IPSWICH: Even Rodney Greenland was disgusted with himself for the vicious way he ended Simon Amers’ life.

A powderkeg of emotions had festered in Greenland for more than 30 years, eventually leading to the murderous frenzy which saw Mr Amers’ stabbed seven times and slashed 12 times to the throat.

The 36-year-old was stabbed with such ferocity that the eight-inch blade on the knife was bent to the hilt. He was even attacked as he lay dying at the foot of his stairs.

Shortly after his arrest the 47-year-old Greenland told police: “I have been crying out for someone to stop me from turning into an animal. I’m not better than an animal for what I have done.”

Greenland also gave an insight into his fragile mental state when he told a probation officer that he was an extremely angry man.

The officer said: “He felt like the Incredible Hulk and sometimes felt something was inside that needed to get out.”

Greenland was effectively left a walking timebomb waiting to detonate by a corrosive cocktail of suppressed rage after being sexually abused as a boy. The anger was further fuelled by a dependency on alcohol.

At the root of his restless, disjointed life was the abuse which he said began when he was a 13-year-old at boarding school in Kent.

Greenland said the anger of his schooldays had never left him and attempts to overcome it had ended in frustration.

He said: “I went back to the boarding school when I was about 22-years-old to see the people. I have never felt so angry in my life when I walked in there and it was an old people’s home.

“So I have had my opportunity taken away from me to get the real people done that needed to be done. There’s pent-up anger.”

Greenland’s formative years were said to be punctuated with occasions were he ran away from the school.

He told police he had killed Mr Amers because he was not able to cope with the hair stylist’s homosexual advances after they had returned to drink at his Widgeon Close flat.

These, coupled with the abuse in his childhood, were said to have finally pushed Greenland too far.