A PARANOID schizophrenic who killed four people will be transferred to a high-security hospital after he threatened to kill his social worker.

Mark Rowntree, 47, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, had been housed in the Hutton Unit, at Middlesbrough's St Luke's Hospital.

But there has been increasing concern over his deteriorating condition and, following a recent court appearance, it has emerged he will be moved to high-security Rampton Hospital, in Nottinghamshire.

Rowntree was given an indefinite hospital order by Judge Peter Fox after he appeared at Teesside Crown Court under his new name of Mark Allan Evans.

He had pleaded guilty to three counts of making threats to kill on July 22 and 27 and August on 13 last year, relating to a female social worker.

His victim was distressed by the threats, which were made after she told a mental health tribunal that he showed no remorse for four killings he committed in the 1970s.

Under the order, he cannot be discharged without Home Office approval.

He is already detained under the Mental Health Act at the medium-security Hutton Unit, which assesses and rehabilitates mentally ill patients.

Councillor Joan McTigue, who represents the nearby Beechwood ward, said she was horrified that Rowntree had remained at St Luke's given his violent past.

She said: "It is worrying that somebody with his sort of background has been in there for long.

"The Hutton Unit is slap bang in the middle of a residential area and I would have thought he needs to be as far away from such areas as possible."

Last night, hospital sources said Rowntree was expected to be transferred within weeks.

Rowntree has already spent time in Rampton Hospital, as well as at Broadmoor and Ashworth hospitals, but was moved to the lower category St Luke's, where he has been for 12 years.

The source said: "The order imposed stipulates that he has to move to Rampton within 28 days."

A spokesman for the Tees and North-East Yorkshire NHS Trust, which runs St Luke's, said: "We will not tolerate any sort of physical violence or threats towards our staff, the partners with which we work, or our patients."

Rowntree stabbed a pensioner to death on New Year's Eve, 1975, at her home in Bingley, West Yorkshire.

Three days later, he stabbed Stephen Wilson, 16, as he waited at a bus stop in Keighley, West Yorkshire.

He then stabbed a 24-year-old woman and her three-year-old son in Burley, Leeds.

Originally from Guiseley, near Leeds, he was convicted at Leeds Crown Court after he denied murder.

He admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and was given an unlimited detention in a high-security psychiatric hospital. The court heard that Rowntree had been motivated by voices in his head that gave him an "insatiable desire to kill" at random.

In 1998, it was revealed he had made a trip to Middlesbrough to go window shopping with a nurse as a minder.

In the past, Rowntree has written to The Northern Echo to blame his crimes on watching violent films such as Charles Bronson's Death Wish. He also said he was resigned to never being freed.