TRicia Monro placed two thick folders on the table with pages of psychiatric evaluations, timelines and dozens of emails pleading for help for her son. For years he tried to catch her when she fell through the cracks of the mental health system.
She was warned not to be alone with him, but relented when he asked for a bath at his home in Oxford in February last year. What she didn’t know was that she had just been stabbed to death by her ex-husband, Peter, 73.
She said she still “can’t believe” how the tragedy has torn her family apart. “I don’t for a moment condone what he did, and I accept that he should be punished,” she said, adding: “It’s a very lonely place to be the mother of a child whose mental health has deteriorated.”
In December Christopher “Kit” Monro, 30, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 12 years for his father’s murder.
The family believe it could have been prevented if Oxford’s NHS mental health service and other authorities had better listened to pleas for help. Instead, her mother said she was left in the dark about issues surrounding her own safety and was made to feel guilty by her carers.
The intervention comes as a public inquiry into the Nottingham attack in 2023 by Valdo Calocane continues to reveal serious failings in the care of dangerous psychiatric patients.
A ‘friendly and kind’ boy
Monro, who has pursued a career in sports nutrition, was a “cheeky, friendly and loving” boy, his mother said.
In a piece of childhood writing, he stated: “I like school, home and my family and in the city, where things happen.
The turning point appears to be a summer trip at the end of prep school, when he describes having an “outer body experience” that he would cite as a pivotal moment.
He sought help from a GP for depression when he was 17. After his first suicide attempt, he was admitted to a hospital in Surrey, 70 miles from Oxford, after no local beds were available.
In the following years, his condition worsened as he battled alcoholism and was given a rotating list of medications and diagnoses, including severe depression, PTSD, schizophrenia and affective disorders.
In 2021, after conducting several mental health facilities and a possible diagnosis of psychosis, the Oxford trust informed the family that support, including one-to-one talking therapy, was “limited”.
Monro was admitted to a private psychiatric hospital in 2023, only to be discharged after nine days. He was prescribed anti-psychotic medication, given a phone call checked by the Oxford team and officially discharged. Left without adequate support, he soon overdosed and was placed with Oxford’s crisis team.
Four years later, in what Lara’s sister called “a tragic twist of fate”, Monro traveled to stay with his father in Mandi to avoid staying at home while his mother was away.
The relationship between father and son has always been fraught. A medical assessment as late as 2018 noted Monro’s fixation, saying he “kept going back to his father, even though it was irrelevant”. The mother claimed that her ex-husband, who was “interesting and widely read”, also suffered from mental health problems and was “very critical” of her son from an early age.
On 11 February 2025, emergency services were called to Peter’s home by a carer who found him stabbed in his bedroom.
Monro later said that the killing happened during an “out of body experience”, the second one he had described in his life. Monro, who “constantly asked to take a shower” to avoid his living conditions, told his mother he killed his father after he refused to let him have hot water.
‘A series of red flags’
In October 2024, four months before the murder, a support worker saw a knife fall from Monro’s bag and reported it to the police, who confiscated several knives and a BB gun from his possessions. Yet the Prevention referral was not implemented because there was no evidence of radicalization and Monro’s risk assessment was not upgraded. The Home Office declined to comment.
Two months later, Monro attacked his mother, pushing herself against a fence. Oxfordshire county council flagged him as a risk of abuse, although he doesn’t remember being told.
Instead, the report commissioned after the murder depicts Monro’s mother as “reluctant” to be involved in the care of her son. He was horrified by the characterization, describing repeated attempts to alert the NHS to Monro’s mental state. “I was worried, and often uncomfortable, but I moved on because there was no one else,” she says.
Lara described the attempt to blame her mother, 70, who works for a charity, as “diabolical”. He said: “There were a number of red flags raised in the lead up to this tragedy. My brother was let down by those whose job it was to support him.
unnecessary death
In an internal report seen by The Times, Oxford Health NHS Trust admitted it missed sharing important family histories with practitioners, failed to intervene at key points and understaffed, which led to Monro losing its support workers.
The trust said: “Our thoughts remain with all those affected by this tragic case. We have completed a comprehensive patient safety incident review, in which patients and their families contributed, and we are grateful for their engagement.”
In his sentencing speech at Bristol crown court, Judge Julian Lambert said Monro was “deeply disturbed” and questioned why the case had not been escalated further. “Considering that issue with hindsight, institutional care is probably better for you,” he said.
The Attorney General’s Office has referred Monro’s sentence to the Court of Appeal, describing it as “grossly indecent”. Thames Valley Police said the killing was being investigated as a domestic abuse-related death.
Last year The Times revealed data showing there were 115 fewer murders by mental health patients recorded in official statistics compared to information released under the Freedom of Information Act in the past four years.
Julian Hendy, who founded the charity Hundred Families after his father was killed by a mental health patient, said: “The same mistakes keep happening and more people are losing their lives unnecessarily.”
Lara, 33, an art consultant, said: “I want to use the story of my father’s death as a transparent example of how our mental health services often fall short in meeting the needs of individuals like my brother.”
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