A couple who beat and starved a vulnerable man to death after he was sent to live with them by social workers were convicted of murder today.
Jurors heard ‘recovering drug addicts’ Melanie James, 63, and her partner Kenneth Newton, 57, kept Rubin Blount in their council house ‘for their own financial benefit’ and abused him ‘for their own fun and kicks’.
The 28-year-old resembled a ‘bag of bones’ in the days before he died and had been seen scavenging in bins. By the end he weighed just seven stones and had suffered multiple rib fractures, a fractured spine and cigarette burns.
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