A Satan-worshipping 16-year-old who heard the devil's voice planned to kill his parents, two school friends and finally himself, a court has been told.
In the end, police arrived at his Sydney home shortly after 7am on March 25, 2008, to find his father dead, his mother seriously wounded and the boy freshly showered and dressed ready for school with a 23-centimetre knife in his bag.
In his school bag and bedroom, officers found numerous drawings, textbooks and exercise books full of handwritten "musings" on Satanism and the afterlife, a judge was told at the start of his murder trial in the NSW Supreme Court.
Now 18, the youth has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his father, and not guilty to the attempted murder of his mother for reasons of mental illness.
In his opening address at the judge-alone trial in Sydney on Monday, Crown prosecutor Peter Miller said the boy's mother woke her son at 6.15am as usual in their Baulkham Hills home.
Following her downstairs a short time later, the boy allegedly asked her whether the family's cat was inside and attacked her when she went to the back windows to check.
"In the reflection of the glass she then saw the accused behind her, coming towards her with a knife," Mr Miller said.
"He stabbed her a number of times and said she deserved it and he hoped she would be a better person in the afterlife."
The boy's father came running down the stairs after hearing his wife's screams and was attacked at the kitchen doorway, Mr Miller said.
"She could hear her husband calling out to her son words to the effect of 'My God, you're killing me - I'm dying'," he said.
The boy's father died from his injuries at the scene.
When the boy went upstairs to change his T-shirt, his mother called emergency services telling them: "My son's going to kill me now".
Police were on the doorstep by the time he returned downstairs.
He told paramedics at the scene: "I just murdered my parents", the court was told.
The court was told the boy had an interest in Satanism and had notebooks full of "meditations" on the afterlife.
Psychiatric examinations revealed the boy was delusional and had - on at least three separate occasions - heard what he thought to be the devil's voice, Mr Miller said.
"He had a firmly held belief that he could influence his own afterlife," he said.
One document found with the codename 5455 - which spells out "kill" on a phone keypad - revealed what appeared to be an even more sinister plot than what occurred.
The original plan had been to kill two boys who attended his school, before taking his own life, Mr Miller said.
He had even written a suicide note, the court was told.
That plan was scuppered because on the day in question - a week earlier than the attack on his parents - his father had gone to work earlier than expected.
The boy's defence barrister Andrew Haesler SC says his client has a defence of mental illness available to him because he suffers from schizophrenia.
"All the experts agree the accused cannot think naturally ... (he) suffers from a disease of the mind," Mr Haesler told the court filled with members of the boy's family.
The trial before Justice Clifton Hoeben will resume on Tuesday.
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