Mental health services 'missed opportunities to stop serial killer'

A serial killer who murdered four people in London and the south coast had not received successful mental treatment due to a series of "missed opportunities", an independent inquiry has found.

Daniel Gonzalez, 27, of Woking, Surrey, was given two life sentences at the Old Bailey in 2006 for murdering four people and the attempted murder of two more in random knife attacks in September 2004.

He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1998 and said his ambition was to be a famous serial killer of "at least 10".

A report has now found authorities could not have predicted he would exhibit such "catastrophic violence" but mental health services offered to him should have been better.

Gonzalez was found dead at Broadmoor Hospital in an apparent suicide in August 2007. His victims included Derek Robinson, 76, and wife Jean, 68, of Highgate, and Kevin Molloy, 46, killed in Tottenham.

The report found the system failed Gonzalez as he was difficult to engage with and had been involved in drugs and petty crime.

Lucy Scott Moncrieff, who chaired the inquiry, said he "was not successfully treated" in a case "full of missed opportunities".

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity SANE, said: "It is nothing short of a scandal a young man was allowed over eight years to be left at home so disturbed that he should kill four strangers."