Psychopath murdered his sister, 4, ‘in revenge for mum’s drug relapse’

This week Piers Morgan will go behind bars to meet a diagnosed psychopath who murdered his four-year-old sister at the age of 13.

Paris Bennett stabbed his younger sibling Ella 17 times, after convincing their babysitter to go home for the evening.

The then-teenager, who is a genius with an IQ of 141, told police that he had done it in revenge for his mother relapsing into drugs.

Charity Lee, 44, had previously been a heroin addict before both Paris and Ella were born.

She relapsed when Paris was 11, taking cocaine for a six-month period and causing him to step in and look after his sister.

Charity had been at her waitress job in Abilene, Texas, on February 5 2007, when she police arrived to tell her that Ella had been murdered.

Paris had planned out the killing, attacking his little sister in her bedroom while she slept.

He then called a friend, before dialling 911 and telling an emergency worker what he had done.

The operator had responded by saying: ‘You think you killed somebody?’, to which Paris then replied, while crying: ‘No I know I did. My sister. I feel so messed up.’

At first he lied that he had suffered a hallucination, but later claimed he was in his right mind, stating it was revenge for his mother’s relapse.

He said: ‘For many years, there was just this hot, flaming ball of wrath in the pit of my stomach and it was directed at my mother.

‘One of the reasons why I chose to kill my sister and not someone else is because I knew that by doing that I could hurt my mother in the worst possible way, because I had always known, as a child, that the most devastating thing to my mother would be the loss of one of her children, and I found a way to take away both her children in one fell swoop.’

He still maintains that he is not insane and does not suffer from any mental illness.

Charity said she managed to forgive her son after recognising him as a ‘predator’, likening him to a shark, unable to be anything other than be ‘what they are’.

She wrote in Good Housekeeping she has ‘learned to live with the past’ but will never understand why her Paris ‘did what he did’.

In a 2017 documentary, she said she would be frightened if he was free – particularly as she now has another son, Phoenix, born in 2013.

Paris has never met him, as he is not allowed to have any contact with children due his conviction.

Charity said: ‘If Paris wasn’t in prison or was able to meet Phoenix, I would have to do a lot more soul-searching.’

She now runs the Ella Foundation, set up in 2007 to aid those affected by ‘violence, mental illness, and the criminal justice system’, and does public speaking across the US.

Good Morning Britain host Piers described Paris as ‘more intelligent, more cunning and more manipulative’ than any of the killers he has met before.

Psychopath with Piers Morgan airs on Thursday at 9pm on ITV.