A woman who encouraged her son to kill his older brother has been jailed for 17 years.
Alison Murphy, 52, and Gary Murphy, 22, were both convicted of attempted murder after hatching a plan to kill Anthony Murphy, 26.
Alison had initially suggested making her elder son ‘fall in the harbour or off a cliff’, but instead Gary stabbed him while he slept on a sofa at their home in Whitehaven, Cumbria.
A series of text messages between the mother and younger son showed how the plan was formulated.
In one message read to the jury at Carlisle Crown Court, she wrote: ‘I definitely think he should be killed but not sure stabbing is the right method. We should make him fall in the harbour or off a cliff.’
Her son later replied: ‘I’m fine with whatever as long as he dies.’
Anthony survived the ‘brutal attack’ thanks to medics and some ‘luck’, the police said.
The court heard Gary had grown resentful of his brother after he returned to the family home.
He had warned his mother: ‘If you take Tony back, I will come down in the middle of the night and stab him to death on the sofa.’
The younger brother pleaded guilty to attempted murder, while his mother denied the same charge but was convicted by the jury.
Gary was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order.
‘It was a brutal attack and I welcome the sentences handed down today.’