Stuart Diamond began his criminal career at a young age, robbing a post office at knife point at just 14 years old. He was involved in a stabbing, and even attacked his own stepmother before being detained in a young offenders institution for yet another violent incident with a knife. During one of his spells of detention as a young offender he told Doctors he fantasised about "killing someone and cutting them up", but incredibly he was released, a decision that only 3 months later would result in an horrific murder in 1997. After luring back a 17 year old man to his bedsit flat, with the promise of a warm bed on a cold night in the northern resort of Blackpool , Diamond savagely attacked, strangled , stabbed and decapitated his victim, Christopher Hartley, with a kitchen knife The body was stuffed into a holdall and dumped in a swill bin of a local hotel, however a keen-eyed policeman spotted blood stains at the bedsit, despite attempts by Diamond to clean the scene and he was promptly arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment at the subsequent trial. Gruesomely the head was never recovered. Diamond only admitted to the murder and revealed in 2006 that he thrown the head into the sea, as a pathetic attempt to manipulate the legal process and have his charge reduced to manslaughter by diminished responsibility at a later appeal in 2008. The appeal was rightly unsuccessful and Diamond remains detained for life in Ashworth High Security Hospital.