A retired detective was stabbed to death by his epileptic step-son while ‘out of it’ and ‘having a seizure,’ his mother claimed today.
Ben Moglione, 23, killed Andrew McDiarmid, 64, who was isolating in his bedroom after testing positive for Covid.
His mother, Alison Moglione, 56, told Liverpool Crown Court she was in the shower when she heard ‘a really unusual sound, not like a scream, like an exhalation of air.’
Her usually ‘calm and placid’ son, who was studying chemical engineering at university, came into the bathroom soon afterwards and started washing blood off his hands.
Mrs Moglione, a senior civil servant, told jurors he was ‘out of it.’
Ben Moglione, 23, (pictured) killed Andrew McDiarmid, 64, who was isolating in his bedroom after testing positive for Covid
The jury has been told there was ‘absolutely no doubt’ he killed his step-father (pictured), who suffered at least 13 stab wounds, and there was not ‘any real dispute’ over the facts of what happened
‘He was in a different place,’ she said. ‘He was living a seizure, that wasn’t Ben. He had been in a seizure state.’
Mrs Moglione ran into her bedroom and discovered her husband, a former detective inspector who served with Merseyside police for 30 years, lying dead on their bed.
Moglione is on trial accused of Mr McDiarmid’s murder.
The jury has been told there was ‘absolutely no doubt’ he killed his step-father, who suffered at least 13 stab wounds, and there was not ‘any real dispute’ over the facts of what happened.
But Moglione denies murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter, partly on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Gordon Cole, prosecuting, said the tragedy occurred at the couple’s £500,000 home, in the upmarket village of Heswall, Wirral, at around 8.30pm on January 24, 2022.
Moglione, who was on a break from his undergraduate studies in Sheffield, watched an episode of the BBC news programme Panorama, which was focused on knife crime, with his mother before telling her he was going to bed early.
But a short time later an internal CCTV camera, which was on a table in the hallway and trained on the front door of the property, captured Moglione walking downstairs from his bedroom in his dressing gown and slippers. He collected a knife from a magnetic block on the wall of the kitchen, then returned upstairs clutching the weapon in his right hand, Mr Cole said.
Audio captured by the same camera picked up Moglione asking his step-father: ‘Hello. Are you alright?
Ben Moglione’s mother Alison, 56, (pictured) told Liverpool Crown Court she was in the shower when she heard ‘a really unusual sound, not like a scream, like an exhalation of air’
Mr McDiarmid replied: ‘Yeah. Are you?’
Moglione then said: ‘No. Not really.’
Mr Cole said that ‘screams, groans and heavy breathing’ could then be heard on the footage.
Today divorcee Mrs Moglione told the court she immediately jumped out of the shower after hearing the strange sound and her son ran into the bathroom to wash his blood-soaked hands a short time later.
She said: ‘He said, ‘You can start again’. He said it in a strange way. I thought ‘Oh my God’.
‘I started running to my bedroom and I saw Andy on our bed. He was leaning over to the right and there was blood and I could tell by his face that he had gone. I could see something on his stomach, something had come out, like intestines.
‘I knew I could not do anything so I ran downstairs. I dialled 999 for an ambulance and the police. In the meantime, Ben came down saying, ‘Mum don’t ring the police’.
‘I said, ‘I’ve got to, I have got to get the police.’
Mrs Moglione said she took the knife off her son because ‘I thought he was going to hurt himself.’
She added: ‘I don’t think he knew what he had done, but when I said I had to call the police it made him nervous. I was in complete and utter shock.’
Mrs Moglione claimed her son and husband, who had helped raise Moglione from the age of five, had a ‘brilliant’ relationship and were ‘very close. They ‘loved each other’ and Moglione treated her husband like his biological father, she said.
But he had been diagnosed with epilepsy during his first year at university and had recently needed to switch his medication.
Mrs Moglione said she had noticed changes in his behaviour and thought his tolerance levels had been affected. ‘I think Andy was getting on his nerves a little bit,’ she added.
Moglione had strong seizures, which last up to five minutes, after which he became ‘fixated,’ his mother told jurors.
He had been ‘very, very ill’ with Covid just before her husband and had found isolating in his bedroom difficult, she said.
In the hours before the stabbing Mrs Moglione said she thought her son, an ‘intelligent’ former grammar school pupil who had received counselling for his sexuality and played the cello in an orchestra, ‘didn’t sound right,’ but she didn’t want to ‘fuss.’
She said she thought he might have had a seizure just before the attack.
Mrs Moglione also told the court her husband was very talented. After retiring from the police in 2008 he had learned joinery and plumbing and ‘rebuilt our house,’ Mrs Moglione said.
She told the court: ‘(Ben) had never harmed a fly. We didn’t see this coming. I have lost my son and my husband.’
The trial continues.