Sentencing remarks: The Queen v. Andrei Mihai Simion-Munteanu
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 13 February 2020 |
| Court | Crown Court |
IN THE CROWN COURT AT LINCOLN
THE QUEEN V. ANDREI MIHAI SIMION-MUNTEANU
13 FEBRUARY 2020
SENTENCING REMARKS OF THE HON. MR JUSTICE PEPPERALL
1. Andrei Simion-Munteanu, you have been found guilty by this jury of the murder of your
mother, Premm-Leela Monti, and her partner, Robert Tully.
2. After 11pm on 29 July 2019, you called your mother into your bedroom saying that you had a
surprise and offering her a massage. As she lay face down on your bed, you placed your left
hand in an oven glove and pressed it firmly over her mouth and nose to prevent her from
screaming. You then strangled her with the crook of your right elbow. I am satisfied that while
Dr Monti would have lost consciousness quickly as you cut off the supply of oxygen to her
brain, you maintained the pressure for some minutes in order to ensure that she was dead. Six
hours later, you bludgeoned Mr Tully to death with a hammer. Mr Tully collapsed to the ground
and still you continued your frenzied attack raining some half a dozen blows to his head and
shoulders with the hammer to be quite sure that he was dead. Mr Tully died from a severe
traumatic brain injury.
3. This jury have rejected your defence that these offences were committed in the grip of a
psychotic delusion such that your responsibility for these killings was diminished and, rightly
in my judgment, concluded that you are guilty of murdering both of your victims. Why you
killed is not clear. You had minor grievances with your mother, but nothing that would begin
to explain your actions. Further, you had no obvious reason to wish Mr Tully harm. Despite
Mr Campbell-Tiech QC’s eloquence, I reject the suggestion that you killed under the grips of
a psychotic delusion that nevertheless did not amount to the partial defence of diminished
responsibility.
4. I accept that you had become depressed over the preceding 18 months as your university
studies started to go wrong and you realised that you are not as clever as you thought you were.
Indeed, your depression was sufficiently serious that you entertained suicidal ideation, inflicted
some minor deliberate self-harm and required formal treatment, including a period of in-patient
treatment at an American psychiatric hospital. You appear to have been vulnerable to
depression in part because of your difficulty in personal relationships and your consequent
feelings of social isolation and in part because things were not going well in your studies.
Depression, however, is usually associated with self-harm and not with extreme violence to
others. It does not start to provide an explanation for these callous murders.
5. It is, ultimately, unnecessary to determine why you killed. I conclude, however, that your
fascination with extremely violent internet footage of accidents, suicides and terrorist
beheadings taken together with your conviction that there was no meaning or value to life, led
you to wonder whether you would yourself be capable of murder. In reaching that view, I am
fortified by your remark to the police upon your arrest that you wanted to see if you could do
it. In my judgment, such thoughts combined with your feelings of worthlessness arising from
your difficulties with social interaction and the prospect that your university career appeared
set to end in failure, and your disproportionate sense of grievance at minor upsets, to lead you
to become a killer.
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