A lovestruck student smashed his way into a mortuary with an axe and began examining corpses after he became convinced that the girl he was attracted to had been killed.
Benjamin Barton had fallen for Amy Ogden whom he had met at the University of Southampton but feared she had been killed when he was unable to contact her for several days in the run-up to Valentine’s Day.
The 24 year old, of Bognor Regis, West Sussex, pleaded guilty at Southampton Crown Court to a charge of criminal damage but was acquitted of an offence of burglary.
He then made his way to Southampton General Hospital where he tried to talk his way into the morgue by claiming he was a medical student and had left his work inside.
The manager took his name and mobile phone number and contacted the out-of-hours mortician who told him he would be let in the following day to collect what he wanted.
He then left the hospital but only to buy an axe, a chisel and a hammer at a home improvements shop, before coming back the next day and smashing his way through an internal door.
Once inside he searched through confidential records and even looked at various bodies in a bid to locate Ms Ogden.
Hampshire police spokesman Ian Sainsbury said: “Barton went into the mortuary looking for Ms Ogden but at the time she was actually safe and well at her family home elsewhere in the country.
“After he was arrested he told police he had been suffering from a broken heart and became convinced something had happened to her.
“He said he then checked records before going to the drawers containing the unidentified bodies and looked at them to see if they were her. When he finally became convinced she wasn’t there he left.”
