A former altar boy has been found guilty of slitting the throat of a convicted paedophile after he confessed to sexually abusing a six-year-old child.
Christopher McMahon, 48, repeatedly stabbed his drinking partner David Potter, 50, in the early hours of August 21 last year, leaving him for dead face down on the floor of his flat in Tooting, south London.
Afterwards, McMahon, of no fixed abode, went to his on-off partner’s house still soaked in his victim’s blood and told her: “I’ve done it.”
Prosecutor Sarah Whitehouse QC told jurors: “Mr McMahon said he had slit a man’s throat and indeed he had.”
Potter, who had convictions for sex offences concerning a child, was found dead in a pool of blood five days later after police were alerted by a concerned neighbour.
A post-mortem examination found he had stab wounds to the neck, the most severe of which had gone through to the spine and cut numerous blood vessels including the jugular vein.
“Mr McMahon said he had slit a man’s throat and indeed he had”
- Sarah Whitehouse QC, prosecuting
Whitehouse told jurors: “Mr McMahon admits he was the person who stabbed Mr Potter to death.
“The question for you will be why Mr McMahon did that.”
The court heard how Potter had pleaded guilty to gross indecency with a child in February 2000 at Chester Crown Court.
The charges related to two incidents of sexual abuse involving a girl in the late 1990s.
The jury was told McMahon had previously made allegations against a parish priest over his behaviour towards him when he was an altar boy in the 1980s, but the matter was never reported to police.
McMahon was cleared of murder but was found guilty of manslaughter by reason of loss of control.
It can now be reported that the defendant was cleared in 2008 of the murder of Jill Grinstead, 63, who was beaten to death at her home in Wimbledon, south west London.
He will be sentenced at the Old Bailey on Friday.