Enid Dodd wants to know why Khan was allowed back in the community

The widow of a man stabbed to death in a knife attack by a psychiatric patient has criticised a review into the killing, saying it is not independent enough and she fears a cover-up.

Enid Dodd, from Prestatyn, is unhappy with the panel commissioned to carry out the review into her 72-year-old husband Brian's murder and is concerned it consists mainly of psychiatrists and mental health workers.

The retired accountant was walking his dogs along Prestatyn's Ffrith Beach last March, when he was murdered by a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who was being treated in the community after carrying out a knife attack six years earlier.

But the health services research agency carrying out the report says it will be "rigorous, comprehensive and fully independent".

Paul Khan, 34 and from Cardiff, was jailed for life at Mold Crown Court last October for Mr Dodd's murder after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

After the sentence, the Welsh assembly ordered Cardiff Local Health Board to carry out an independent external review into their care management of Khan.

I think about that day and how it should never, ever have happened. Enid Dodd

In court it had emerged Khan was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order in 1996 after slashing a man across the throat in Cardiff Central library.

He was treated at various secure hospitals and, in 2000, a mental health review tribunal decided that he could be treated in the community.

The treatment appeared to work but, just before Mr Dodd's killing, Khan stopped taking his medication and concealed his condition from staff.

Khan's motive has remained unclear and he told police he had no memory of the attack

'Ordinary wife'

Mrs Dodd is now demanding to know why Khan was allowed out into the community again to kill.

"I'm still angry and I still do not believe he should have been let out in the first place," she told BBC Radio Wales.

She said she fears the review panel may not be tough enough on its own profession.

Mrs Dodd has called for a judicial inquiry into her husband's death

"I am overwhelmed because it will be the top people with all these letters after their names and who are all top people in their field, and I'm just the ordinary wife of the victim.

"It's not right they should have all these people on the panel and not have anybody from out of the profession."

"I just don't want there to be a cover-up," she said.

"I think about what happened that day and how it should never, ever have happened."

ECRI, a health services research agency, which is carrying out the review said its panel would consist of a team of mental health specialists with a "a wide range of experience of the investigation of mental health homicide.

"The report that will be generated as part of this process will be rigorous, comprehensive (involving all the agencies who provided for the care of Mr Khan) and fully independent," it said in a statement.