'He was on drugs ... I forgive him'

[turkeyphant]

Originally Posted by http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,29389-2362916,00.html

THE father of an Oxford student suspected of murdering a Harrow School master’s daughter has told her family that he was devastated by the murder.

Lucy Braham, 25, an aspiring fashion designer, was stabbed at her parents’ home on Thursday. William Jaggs, 22, who had known Miss Braham for most of his life, was found with stab wounds in the house and was arrested on suspicion of murder. Friends described him yesterday as an eccentric character who had become involved in drugs.

Mr Jaggs’s father, Alan, contacted Miss Braham’s father, Jason, by e-mail on Friday. Both are department heads at Harrow and their families live four doors apart at the school in northwest London.

Peter Jaggs, William’s uncle, said yesterday that the student’s father had sent an e-mail to Miss Braham’s father hours after the murder.

Mr Jaggs, from Liverpool, told The Times: “They have known each for 20 years; they have worked together and they are best friends.

“The kids have known each other for that time. Alan contacted Mr Braham to say how devastated he is by what has happened.”

Mr Braham is director of art at the 400-year-old public school and Mr Jaggs is head of design and technology.

Joan Fieldhouse, the victim’s grandmother, said: “I forgive [the alleged killer] because he was on drugs. The devil gets into the mind when someone is on drugs. They are not capable of thinking for themselves.”

She added: “The two families have been friendly for many years. I expect that when they do see each other they will hug each other.”

William Jaggs, a former pupil at Harrow, was found with stab wounds to his heart and chest. He was described yesterday as being in a serious but stable condition in Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow.

Friends painted a disturbing picture of the aspiring actor who they said had become increasingly involved in drugs at Oxford. He was due to return to Oriel College next month to finish his English degree after being suspended last year because of his erratic behaviour and poor work.

Will Orr-Ewing, 21, who read modern history at Oriel and was a Harrow contemporary of Mr Jaggs, said: “He just wasn’t working hard enough.”

Numerous contemporaries of Mr Jaggs said that his drugtaking went beyond the usual student experimentation with cannabis.

An Oriel student from the year above Mr Jaggs said: “He was taking lots of drugs, not just cannabis.” Another said: “He experimented with magic mushrooms and LSD.” One student, whose shared college flat was next to Mr Jaggs’s, said: “Our flats were close to each other but they were very different. We would sit drinking tea; they would sit in theirs smoking dope.”

One close friend from Oxford said: “What has happened is galactically out of character. He was foppish but everyone in our set was. There was nothing stuck up about him.”

Mr Braham and his artist wife, Julienne, 50, issued a statement paying tribute to their daughter. “It is the cruellest tragedy that someone so gentle should have had her life snatched away so senselessly,” they said.

“Lucy was a stunningly beautiful young woman, but modest. It is an irony that someone so dismissive about her looks, who disliked being photographed, should have her face in every national paper.”

The London College of Fashion graduate had recently returned from a five-week trip to Guatemala and Mexico with an old school friend. “Lucy was quiet, calm and graceful. She had a circle of close friends and a warm and generous smile that touched everyone she met,” added the statement.

The family said Miss Braham had no social connection with Mr Jaggs or his friends.

Emphasis added is mine. It's always nice to see the slant the Murdoch Times can put on things. Obviously, because this kid smoked pot and did acid at university, it's to blame for him being a (possible) murderer?

Words fail me.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Great news-hawking recently

[Riconoen {UGC}]

Oh haven't you heard of the psychotic reefer rages and the 7 trip limit before you're legally insane turkeyphant?

[enquirewithin]

Just the kind of ignorance you would expect form the The Times.

[N0ly]

notice how they focused on his drug use and the stabbing yet they did not put forth any hypothesis as to why he had stabed the girl. NO they focus on the drugs and try to make some vague connection between the two. just your run of the mill anti-drug propaganda BULLSHIT. damn this kinda shit pisses me off sooo bad.

