A KILLER who shot his wife dead in a care home has been sentenced to six years in a secure hospital.

Ronald King, 87, killed wife Rita, 81, by shooting her in the head with her late father’s gun in the residents’ lounge of a Walton care home.

Ronald King was suffering from as then undiagnosed brain damage which caused him to suffer from extreme paranoia about the care being provided to his wife.

His frontal lobe dementia, the decline of his wife’s health and his ready access to a gun created a deadly combination.

Ronald King was sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court today having admitted one count of manslaughter by diminished responsibility.

Ronald King admitted possession of a prohibited firearm, namely a 1934 Enfield Revolver marked with a Royal Canadian Air Force badge and possession of ammunition without a certificate on the opening day of the trial.

Andrew Jackson QC, said : "There is certainly an agreement some form of treatment is required."

Professor Graeme Yorston, an expert forensic psychiatrist, told the court Ronald King suffers from vascular alzheimer's disease which caused the progressive frontal lobe dementia.

He confirmed it was this condition which led him to his false beliefs about the care provided at the home and led to his view the "only possible response was for him to shoot his wife, and he also planned to shoot himself and his sister".

Patrick Upward QC, mitigating, said: "Without the disease the offence would not have taken place.

"This defendant's illness drove him, through paranoia, to reach a conclusion because of the state of his mind that would not otherwise have been reached.

"His punishment is the separation from the woman he was married to for more than 50 years."

Judge Charles Gratwicke QC said: "You and your wife had been a devoted couple and there is no doubt that as she started to exhibit the first signs of dementia and increasingly cared for her until her dementia, and your ill health, meant you could no longer do so.

"This was, from every angle, a tragedy.

"You told the police you had shot her to prevent her suffering anymore and that she had had enough and you were dying anyway.

"There is no evidence she was in pain anymore than anyone who has succumbed to dementia.

"The court acknowledges and accepts it is a dreadful condition though this was not a mercy killing.

"It is a killing that occurred at a time when the experts agree you were suffering from paraphrenia and dementia causing an abnormality of your mental functions."

Judge Gratwicke added the court cannot "shut its eyes to the fact that the possession of the firearm and the ammunition was long standing and certainly well before the onset of your mental disorder".

In December Ronald King began adapting bullets to try and make them more lethal.

He planned to use one on his wife, one on his sister and one on himself.

On December 26, having spent Christmas at De La Mer Care Home with his wife, Ronald King returned to his home in Cedar Close, Walton, to pick up his gun and ammunition.

On December 28 he ate breakfast with Rita before they retired to the lounge.

He pulled out the gun and, while shaking, shot her through the eye before kissing her on the forehead and telling her he loved her.

Ronald King then turned the gun on himself but he only has one hand, from birth, and was physically unable to pull the trigger.

He went into reception and asked staff to help him but he was disarmed, by the care home manager, and the full horror of what had happened was revealed.

Ronald King denied murder and was put on trial in July, his conditions still undiagnosed due to failings in the justice, healthcare and prison systems.

Neurological tests, such as an MRI scan, were not completed until three days before the trial, despite being requested months earlier, and the results not known until close to its conclusion.

Once his conditions of dementia and paraphrenia were confirmed and the results analysed Ronald King admitted one count of manslaughter by diminished responsibility, the plea was accepted by the prosecution and he was cleared of murder.

Ronald King’s conditions, according to clinical experts, means he is unable to form rational judgements.

One of the consequences of his illness was he believed the care home in Naze Park Road were drugging and stealing from patients, mistreating his wife and taking his money.

He told the jury he killer her in the lounge to “show them up” because he wanted the home closed down.

He was sentenced to six years for manslaughter by diminished responsibility, five years for possession of the firearm and 12 months for possession of the ammunition, to be served concurrently.

He will serve his sentence in a secure ward at St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton for treatment.

If the treatment concludes before his sentence he will be transferred to prison.