Скачать или смотреть How Did Daniel Rosenthal Manage To Escape?

An investigation is underway into how one of Britain's most brutal murderers escaped from a mental hospital.

Police launched a manhunt for 'mad scientist' Daniel Rosenthal, 58, who was jailed for life after dismembering his mother's body with a hacksaw in 1981.

He was accused of hacking his father to death in France and dumped his body near Paris before returning to the family home in Hampshire to kill his mother.

There was a full-scale alert after police revealed Rosenthal, who is a paranoid schizophrenic, fled from his hospital on the fringe of Hampshire's New Forest.

He had been allowed to go for an 'unsupervised walk' around hospital grounds.

Police warned the public not to approach the 'dangerous' patient and to contact police immediately by dialling 999 if he was spotted.

After 20 hours 30 minutes on the loose, Rosenthal was finally found around seven miles away in Southampton, Hants, at 11am today.

Rosenthal, who wears glasses and walks with a hunch, is a patient at Tatchbury Mount Hospital in Totton, Hants.

The hospital, run by Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, is carrying out a full investigation into Rosenthal's escape at 2.30pm yesterday.

It revealed he was being kept in a 'low secure mental health unit' on the site called Southfield.

He had previously been held at Ashworth Special Psychiatric Hospital - a high security unit in Merseyside.

Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust spokeswoman Natalie Duffy said the trust could not comment on whether his risk had been correctly assessed.

The trust would also not comment on why he had been allowed to wander the hospital grounds unsupervised, saying this was subject to the investigation.

The grounds are not gated and it is possible to walk out on to the road. The slatted, wooden perimeter fence is only 4ft high.

Ms Duffy said: "Due to patient confidentiality the Trust cannot discuss an individual's treatment.

"The Trust is currently conducting a full internal investigation into these circumstances.

"Southfield helps people with a serious mental illness.

"Most of our patients will have either committed a criminal offence or have challenging behaviour."

The Tacthbury Mount site is just 15 miles from the family home in Hedge End, near Southampton, where Rosenthal brutally killed his mother.

Hampshire Police said they carried out an 'extensive search' for Rosenthal after he disappeared while going for 'a routine, unsupervised walk around the gardens of the hospital'.

Warnings were circulated, describing bespectacled Rosenthal as a 5ft 2ins tall man with short, greying, brown hair cut in a 'basin style fringe, who walks 'with a hunch and a scuffle'.

Hampshire Police spokeswoman Julie Knight said: "He is considered potentially dangerous and a risk to the public."

Rosenthal is understood to be the first murderer to be convicted without a body or confession.

He was locked up after Winchester Crown Court heard he visited his father Milton in Paris, hacked him to death then hid the body in a British bin bag in a forest 100 miles from the French capital.

He then returned to England and killed his 60 year old mother, Leah Rosenthal, cutting up her body with a hacksaw at their house.

Her body was never found and police believe her remains were unwittingly carted off by dustmen.

Rosenthal could not be charged with the murder of his father, whose body was found just days before his trial.

He continued to deny the murders and was convicted on compelling forensic evidence.

Rosenthal was dubbed 'the mad scientist' because of weird experiments he carried out on chicken eggs and embryos in a 'lab' he built in the living room.

He claimed to be a 'genius' and would leave bloodied feathers and chicken remains - the remnants of his bizarre experiments - in bags for the dustmen.

The home in Hedge End was finally sold for 50,000 pounds in 1994 and Rosenthal collected a sum of 16,000 pounds despite serving a life sentence.

At the time a spokesman for the solicitors' firm dealing with his mother's will said they hoped he would never be able to spend the money.

She added: "Our worst nightmare is of Daniel Rosenthal on the streets again."

Rosenthal had been held at high security unit Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside.

Speaking five years ago, the detective responsible for catching Rosenthal said his psychiatrist at Ashworth told him the murderer should never be released.

Former Hampshire Police chief superintendent Mike Southwell said: "When I retired I got hold of his psychiatrist.

"I asked him if there was any point me coming up and talking to Daniel to see if he would at last tell me what he did with his mother's remains.

"He told me Daniel had never admitted he did it, he will not discuss it with anyone and the last person on Earth he is going to talk to is the bloke who put him away.