problems started when he had his leg removed.

"He has not been the same since."

Jones first got into trouble aged 14 when he attacked a teacher who had innocently tapped him on the head.

The teenager was charged with assault and excluded from school. At about this time, he was taken into care and moved to Aycliffe Young People's Centre, County Durham, after his parents could no longer control him.

He was said to have put them through "hell".

Tearfully, his mother told the court: "At times, I was frightened of him. If things did not go his way, he used to get angry, break things, smash windows in the house and ornaments. He kicked a lot of doors in."

A few years later, in 1989, then aged 18, he stabbed a teenager with a craft knife on Redcar seafront, in east Cleveland. The following year, he attacked a middle aged-man in the street.

It was at that time Jones was diagnosed as suffering from anti-social personality disorder, which affected his moods and behaviour.

The court heard the 33-year-old is unable to feel guilt, is deceitful, impulsive and reckless and shows no under-standing of the harm he causes his victims.

The father-of-five is also unable to have close, long-standing, personal relationships.

Jones became a well-known face in Redcar because of his odd behaviour, but had few real friends and he was feared by many. Tellingly, even his own uncle would not cross the street to greet him.

Since his first offence as a teenager, he has been in court every year since the age of 14, except one, and was the subject of concern by police and probation workers who deem-ed him a danger to the public.

In April 2003, the authorities disclosed that Jones posed "a risk of serious harm, whereby a potential event could happen at any time and the outcome could be serious".

Police records show that on one occasion he flew into a rage and armed himself with a knife. Officers could only control him by spraying him with CS gas.

Officers were warned that if they came into contact with Jones they should never be complacent with him, because he was extremely volatile and unpredictable.

Less than a year before the murder, a public protection forum meeting concluded that Jones was a high risk and potentially dangerous.

Nobody was safe from attack. In 2002, he was convicted of assaulting a nurse at the James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, after he flew into a violent rage.

His mother also became a victim of her son's aggression when he attacked her and bit her face. He was sent to prison for the assault and his parents took out an injunction against him in 2001, preventing him from contacting them.

Tragically, it was Jones's mother who passed on his victim's telephone number, paving the way for the killing, after she met her homeless son in the street.

Feeling sorry for him, the former care worker told Jones that Mr Carter was looking for a lodger.

But she failed to tell the vulnerable multiple sclerosis sufferer about her son's disturbing and violent past, an action that she is said to regret bitterly.

Jeremy Richardson QC said: "I have no doubt whatsoever that she regards that as being one of the most awful mistakes of her life.

"And you can feel for her, the agony she must feel having made that decision."