[Nagognog2]

Rupert Murdoch must be on something. He seems to jack-off to stories of murder and little kids being chopped up. His tabloid legacy extends all over the planet - to include the facsist propaganda-machine he launched here in the USA - FOX News.

Reputation Comments on this post:

right on nagonog

[SPWIM]

I'm not sure words can describe how angry articles like this make me.

[Lunar Loops]

This sort of reporting really is enough to make a dog (any sensible, free thinking one that is) vomit. Psycho blames drugs for all his ills, "for it was not me, but twas the drugs that did it all guv, so perhaps your honour might see fit to give me a more leniant sentence........"

This tripe from The Torygraph (UK):
Harrow killing blamed on school drug culture


By Richard Edwards

Last Updated: 8:52am BST 13/07/2007





Mr Braham's full impact statement
Your view: Should schools toughen up over drug use? The father of a young fashion designer stabbed to death by a former pupil of Harrow school who went on to Oxford University yesterday blamed both institutions for failing to tackle the "despicable" drug culture that drove the student to kill.
Lucy Braham fought Jaggs but died in the 'ferocious' attack

William Jaggs stabbed Lucy Braham 66 times in a "ferocious and unrelenting" sexually-motivated attack at her home in north London.

The Old Bailey heard that the 23-year-old became a drug user at Harrow school, where his father was a teacher, and admitted developing an LSD and crack cocaine habit at Oxford that gave him violent sexual hallucinations.

Miss Braham's father, Jason, himself a senior master at Harrow, where he taught Jaggs as director of art, blamed both institutions for turning a blind eye to the boy's descent from the "gutter to the sewer".

As Jaggs was sentenced yesterday, Mr Braham made a moving statement in court.

"It is worrying that he developed his drug habit at his boarding school," he said. "Even if the habit only became apparent when he was no longer a pupil, the school is to be challenged for its failure to act.

"This community [Harrow school] had the right to expect a certain standard of behaviour of its members and the members had the right to expect to live in safety. Yet, despite visible, spoken and written warnings about Jaggs's behaviour and that of his closest friends, no action was ever taken to call a halt to it. Lucy was badly let down."
Police officer with the kitten that Jaggs tried to give Miss Braham

Mr Braham also criticised Oxford, from which Jaggs was serving a year's suspension when he carried out the attack in September last year.

He said: "He fitted readily into the despicable drugs fraternity at Oxford University. He was sent down for a year 'to sort himself out'. The extent to which he failed to do so is obvious. That year saw the completion of his degeneration. This disgrace of a human being reached the lowest depths on 14th September last year."

Jaggs, who was judged by psychiatrists to be suffering from schizophrenia, was sent to Broadmoor secure hospital indefinitely.

A disturbing history of abuse being ignored by the authorities had emerged.
The court heard that Jaggs started drinking heavily as a 14-year-old at Harrow. He moved on to cannabis, and then cocaine.
Jaggs indecently assaulted a boy at Harrow and was thrown out of his boarding house. But he stayed at the school as a day pupil.
He had been using his parents' bank cards to buy drugs and was also stealing items to sell from Harrow, the court was told.

