A convicted killer - who claimed four lives in eight days nearly 30 years ago - has told the Telegraph & Argus he wants to end his life.

Former public schoolboy Mark Rowntree was just 19-years-old when he stabbed four people to death, including a mother and her toddler son, in January 1976.

He has contacted the T&A from the secure unit where he is now held and talked in detail about how he wants to die and how he will refuse to co-operate with staff at the high security hospital where he has been locked up for the last 12 years.

Rowntree, who is now known as Mark Evans, was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court in summer 1976 to be kept in Broadmoor top security psychiatric hospital without time limit after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

He has also been held at Rampton Special Hospital and Ashworth Hospital but is now detained at a secure unit at St Luke's Hospital, Middlesbrough.

His victims were widow Grace Adamson, 85, whose body was found at her home in Old Main Street, Bingley; 16-year-old Stephen Wilson, of Edensor Road, Keighley, who was stabbed at a bus stop in Eastburn, and part-time model Barbara Booth, 24, and her three year-old son Alan, of Burley, Leeds.

In a letter and telephone calls to the T&A, Rowntree, now 47, has said he is at the end of his tether and has "had enough."

He talks of his shame and feelings of remorse about his crimes and the love and support of his mother.

He has also expressed fears he is on the verge of being moved to a prison after he threatened to kill a social worker.

Rowntree told the T&A: "When I killed Grace Adamson I was psychiatrically insane, a savage, a 19 year-old maniac who was sick upstairs.

"There was no motive for any of the crimes. I should imagine that I am justifiably looked on with contempt by the public, but I did not get any satisfaction out of such dreadful actions.

"I disgraced my dad and broke the hearts of the victims' relatives. They feel I am scum of the earth, but in that first week of 1976 something got control of my mind.

"I do not ever expect to be released. I do not expect compassion or forgiveness. What I did was morally unforgivable.

"I just want to die and be erased from society's memory, of the embarrassment and inhuman individual I am."

"I probably will finish up killing myself when my mother has died.

"If I died now it would break my mother's heart, but once she's gone I've nothing. I will probably take an overdose of pills or something because you can secrete your tablets in hospital. There's no other way.

"People are very security conscious on razors here, they're all counted, mirrors are made of plastic, cups usually are and cutlery is counted meticulously. You don't have much of a chance.

"I will find a way. It will be some time when I'm unsupervised. It could be two years, it could be five, it could be ten - but I look forward to doing it."

In 1993 doctors sparked controversy by granting Rowntree, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, permission for unsupervised day release.

Five years ago Rowntree said he felt stable and believed he was well enough to be released back into society. He cannot be freed without the permission of the Home Secretary.