A retired oil executive was murdered by his son, a television executive, who dumped his father's body in a bin before emptying his bank accounts.

Benjamin Holding, 29, killed Michael Holding, 70, by repeatedly bashing his head against the floor and a metal cat bowl. He tried to cover up his crime by wrapping the body in a sheet and dumping it head first in a rubbish bin at their home in Inchmarlo, near Banchory, Aberdeenshire, where it remained undiscovered for seven weeks.

When police eventually arrived at the house after a tip-off from his wife, Holding told them: “Two months ago I had an argument with my father. I killed him and he's in the shed.”

After the killing, Holding, a business development executive for STV, the Scottish television channel, set about spending £7,000 on his dead father's credit cards and even bought a £17,000 car, later claiming that he had been “spending his rightful inheritance”.

He also sent bogus e-mails pretending to be his father and claiming he was elsewhere in the UK.

Holding, who was in financial difficulties, claimed that he had been driven to the killing by his “domineering” father, who he said viewed him as a failure. He faces life imprisonment after pleading guilty yesterday to murder, fraud and attempting to defeat the ends of justice.

The High Court in Edinburgh was told that Holding and his wife, Sarah, had been living with Mr Holding senior for some months because Holding had been unable to get a mortgage on a home because of his poor credit history. In the weeks leading up to the killing, Holding had lied to his wife and father, telling them that he had successfully bought a house for the couple to move into.

On the day of the murder, October 13 last year, Holding told his wife there had been a problem with the house purchase and agreed to tell his father they would need to stay on. He returned to the home at about 2pm and got into an argument with his father, before knocking him to the ground and hitting his head against the floor and a metal cat food bowl. He then hid the body in a shed and destroyed evidence by washing clothes and cleaning out the utility room where Mr Holding senior died.

Less than 90 minutes after the killing, the 29-year-old began a seven-week-long spending spree with his father's credit and debit cards, amounting to more than £30,000. Although retired, Mr Holding senior had been working occasionally for an oil industry training company and lived in a modern development of “executive properties” near Banchory.

He had a son, Stephen, from a previous marriage, and Benjamin was the elder of his two sons with wife Linda who died less than a year before him, in October 2006.

After the murder, Holding told family members his father had gone to England on an extended holiday. Mr Brown said that they had later been “surprised and distressed” that he had ignored the first anniversary of his wife's death. “The reality was that he was dead by then.”

On December 6 last year, Holding's wife opened a bank statement belonging to Mr Holding senior. It revealed that his bank cards had been used in Banchory just days before. Mrs Holding confronted her husband and he confessed to killing his father. She called her mother who alerted police.

Mr Brown said that when interviewed, Holding told police his father had been an “ill-tempered man” who saw him as a “waste-of-space”. Donald Findlay, QC, defending, said that Holding had been, up to the murder, “a young man of impeccable character, with a young wife and on the face of it a reasonable and promising career. He said that Holding had no psychiatric problems but had “stepped almost instantly into some kind of fantasy world” after killing his father, by trying to cover up the murder and stealing money from his father's accounts.

Judge Roger Craik said: “You have pleaded guilty to a dreadful matter, I'm quite sure that you realise that. Given the nature of your plea there is only one sentence open to the court.”

Speaking from his home in Liverpool, Stephen Holding, 50, Mr Holding senior's eldest son, said that his half-brother should be jailed for life. “Ben was just basically spoiled,” he said.

Holding is due to be sentenced next month.

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