At Oxford he became a hardened drug user, taking LSD and crack cocaine.
He had violent sex with one girl, brandishing a knife at one point, but it went unreported to police. He sent a text to another girl saying: "I'm seeing a shrink today. As you correctly noted I'm a total psychopath. Have a nice day."
One pyschiatrist said that tests carried out after the killing showed he was showing early signs of mental disorder and "severe emotional disturbance" from the age of 14. The court heard that Jaggs had visited a GP in Oxford, who gave him prescription drugs after he complained of being depressed. But the doctor failed to diagnose the signs of schizophrenia.
On Sept 13 last year, a day before Miss Braham's death, he sent a long, deranged email to his tutor at Oxford saying that he had been taking crack cocaine and LSD, and that in his drug-induced black-outs he dreamed of having sex with Miss Braham. It is not known when the tutor read the email.
Having been suspended from Oxford, Jaggs was staying with his parents in Harrow-on-the-Hill, four doors away from where Miss Braham, 25, lived. Although Mr Braham and Mr Jaggs had been good friends for 20 years, their children never mixed.
On the night of Sept 14, Miss Braham was at home alone after her parents had gone out to see an art exhibition.
Jaggs decided to try to sell her a kitten as a way of getting into her house.
He took it to Miss Braham's home and offered it to her. She took it but later called him back to say she could not accept it.
"This triggered off a series of disastrous events," said Aftab Jafferjee, prosecuting.
This was a sexually motivated homicidal attack on an entirely innocent and blameless young woman."
The court heard that Jaggs forced his way into the house, still holding the kitten, and attacked Miss Braham.
She tried to escape as he cut off her clothes with a pair of scissors, and she cried out: "Please somebody help me".
As the "ferocious and unrelenting attack" continued, she tried to fight back.
One neighbour heard her cry: "But please, I'm in such pain."
She was stabbed more than 16 times on the arms and hands as she tried to defend herself. Jaggs stabbed her 12 times in the chest. After she collapsed face down on the floor in the kitchen, he stabbed her 33 times in the back.
The killer then tried to carve her torso with a saw, and used a pair of garden secateurs to attempt to chop off her thumb.
Neighbours had locked themselves inside their homes and called police. When officers arrived Jaggs was standing over the body, holding the knife towards them. He then stabbed himself 32 times and required emergency surgery.
Mr and Mrs Braham returned from the art exhibition to be held behind police tape at the end of the road. They left a phone message for their daughter as they waited. It said: "We are at the top of the hill. Police are not letting anyone down. We will be there shortly."
An officer then informed them their daughter was dead.
Jaggs pleaded not guilty to murder but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The judge, Mr Justice Bean, told him he might never be released and said doctors had described him as dangerous, and a grave and immediate risk to others.
Miss Braham's family is steeped in success. Her mother Julienne, 50, is an artist and her older sister Alice, 30, works for a magazine and has represented Britain in a number of marathons, including London and New York.
Later, a statement from Harrow School said: "The school has been devastated by the death of Lucy and by the appalling consequences of her death for two families who contributed so much to our community over many years."
A survey by the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference found that 43 per cent of pupils in independent school sixth forms had experimented with drugs.
In theory, Oxford University has a no-tolerance drugs policy but sources admit it is rare for anyone to be sent down for drug use.

[Lunar Loops]

More of the same from The Times (UK):

Old Harrovians recall a culture of Ecstasy, cannabis and cocaine

Patrick Foster and David Brown


It may be the alma mater of seven prime ministers and a finishing school for royalty, but Harrow is acquiring a reputation of being a drugs haven.
Contemporaries of William Jaggs told The Times that a combination of wealth and boredom gave rise to a situation in which drugs were rife. “If you wanted to use drugs, you could get them — there was little to stop you,” one said. “If you wanted to do Ecstasy or coke you could just walk into someone’s room and do it . . . I used to get sent down town to pick up pills or coke. I’d bring it back to our rooms and the lads would give me a cut of it for free.”
Old Harrovians remembered Jaggs as a clever boy who, like many, dabbled in Ecstasy and cannabis before moving into cocaine. “Jaggs and I used to drop a bit of Ecstasy together and hang around after lessons for a cigarette or a joint,” one Harrow and Oxford contemporary said. “At school he was into weed and cocaine. We would have parties at his parents’ house where we’d do coke.”
Down the road from the Jaggs and Braham families lived Simon MacPherson, a classics master at the school. His son, also Simon, spent a brief spell at Harrow, overlapping with Jaggs, before being expelled after drugs paraphernalia was found in his room. The two were part of a group who experimented with harder drugs. Yesterday the Old Bailey heard that, four days before Jaggs killed Lucy, he went to the MacPherson house with a chainsaw to kill his former classmate.
At Oxford, Jaggs made the transition from dalliances in “party” drugs to crack cocaine. Mr MacPherson, the Old Bailey heard yesterday, was a companion in that abuse.
It was then that those around Jaggs started noticing that something was wrong. A friend told The Times: “He would ring up in the middle of the night and come round to my room. He would sit there, obviously high, obviously depressed, but refuse to talk about what was wrong. I stopped taking his calls. I don’t regret it.”
Another said: “He would call me up when he was on a trip and just blather absolute nonsense down the phone. I remember him very clearly once going on about how he thought he might be insane. He said, ‘Am I mad? How would I know if I was mad? Eventually he snapped out of it and said he’d had a bad comedown and that everyone was over at his house doing coke.”
In late 2005 Jaggs was suspended by Oxford after concerns about his behaviour and poor work. “People were saying that he’d lost it,” said a friend. “He was constantly wrecked and really ill and emaciated. His parents seemed a bit naive. They must have known that he was in a bad way. Everyone knew.”

