A MENTAL health charity had not carried out an annual risk assessment on psychotic killer Ronald Dixon for three years.

The paranoid schizophrenic stabbed psychology graduate Ashleigh Ewing 39 times when she went to his home in Heaton, Newcastle, to deliver a letter from her employers.

He attacked her with such savagery that he left the broken blade of a knife embedded in the 22-year-old’s chest.

Dixon, then 35, had not long been released from a secure hospital after travelling with his dog to London and making threats to kill the Queen.

Now, an inquest has heard that Ashleigh had visited Dixon’s just days before she was killed in May 2006 but made excuses not to go in, because he was drunk.

The court also heard her employers Mental Health Matters had not carried out a risk assessment on the killer for three years, despite regulations ordering one to be done annually.

Having been “stable” for four years, Dixon relapsed six months before he killed Northumbria University graduate Ashleigh, of Hebburn, South Tyneside.

He was arrested and spent a month in a secure unit after travelling to Buckingham Palace and making threats.

He was then judged to be stable and released back into supported accommodation within the community.

But he again stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication and despite the fact he was also known to be drinking, no action was taken by Mental Health Matters to carry out an official risk assessment, the inquest at Newcastle’s Civic Centre heard.

Coroner David Mitford asked Ashleigh’s boss Steven Brown, who managed the supported housing project which Dixon was living in, why nothing had been done.

He said: “What you have got is Mr Dixon who has suddenly gone off the rails, it seems. He’s stopped his medication, he’s gone to London, where we know what happened, he’s in hospital and then transferred back to Newcastle.

“Isn’t that the moment you had to think about what steps had to be taken with regard to the organisation’s future with Mr Dixon?”

Mr Brown said: “There was no information we were given that he was causing problems for anybody when he came out of hospital. The information we had from the psychiatric medical team was that he was still low risk and I saw no evidence the risk had increased.”

Mr Mitford said: “Might I suggest to you that you didn’t put enough emphasis on the significance of London and him not taking his medication?

Mr Brown said: “We were monitoring the situation, that’s all we could do.”