A man who murdered his lodger in a “ferocious attack” before cutting up his body and dropping packages of his dismembered limbs along Bournemouth seafront has been jailed for life with a minimum of 19 years.
Benjamin Atkins, 49, was convicted by a jury at Winchester crown court in May for the murder of 49-year-old Simon Shotton, whose legs were found in packages by a member of the public on the Manor Steps Zig Zag footpath in the Boscombe area of the Dorset seaside resort in August 2023.
Shotton had been living in a tent in the garden of the flat Atkins shared with his girlfriend, 39-year-old Debbie Pereira, in Aylesbury Road, Boscombe, giving the defendants drugs in lieu of rent.
Sentencing Atkins on Friday, the judge, Mrs Justice Stacey, said he may have initially been acting in self-defence when a fight broke out on the night of the killing, but said the level of violence he inflicted was “extreme”.
Pereira, who was acquitted of murder but convicted of perverting the course of justice, was jailed for four years after the court heard she “hid” in her bedroom while Atkins carried out the brutal attack but helped clean up afterwards.
Atkins had previously admitted perverting the course of justice and both defendants had admitted preventing the burial of a corpse.
Atkins admitted in court to killing Shotton at the couple’s home and dismembering his body, but claimed he had acted in self-defence.
In a victim impact statement read out by the prosecutor, Paul Cavin KC, on Friday, Shotton’s son Wesley, who was 19 when the murder took place, said his father had struggled with drink and drugs, which had an effect on the amount of time he spent with his children, but that he was “filled with love and care” for them.
He called his father’s killer “evil”, saying: “Your children should be ashamed of what you have done. You wrecked so many more lives than just my dad’s.
“No sentence will ever be enough for what you have done. There is nothing I can say that can truly capture what you have left me feeling. You knew what you were doing.”
During the trial, Atkins said the argument had started over the victim demanding payment of a debt.
Cavin told the court that Atkins was recorded after his arrest by a secret microphone in a prison van telling Pereira that “if he admitted that he cooked Simon’s head up and ate his cheeks, ‘would it get me off the hook?’”
He was also recorded as saying, when asked by his co-defendant whether he had any regrets: “I’ll look ’em straight in the eye and say: ‘Yeah. I’d do it again and again and again. If you let me go today, I’d find another one and do it again.’
“‘Drug dealers and pushers. Kill, decapitate and eat the fuckers.”
The trial heard that after the killing of Shotton, Atkins and Pereira sold the victim’s mobile phone in a Cash Creators shop in Boscombe, which police used to track down them down.
Atkins cut up Shotton’s body using a hacksaw in the couple’s garden under a makeshift tent before burning the victim’s head on a fire.
When it took longer to burn than he expected, he wrapped up the remaining body parts and disposed of them around Bournemouth seafront, with Shotton’s torso discovered in a suitcase in Boscombe Chine Gardens in September.
Describing dismembering the body, Atkins told the court: “I won’t deny it, I used copious amounts of various drugs … I wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t under the influence.”
