TWO teenagers have been handed life sentences for a double murder committed within a 36-hour period.
Andrew Moran, 19, was ordered to serve at least 24 years behind bars.
His accomplice Paul Erskine, also 19, was sentenced to a minimum term of 22 years for the murder of Steven Mitchell and the killing of pensioner Harry Reekie, who died in hospital four months after the attack.
The pair, who had both been freed by courts on bail, carried out the murders while high on drugs in the West Lothian town of Bathgate in September last year.
A judge told them at the High Court in Edinburgh that the cocktail of drink and drugs they had consumed may go some way to explaining their actions, but it in no way excused their crime.
Lord Kinclaven said: “There is no alternative to a life sentence. No other method of dealing with you is appropriate.”
He ordered that the pair be detained in a young offenders’ institution.
Erskine’s defence counsel, Ian Duguid QC, earlier informed the court that the teenager had told a social worker that “he deserves everything that is coming to him”.
Moran was previously convicted of murdering Mr Reekie, 65, following an attack at his home in Lothian Street, Bathgate, on September 16 and murdering Mr Mitchell, 31, at an address in the town’s Marmion Road on September 16 or 17.
Erskine was found guilty of killing the pensioner and murdering Mr Mitchell.
The pair broke into Mr Reekie’s home. Tape was wrapped around his mouth and wrists and he was repeatedly struck with knives as he was threatened and robbed of £400, a bank card and phones.
The victim later died in January this year at the age of 66 after sustaining such serious injuries that he never returned to his home. The killers used cash taken from the wounded victim to go on a shopping spree.
Mr Mitchell was then stabbed to death at a nearby house. During the attack the victim was repeatedly struck with a knife or knives and a hammer or similar weapons. He was also hit on the head and body with a table.
The court heard that bloody footprints from the culprits’ new trainers were left behind at the scene.
Their trial heard that Mr Reekie woke up to discover the intruders in his home after they had clambered in through a window Mr Mitchell died from stab wounds to the chest and blunt force injuries inflicted in the attack upon him.
Mr Duguid said: “I understand this is the closing chapter in a very sad and tragic series of events in which two people lost their lives.”
He said that Erskine had admitted that he stabbed Mr Mitchell through the heart.
The defence counsel said: “He really has no explanation apart from the fact he was on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol.”
Tony Graham, counsel for Moran, said he left his family at the age of 15 “essentially to fend for himself and had had little boundaries in place ever since”. He had been using valium.
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