[Lunar Loops]

Even worse the Torygraph managed to try and link this little nuggett to the previous story as if it all made perfect sense. Look at the startling science they use to prove it. We say it's true and we are intelligent broadsheet types, therefore it must be true......on and on it goes:
Cannabis use linked to schizophrenia


Last Updated: 2:32am BST 13/07/2007





Father blames killing on public school drug culture Research has established a clear link between cannabis use and schizophrenia.
The drug can trigger hallucinations, fantasies and loss of control.
Some studies have shown cannabis use increases the risk of schizophrenia by 30 per cent. Dutch research found that half of patients treated for a cannabis-related mental disorder go on to develop full schizophrenia. The drug seems more harmful the earlier it is taken up.
Dr Trevor Turner, vice-president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has said that mental illness in itself makes the sufferer more likely to turn to drugs. It is thought cannabis can trigger schizophrenia in mentally vulnerable people.

[Orchid_Suspiria]

What research?As far as I know schizophrenia is a genetic condition or appears for reasons unknown.If this was true and cannabis was linked to schizophrenia we would have alot more schizophrenic people in the world.

[meep]

this one time, swim got messed up on jack daniels and threw up, in the street no less. swim cant be arsed to work out the connection, but about 3 months before, swim had seen some one smoking a fag, it might have been a wacky bacci one. Swim assumes this is what made him sick. Those dam druggies.

[BackToBasics]

What a load of crap..this comes from the same people that also reported this : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1720647.ece

Idiots.

[enquirewithin]

Sadly the Times and Telegraph are considered by some as serious papers.

Any paper which prints nonsense like "[he] admitted developing an LSD and crack cocaine habit at Oxford that gave him violent sexual hallucinations" is in dire need of doing better research-- that's more worthy of the Sun.

[rocksmokinmachine]

This is from the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2407027.stm

'Two recent studies have shown that heavy use of cannabis is associated with a fourfold increased risk of developing the mental illness.'

Does anyone have a link to these studies? It would make intesting reading

[psyche]

Oftentimes they are talking about 'an association' or 'is linked'. One could say that smoking tobacco is very strongly associated with scizophrenia since 90% of scizophrenics are smokers. Why bother clearing up the direction of causality, drugs should be avoided at all costs, it's the main point. It should be quite obvious that cannabis use doesn't increase scizophrenia in population since there seems to be that magical 1% of people who have this disorder, in all populations despite the cannabis consumption rate.

[thrackelsby]

Holy shit...

That poor kitten.

[colt_777]

Originally Posted by Orchid_Suspiria

What research?As far as I know schizophrenia is a genetic condition or appears for reasons unknown.If this was true and cannabis was linked to schizophrenia we would have alot more schizophrenic people in the world.

schizophrenia is a genetic condition but it is dormant in alot of people (ie they have the potential to become schizophrenic if it is triggered). smoking excessive weed is a trigger in some people with dormant schizophrenia. two of my mother's brothers and her mother as well, developed schizophrenia due to excessive smoking. the other 5 or so members of the family who didn't smoke turned out fine as did one other who smoked occasionally, on and off throughout her life.

there's been alot of research into this it's not just propaganda.

they do make it out to be worse than it is though.

drugs in small doses, kids!