A SOLDIER who bludgeoned his friend’s father to death after suffering a psychotic reaction to home-grown cannabis was jailed yesterday for ten years.

Laurie Draper, 31, “beat the brains out” of Paul Butterworth, a teacher, by repeatedly smashing 3ft garden shears into his head and body.

Mr Butterworth’s son, Ashley, fled to save his own life after unsuccessfully trying to drag his father’s body away from the paratrooper.

Draper, an Iraq War veteran with eight years of exemplary service, began to smash up a bathroom after smoking a small amount of the drug that had been grown by his victim.

Attempts to restrain him resulted in the sustained attack on Mr Butterworth, 53, which Judge Findlay Baker, QC, called an “appalling act of extreme and persistent violence”.

Sentencing Draper at St Albans Crown Court, the judge said: “I have no doubt it would not have happened if you had not consumed cannabis. Your conduct became at first strange, then alarming, then delusional. Resisting attempts to calm you down, you attacked Paul Butterworth.”

When Ashley Butterworth intervened, some blows landed on him, the judge said, adding: “Fearing for his life he desisted, leaving you to beat the brains out of his unfortunate father and eventually drag his body, mutilated and barely recognisable, to the living room sofa.

“Anyone who unlawfully takes a dangerous mind-altering controlled drug and who finds that his mind is altered in unexpected and undesired ways must take responsibility for his subsequent actions.”

Draper, originally from Leicester but based at Colchester Garrison, Essex, was a lance corporal who had served in Northern Ireland. He had a family history of schizophrenia.

He admitted manslaughter in March on the ground that his mental state had been affected by Mr Butterworth’s home-grown, high-strength cannabis.

The three were smoking the drug in the design and technology teacher’s home in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. Draper and Ashley Butterworth had been childhood friends but their relationship fizzled out when Draper joined the Army. They met again in the weeks before the attack as Draper prepared to leave the forces.

Ann Evans, prosecuting, told the court that Draper had smoked a pipe with cannabis in it. She said: “After just one pull on the pipe Ashley observed the defendant to be euphoric, giggling and obviously enjoying the experience.

“Having finished the first pipe he then asked for a second. This time Ashley increased the amount of cannabis to what he estimated to be half the size of a garden pea.”

Draper then stripped naked, threw his clothes into the fire and began “frantically” washing himself in the kitchen. He started smashing up the bathroom. When the father and son tried to stop him, Ashley Butterworth was punched in the face.

Mrs Evans added: “Draper then grabbed hold of some long-handled tree-loppers that were lying against a chair in the hallway. He struck downward at a 45 degree angle towards Paul Butterworth’s head. This was done with maximum power and cut down into his head just above his eyebrow.”

The court heard that a second blow hit the man in the right cheek, although he was almost certainly dead from the first blow. As Ashley Butterworth ran he saw Draper return to his father’s body where he aimed three or four more blows with the garden tool.

Mrs Evans said: “The most likely explanation for his behaviour was that he had developed a cannabis-induced psychotic mental state during which he experienced delusionary thinking, in other words that the house was on fire, his life was in great danger and that Ashley was attacking him.”

Draper was diagnosed by Michael Laker, a psychiatrist, as having the disorder hypomania.

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