Man blamed murder suicide on knotweed

Updated
Murder blamed on knotweed
Murder blamed on knotweed



Nobody could have foreseen that a man who had become obsessed with Japanese knotweed in his garden, would go on to kill his wife and himself: the knotweed was not to blame, according to a report on the 2013 case.

In July 2013, the bodies of Kenneth McRae, a 52-year-old lab technician from Rowley Regis, and his wife Jane (55), were found at their home. Kenneth had killed his wife and himself, and left a note blaming the Japanese knotweed.

He wrote: "I believe I was not an evil man until the balance of my mind was disturbed by the fact that there is a patch of Japanese knotweed which has been growing over our boundary fence on the Rowley Regis Golf Course. They were told about it by Sandwell Council two years ago, but did nothing about it."

He said he was worried that it would make their home unsellable, and said: "The worry of it migrating onto our garden and subsequently undermining the structure over the next few years, with consequent legal battles which we won't win, has led to my growing madness." He said he killed his wife because he didn't want her to be alone and without income when he killed himself.
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Not to blame

The council then launched an investigation into whether their deaths could have been prevented, and the Crime Board has just published its report. It said that there had been no history of any problems suffered by the couple, and the authorities hadn't missed any opportunity to intervene.

It added: "His reported concerns about Japanese knotweed did not explain his extreme action and no reason was found to blame any party or agency contacted about it. No reasonable person could have anticipated the actions he took and attributed to such an improbable cause."

Knotweed

The knotweed, it concluded, was the focus of Mr McRae's mental problems, rather than the genuine cause of it, and nobody would suggest for a second that knotweed was responsible for this tragic event.

Discovering the weed in your garden is, however, an incredibly distressing thing to happen to anyone. We are all aware of the stories of the homes that have been destroyed by the weed, people who have seen the value of their property halved because of knotweed in the garden, and those who have seen sales fall through because of a tiny plant.

It can be very upsetting, but the experts are reassuring. They point out that it is possible to kill off the plant before it has time to get close to your property. If you discover it in the garden, specialists can inject weedkiller into the roots and regularly cut it back as it is dying off in order to stop it spreading.

If you have it treated twice a year for three years - by a specialist who follows clear rules about how the weed is removed - then many mortgage companies will no longer see it as a threat. It could cost you up to £1,500 over this time, which nobody likes the sound of, but is clearly a far cry from the kinds of values people have seen wiped from their property.

If you are worried about a plant in the garden, therefore, it's always worth calling a specialist and putting your mind at rest.

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