Guilty verdict issued in Jack Frew murder case

Craig Roy, 19, was convicted over the death of the 16-year-old who, he claimed, had pestered him for sex.

He stabbed the younger boy 20 times and slashed his throat with a kitchen knife near their school in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, in May 2010.

Roy had cheated on his long-term boyfriend with Jack and was plagued by guilt over his infidelity, the trial at the High Court in Glasgow heard.

He admitted stabbing Jack but denied murder, claiming he had no memory of the incident and that he had taken a knife with him to meet the victim because he wanted to scare him.

Roy said he only recalled taking out the knife and then seeing Jack lying bleeding to death on the ground.

But instead of calling an ambulance for the dying teenager, Roy called his boyfriend for help for himself.

Roy claimed Jack had been blackmailing him for sex after they shared a sexual encounter in the school toilet three months before the murder.

He said the schoolboy, described by friends as “flirtatious” and “flamboyant”, was a “sex pest” who would threaten to tell Roy’s boyfriend he had cheated.

Roy was the only person in the three-week trial to make the claims. He said he took a knife to the meeting in secluded woodland on May 6 in order to “scare” the younger boy into leaving him alone.

But instead he attacked the openly gay teenager, leaving him with horrific wounds including punctured lungs, a cut windpipe and knife damage to his ribs.

Roy’s defence said he had a personality disorder which diminished his ability to control his actions.

But the jury of nine women and five men rejected this claim, finding him guilty of murder after almost two hours of deliberation.