Sad tale of Battersea man murdered by his own grandsons (From Your Local Guardian)

Sad tale of Battersea man murdered by his own grandsons

7:50am Sunday 24th January 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

He was the generous old man everyone knew as Grandad. His grandsons were charmers with a liking for the ladies.

But behind closed doors Paul Peters was being abused by his own flesh and blood, and his kindness towards them would eventually kill him.

Last Thursday Wayne Edwards and Anton Sanderson were jailed at the Old Bailey for beating their grandfather to death in his own flat - the final chapter of a long history of difficulties in his family.

Mr Peters could hardly have imagined his fate when, in 1956, he moved to London from Grenada in the West Indies to start a new life with his wife and childhood sweetheart, Roslyn.

His son, Loxley, 49, said he remembered his father enjoying old rock music and working as a clothes presser - once preparing dresses for Princess Diana.

The couple had five children and moved into number 35, Kennard House, Francis Chichester Way, in the early eighties - where Mr Peters would often keep lollies for the children of the estate.

Zahid Bukhari, 38, who runs the nearby Doddington Newsagent in Battersea, said: “He had a big heart. He walked around here chatting to everybody – laughing and joking.”

Kim de Souza, a 25-year-old mum, added: “He was a very nice man. You never passed him without saying ‘hi Grandad’. Because he was our grandad - all of us.”

But three decades ago his daughter Stella, now 52, became pregnant at the age of just 16, and gave the baby to Mr Peters and his wife to bring up as their own.

That baby was Wayne Edwards, who took the surname of a father he never knew - and never got over the feeling of rejection.

As Mr Peters grew more elderly, he got into drinking and found his grandson increasingly difficult to deal with - especially after the death of his wife in 2001.

His son Loxley described Edwards as a “very good shoplifter”, sweet-talking female shop assistants in a sharp suit and sometimes bringing in £600 per month.

He developed an addiction to crack, and by the time of the attack police said he had 30 previous convictions - mainly for theft, burglary and robbery.

Meanwhile, in north London, Stella went on to have three other children with a different man - one of whom was Anton Sanderson.

By the age of 14, he was bunking off school and was later convicted of slashing a taxi driver across the face as well as for four other minor offences.

As adults, the pair regularly took advantage of Mr Peters’ hospitality, with neighbours complaining of spitting, urinating and vomiting coming from his balcony.

Wayne would sometimes rack up a £100 bill at Doddington Newsagent in a week for cigarettes and alcohol, which his grandfather would always pay for.

Despite both men having children, they were, for the most part, unemployed. Edwards hardly ever saw his daughter, now 15. Sanderson had two children by different mothers.

Loxley, a professional carer himself, said the two were emotionally troubled after an unstable upbringing and began the attack “as a play thing” while on a drunken spree.

He said: “You can’t go around blaming other people. No-one knew this was going to happen.

“I still love the two boys. I can’t condone what happened, but I can’t hate them either. Three people were sentenced in that room - those two and me. They were like my sons, both of them.”

Detective Inspector Arthur, who led the investigation, said: “They were unemployed, predominantly, anti-social, violent offenders with a lack of a father figure. It’s symptomatic of a breakdown in family values and society.”

Edwards, 34, who lived with his grandfather, and Sanderson, 25, of Latymer Way, Enfield, north London, were jailed for life at the Old Bailey on Thursday, January 14.