A HOMELESS man has been found guilty of murdering his grandmother in a savage knife attack at her home in Helston.

Cameron Dancey-Stevenson broke into 62-year-old Alison Stevenson home in the early hours of the morning and used a 20 centimetre bladed kitchen knife to attack her in her bed.

Dancey-Stevenson, aged 26, who was living rough in parkland on the edge of Helston at the time but is now at the Langdon Hospital in Dawlish, denied murder. But was found guilty.

He stabbed her so many times in the neck and throat that a pathologist was unable to count the wounds and with such violence that some of the injuries went right through her neck and out the other side.

Dancey-Stevenson then left her dead in a pool of her own blood and went downstairs to use her washing machine and tumble drier to clean his blood-soaked clothes.

The 27-year-old then fled her home in Greenbank and left other members of the victim’s family to find her dead the next morning when they could not contact her and began to worry about her welfare.

Retired care home owner Mrs Stevenson spent years trying to help her grandson after he developed mental illness and let him use her house during the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and early 2021 because he was homeless and living in a tent.

Their relationship broke down because of his irrational and violent behaviour and by April 2021 she had banned him from her home and obtained a court order to keep him away from her.

Dancey-Stevenson killed her because she had reported him to police for breaking the order in April 2021 and he was due to be sentenced for breaking a restraining order on May 25, 2021, the day that he killed her.

He left a trail of forensic evidence which proved that he was the killer, including a bloody footprint at the entrance to her bedroom. Her blood and his DNA were also found on the door of her washing machine, which he used just after the killing.

Police were able to access data from Mrs Stevenson’s smart electricity meter which showed he washed his clothes between 2.30 am and 5.30 am on the morning of the killing, effectively fixing the time of the murder.

Her blood was found under one of his fingernails after he was arrested several hours after the killing. Defence wounds on her hands and arms showed that she tried to fight him off before suffering the horrific injuries which led to her dying from loss of blood.

Dancey-Stevenson gave a garbled account to the jury at Exeter Crown Court of hearing a mystery intruder arguing with his grandmother as he passed her window on the night of the murder.

He claimed to have gone into her house to protect her and said he picked up the knife as he went through the kitchen but was then disarmed by the other man, who then used it to kill Mrs Stevenson as he cowered in a neighbouring bedroom.

The jury took less than three hours to reject his account, in which it is possible he was attributing his own actions to the imaginary intruder.

He claimed that the knifeman had demanded money or bank details and stabbed Mrs Stevenson when she refused to give them.

Police discovered that he had made internet searches into the likely outcome of his court sentencing for breaking the restraining order as well as blackmail.

He had told his father a few days before the killing that he was angry with his grandmother for reporting him to the police and said ‘I’m going to ****ing sort her out when I get out’.

Dancey-Stevenson, aged 26, who was living rough in parkland on the edge of Helston at the time but is now at the Langdon Hospital in Dawlish, denied murder. But was found guilty.

Judge Simon Carr is expected to sentence him tomorrow (wed). The only sentence which he can pass is life imprisonment but it is possible that Dancey-Stevenson will remain in Langdon Hospital until he is well enough to be transferred to jail.