A retired university lecturer deceived into marriage wrote a poem about the man who would go on to murder him .

Benjamin Field, 28, drugged the 69-year-old Peter Farquhar and encouraged him to drink alcohol.

The combination made him believe he was losing his mind.

It was all part of Field's plan to drive him to suicide.

And Field, a church warden, had all the makings of a serial killer, taking a sadistic pleasure in torturing his victim.

By the time of his arrest Field had drawn up a list of 100 future targets for fraud including his own parents and grandparents.

When the suicide plan failed Field killed him, making it look like he had drunk himself to death.

He was just 22 when he began to target Mr Farquhar for his money.

Oliver Saxby QC, prosecuting, told the trial the plot to deceive Mr Farquhar was a sustained "gaslighting" campaign aimed at making him question his sanity.

Mr Farquhar's drinks were topped up with bioethanol and poteen, a high strength Irish alcohol, and his food was laced with drugs, Mr Saxby said.

And despite slowly poisoning Mr Farquhar's mind and body – the retired lecturer perfectly summed up Field's poisonous character in 18 lines of poerty.

The author penned the poem 'Ben' in response to Field giving him his '10 Battle Raps' as a Christmas present.

Field had composed the Truest Jest collection of caustic rhymes about Mr Farquhar, which were "extremely insulting" and upset him deeply.

In response, Mr Farquhar wrote:

"Consider now an obscure youth named Ben,

Caustic pedant, laughably vain.

Recently bearded with staring dark eyes,

Aspiring to become one of the tough guys.

For Irish Muldoon he hopelessly pleads,

A nonentity whom nobody reads.

Deceptive and disloyal as a friend,

Ben uses people for unworthy ends.

Willing to wound and happy to strike,

Returning kindness with sneering dislike.

Described himself as a conceited teen,

A serious man he has never been.

Hurting others is his special pleasure,

Cruel disregard a happy leisure.

Skinhead with pseudo-intellectual specs,

Befriend him and he your reputation wrecks.

Witness: in eighteen lines more has been said,

Than in the mass scribblings from Ben's poisoned head."

Field duped Mr Farquhar into believing he was in a genuine relationship.

But promiscuous Field maintained relationships with long-term girlfriends who he cheated on with other women.

He also hooked up for "edgy and dirty" sexual encounters with men he met on Grindr, having earlier been paid by men who answered his advert on Craigslist.

Asked to explain why he did it, said: "Having done something I had not done before and try to do something I found transgressive and test myself."

To the outside world he was caring and trustworthy but hidden from public view was a much darker personality.

A priest he knew described him as "well respected and caring", while a former partner said "'love thy neighbour' is the best way to describe how he is to other people".

Field meticulously documented his depravity in his journals, poetry and videos – leaving it all for the police to find.

He admitted he had an "interest with the extremes of death and the idea of killing" and collected books and essays about dying, including the Five Last Acts, Easing The Passing and The Savage God.

Field later got a job in a local nursing home, providing end of life care for dementia sufferers, where he later filmed himself taunting an elderly woman about loneliness, pain and death.

He was born in 1990 and grew up in Market Harborough, Leicestershire. He has an older sister, Hannah, and a younger brother, Tom.

Their mother Beverley served as a Liberal Democrat councillor on the district council for several years, and their father Ian is a Baptist minister.

Field went to Bishop Stopford School in nearby Kettering, leaving in 2009 with two grade A A-levels in music and English literature and a C in economics.

He had earlier achieved four A*s, four As and two Bs in his GCSEs at the school.

Field told jurors that he had bunked off a lot of his secondary schooling and would go the library and read.

The family then moved to the village of Olney, near Milton Keynes, where Rev Field became the minister at Olney Baptist Church.

Field started at the private University of Buckingham in 2011 studying for a Bachelor of Arts (hons) degree in English literature, achieving a 2:1.

In 2013 he completed a Master of Arts in literature, gaining a distinction before beginning in January 2015 a Doctorate of Philosophy in literature.

Field told the jury he had considered taking his own life in 2013 as he was feeling "depressed and alienated" having finished his master's degree earlier that year and been unable to secure a full-time job.

He was cautioned by the police in 2011 for shoplifting t-shirts and also admitted to frequently trespassing – a precursor to burgling homes of the elderly.

Field also used cocaine once in 2010, later taking benzodiazepines to help him sleep while at university.

After he was arrested, he boasted: "I think I will get away with most of it.

"The two major charges I am not worried about even slightly … they don't have any evidence … also, if I'm wrong and they have evidence, I'm going to beat that and I'm going to distance myself…"

After 77 hours of deliberations jurors at Oxford Crown Court today found Field guilty of murder.

Senior investigating officer Mark Glover, a retired detective chief inspector with Thames Valley Police, said Field fitted the profile of a psychopath.

"Cruel, calculating, manipulative, deceitful. I don't think evil is too strong a word for him," he said.

"He's taken pleasure in tormenting, torturing, physically and mentally, Peter."

"Everything is about Ben Field and Ben Field's gain.

"I would imagine someone would document him as a psychopath, a sociopath, a sadist maybe.

"I'm not qualified to say those things, but when you look at the definitions of those people he probably sits in there somewhere.

"I don't think he's expressed any emotion, apart from laughing occasionally at something he's written himself – one his own poems or a little ditty.

"He has not expressed any regret, remorse or choked on his words."

Mr Justice Sweeney adjourned sentencing against Field until a date to be fixed after ordering a pre-sentence psychiatric report.

He was remanded into custody until then.

Source: Read Full Article