11.30am UPDATE - Newton ordered to servce a minimum jail sentence of 16 years.

The family of a Bristol pensioner stabbed to death by a psychotic drug addict say his killer should never have been free to walk the streets.

Stephen Newton was found guilty of murder yesterday for stabbing Philip Hendy in the neck and back in a quiet Bristol street.

Mr Hendy was walking home after paying his newspaper bill at A&J News in Greenbank Road on a Sunday morning in April 2007.

He was killed around the corner from his home, in an area where he had lived all his life – and by a man who lived in a nearby street.

After yesterday's verdict, one of Mr Hendy's sons said Newton, 43, should have been detained in hospital after "clear warnings" to mental health services.

Newton's legal representatives had argued he was suffering from mental illness when he stabbed 75-year-old Mr Hendy and attacked 84-year-old Hargovindhai Taylor while apparently in the grip of delusions.

But prosecution experts said that though Newton had an "abnormality of mind" his behaviour was due to him being under the influence of amphetamines. The Bristol Crown Court jury agreed, taking just under two hours to convict Newton, of Carlyle Road, of murder.

The Honourable Mr Justice Richard Plender told Newton he would find out the minimum length of his mandatory life sentence today.

Outside court, one of Mr Hendy's sons, Julian, a 50-year-old company director living in Yorkshire, said the family had learned that Newton was well known to mental health services in Bristol. He had a lengthy history of deception, drug abuse and offending caused largely by his taking of amphetamine in "industrial quantities".

He told the Post: "We learned there were clear warnings about his psychotic behaviour. We believe Mr Newton should not have been at liberty and dangerous in Greenbank that day – he should have been in hospital. The loss of our father has been a traumatic and devastating experience.

"We welcome the findings of the court that Mr Newton will serve a lengthy sentence and will no longer be able to harm others."

Julian said his family thought about his father every day, a wholly innocent man who was murdered by a complete stranger.

He said: "Our family has lived in Greenbank for other 100 years. Our grandmother was born there, my father was born there, he went to school there, got married in the church there, and it is the place where he lived for all of his life. It is the place where we all grew up.

"There have been suggestions he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"My father had every right to pay his paper bill in Greenbank on April 29 last year. He was not in the wrong place at the wrong time – Mr Newton was."

Mr Hendy was born in Greenbank in 1931 and remained there in the same house in Thurlow Road through education, work and family life. He worked as a sale rep for much of his life before retiring in 1996, and had three sons with his German-born wife Elfriede – Julian, Simon, 53, a company director living in Bristol, and Philip, 45, a designer living in the West Country. They gave him three grandchildren whom he adored.

One of his passions was gardening and he was site representative at Packers Allotment, near Gordon Road, Whitehall. After his death the Philip Hendy Cup was inaugurated, an annual award for Bristol's best allotment.

Julian said: "He was fit and healthy, he had his five fruit and veg a day and he jogged – even on the day he was stabbed.

"He made his grandchildren dens, taught them to use tools and he was a very hands-on grandad.

"My father always supported us in any way and was a very practical man. He did lots of DIY, fixed his car himself and had the wartime philosophy of 'waste not, want not'.

"He was very modest, always smiling, and he always put himself at the back and put others first."

He added: "I think about him every day and I think about the way he died every day. We've got a life sentence. We didn't choose this. Mr Newton chose to take vast quantities of drugs and we're paying the consequences of his actions."

Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health NHS Trust offered its condolences to the Hendy family. It said it had carried out its own investigation and would co-operate with any investigation by the strategic health authority.