Thiruvananthapuram: In April 2017, the city woke up to one of its most horrific crimes — the brutal murder of four members of a prominent family in the quiet Baines Compound near Cliff House at Nanthancode. A tall, hefty 29-year-old man named Cadell Jeansen Raja stood at the centre of the storm. With flowing locks, a cryptic smile, and a chillingly calm demeanour, he had murdered his parents, sister, and aunt — then set about masking the crime with eerie calm.

Cadell used a hatchet to kill his father, Prof Raja Thankam (60); mother, Dr Jean Padma (58); sister Caroline (26); and aunt Lalitha (70). Three bodies were burned in the bathroom; one was wrapped in bedsheets and left inside the house. After committing the murders, he fled to Chennai but was arrested by Railway Police on April 10 and handed over to the Thiruvananthapuram city police.

On Monday, more than seven years later, the Additional Sessions Court found him guilty. The quantum of sentence will be pronounced on Tuesday.

Cadell initially attempted to mislead investigators by claiming the deaths occurred while he was experimenting with "astral projection" — the belief that the soul can detach from the body and travel independently. But that narrative quickly fell apart. Police, aided by psychiatric evaluations, concluded that Cadell was mentally sound and had meticulously premeditated the murders.

“He had practised on dummies for days,” said a police official involved in the investigation. “We also found videos on his laptop where he learned how to slit throats with an axe.”

Cadell was reportedly haunted by resentment and emotional isolation. Investigators found that he harboured deep frustration at being treated as a failure in a family of achievers. He told police that his parents never allowed him to socialise and constantly portrayed him as an underperformer. Though he wanted to study history, he was forced to pursue medicine in Australia — a course he abandoned midway before returning home.

K E Baiju, the then Assistant Commissioner of Cantonment Police who led the investigation, said Cadell had tried hard to build a facade of psychosis. “He tried to confuse us with all that talk of astral projection. But we saw through him. This was pent-up anger and rejection that he turned into violence,” Baiju said.

Cadell is currently housed at Poojapura Central Jail, awaiting sentencing in one of Kerala’s most disturbing and premeditated family murders.