Man with Asperger’s jailed for life for McDonalds killing

21-year-old Shane Freer, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, has been jailed for life for stabbing 57-year-old Jackie Marshall to death at the McDonald’s where they both worked last April, as reported in today’s Daily Mail. Freer had worked at the McDonald’s in Chichester in the UK for over a year when he was suspended on full pay by restaurant manages after punching a rowdy teenager in the face. Freer bought an 8-inch-hunting knife and, in front of forty customers, stabbed Marshall, who had been his line manager and who had reached out to Freer; a Christmas card on which she had written “To Shane, best wishes from Jackie XX’ ” was found in Freer’s bedroom.

Freer is being detained indefinitely in a secure mental unit. He lived with his 51-year-old mother, Rosemary, and has a 23-year-old sister, Elaine, a college student. At school, Freer is reported to have had no friends and to have rarely spoke. As the Daily Mail notes, “although he struggled in most subjects, he was in the top set for Maths and later achieved a BTEC in electrical engineering.”

The Daily Mail story also noted that Freer’s parents “had no idea of the extent of his mental problems and had never heard of Asperger’s syndrome, the same condition suffered by the narrator in the best selling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” Freer, the Daily Mail notes, thought that Marshall had betrayed their friendship by reporting on him to the restaurant managers.