Ex-soldier, 79, who stabbed fellow pensioner to death because he believed he had sexually abused a woman dies behind bars
Richard Cassidy, a 79-year-old former soldier, has died in prison nine years after murdering fellow pensioner David Farish, whom he believed had sexually abused a young woman he knew. Cassidy stabbed the 75-year-old 14 times and slashed his throat at his home in the Scottish Borders in February 2016, then left him to bleed to death, before disposing of his bloodstained clothes and the murder weapon and confessing to police. He was convicted of murder at the High Court in Glasgow in 2017 and jailed for 17 years; it has now been confirmed he died on 26 June at HMP Shotts in North Lanarkshire.
Cassidy used surveillance techniques he had learned infiltrating terrorist cells in Northern Ireland during the 1980s to befriend Farish, whom he had never previously met, before confronting him over allegations made by a woman who said she had been abused by Farish from the age of seven. When Farish reportedly told him police "could not prove anything", Cassidy said he "flipped" in a moment of madness. He never denied the killing but argued it amounted to culpable homicide rather than murder; the judge, Lord Summers, described the attack as "particularly brutal", while a detective called it the "heinous murder of a frail, elderly man in his own home". Cassidy had suffered a heart attack and stroke while awaiting trial, and his defence had said at the time that he was likely to die in custody.
- Ex-soldier Richard Cassidy, 79, has died in prison after murdering pensioner David Farish
- He stabbed Farish 14 times in 2016, believing he'd abused a young woman
- Jailed for 17 years in 2017; died at HMP Shotts on 26 June
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Cassidy, 79, was a former soldier who spent nine years in prison after killing 75-year-old David Farish at Farish's home in the Scottish Borders in February 2016. Cassidy believed Farish had sexually abused a young woman he knew, and used surveillance skills he had picked up decades earlier while working against terrorist groups in Northern Ireland to get close to him before the attack. He confessed to the killing but always disputed the charge of murder.
At his 2017 trial at the High Court in Glasgow, Cassidy argued the killing should be treated as culpable homicide, a lesser charge under Scots law broadly similar to manslaughter, rather than murder, on the basis that he had acted in a moment of extreme provocation. The court rejected this and convicted him of murder, for which he received a 17-year sentence. The case drew attention both for the brutality of the attack on an elderly, previously unconnected victim and for the unusual defence built around Cassidy's military background.
Cassidy's health had already declined sharply by the time of his trial, after he suffered a heart attack and a stroke while awaiting court proceedings, leading his own lawyers to suggest he was unlikely to survive his sentence. He was held at HMP Shotts in North Lanarkshire, one of Scotland's main prisons for long-term and high-risk offenders, where he remained until his death.