A RECLUSE stabbed his alcoholic stepfather through the heart, a murder trial heard yesterday.
But Darren Gregson then joked with paramedics that he would buy him a drink if he woke up.
The jury at Leeds Crown Court were told how Gregson, 30, knifed Mark Berry, 49, at the home they shared in Spring Bank Drive, Norristhorpe, on Friday, June 3 this year.
Gregson denies a charge of murder.
Former Tesco manager Mr Berry met Gregson's mum Gillian in 1992 when the pair worked together. They moved in two years later and married in 1998 and eventually moved to Spring Bank Drive where Gregson lived with them.
Prosecuting, Andrew Campbell QC told the court Mr Berry was diagnosed as an alcoholic in 2001.
He described Mr Berry's marriage as "stormy" and admitted Mr Berry, who was retired at the time of the attack, had been convicted of beating his wife twice, in 2001 and 2004.
He also told how Gregson, who also had an alcohol problem, was an epileptic and suffered with depression.
He said the former gardener had become a virtual recluse in his bedroom.
Mr Campbell said: "The fact that Mark Berry and his stepson were spending almost all their time at home led, no doubt, to increasing tensions.
"They led separate lives under the same roof."
He said on the day of Mr Berry's death Mr Berry's wife had gone to work at 11.30am and Mr Berry had been visited by his son John in the afternoon.
John took the dog for a walk while his father mowed the lawn.
At 5.30pm Gregson called his sister Vicky, 26, and she later came round and dropped off some lager and cigarettes for him.
At 8.20pm Mr Campbell said Gregson called his sister again and told her he had had an argument with his stepdad and stabbed him.
She went to the house, where her brother told her:
`We have had an argument. I can't wake him up.'
"She found her stepfather half sitting, half leaning against the arm of the sofa," said Mr Campbell.
"Initially to Vicky Gregson, he appeared uninjured so she began to shake him to try and rouse him.
"Then she noticed blood on the arm of the sofa and she rang the ambulance service."
Vicky moved her stepfather to the floor and vainly tried to resuscitate him.
Mr Campbell added: "Darren sat in a chair nearby and held his stepfather's hand saying `Come on Mark, we are here for you now'.
"You may think this is a curious thing to say bearing in mind moments before he had fatally stabbed him."
Mr Campbell said a paramedic who tried to save Mr Berry's life heard Gregson saying to his prone stepfather: "Wake up, I'll buy you a pint."
When police arrived Gregson denied knowing the location of the knife Mr Berry had been stabbed with, but later told them it had been hidden behind a radiator near the front door of the semi-detached house.
On his way to Dewsbury police station Mr Campbell said Gregson told officers: "This will be a tick in the box for you guys for murder. He beat his wife every day."
When he arrived at the police station and when asked how he felt, he responded: "How would you feel if you had just killed your dad?"
He was found to have been more than three times the legal drink drive limit.
In his police interview Mr Gregson, who was often verbally abused by Mr Berry, said he had gone downstairs for a pizza and his stepdad was sitting on the couch.
While in the kitchen his stepfather said something he couldn't hear and went into the lounge.
He told detectives: "The next thing I knew I had blood on me."
Mr Campbell said: "When he was drunk the deceased man may have been an unpleasant individual but that doesn't make it manslaughter, but murder.
"It was a drunken attack on a defenceless man."
Mr Berry's son David said his father didn't like former gardener Darren because he wasn't working.
Under cross-examination by Gregson's barrister Douglas Hogg QC, Mark Berry's son John said his father was drunk more often than not.
He added: "When my father was drunk he could be verbally abusive to people."
Carol Bownes, who worked with Mr Berry's wife at Tesco, said Gillian's husband abused Gillian, Darren and Vicky.
She added: "They couldn't walk through the room without Mark saying something to them. That's why they always lived in their bedroom."
John Berry said an incident took place at Christmas 2002, when Mark Berry and his wife Gillian both fell over after an inebriated Mr Berry had been dancing with a Christmas tree.
Gregson heard the noise and saw Mr Berry on top of his mum and thought he was beating her.
John Berry added: "He goes back into his bedroom, comes downstairs with a baseball bat and just cracks him."
David Page, brother of Mr Berry's wife Gillian, told how he ejected Mr Berry from a Christmas party at his home for "goading" Gregson.
Under cross-examination he said he had broken Mr Berry's nose when he punched him for beating his sister.
Defence counsel Mr Hogg said: "He was a person from hell to live with?"
"Yes" replied Mr Page.
The trial continues.
