 BRIAN BLACKWELL'S imagination was so powerful it gradually began to control his life. For seven months, the 18-year-old student had been living in a fantasy world. Between his A-Level studies, he spent his time pretending he was a wealthy professional tennis player, lying to banks about his income in efforts to obtain loans and credit cards, and visiting showrooms to test drive sports cars. Meanwhile, he had been lying to those closest to him, by cheating his parents out of their money and telling his girlfriend, Amal Saba, wildly fantastical lies. This double life should have ended on Sunday, July 25, 2004, when he flew into a rage and butchered his parents in their secluded home in the Melling countryside. But he could not help himself. After dragging his mother's mutilated body across the carpet from the lounge to the bathroom, Blackwell called a taxi and made his way to his girlfriend's house. Doing so, he left the macabre scene he had created behind the doors of his family's lovingly-kept bungalow. Brian Blackwell senior and his wife, Jacqueline, had died brutal deaths at the hands of their beloved son. Any dignity that may have remained was lost as their bodies were left to decay for six weeks before anyone noticed their disappearance. Within three nights of the killings, the then 18-year-old had flown first class across the Atlantic on his dead father's credit card and was enjoying champagne and lobster at New York's Plaza Hotel. "He had basically duped his girlfriend. She was only a kid and she fell for his lies," said Detective Chief Inspector Mike Keogh, who led the murder investigation for Merseyside Police. Mr Keogh said Blackwell's rare condition, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), is thought to have sparked a "Walter Mitty" existence in the teenager.. He added: "He had concocted this lifestyle in which he was a tennis player being sponsored by Nike for £70,000 and playing in tournaments all over Europe. "In reality, he had very limited sponsorship, offered to any reasonable standard local tennis player. "He had visited car showrooms and taken test drives in expensive sports cars. All these aspects surrounded the impression he had given that he was a well-paid, extremely promising tennis player." | 
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