A man who admits killing his girlfriend's baby told a psychiatrist that he was evil and that he deserved to die, a court heard yesterday.

The psychiatrist said that Richard Baxter, 30, who is on trial for murder, suffers from a severe personality disorder, which is an abnormality of mind under the Homicide Act.

That was the conclusion given at Teesside Crown Court by Doctor Christopher Green, a consultant forensic psychiatrist who examined him in Holme House Prison at Stockton.

It was caused by a history of Baxter's own childhood abuse and lack of a stable upbringing.

The psychiatrist said that Baxter, who spent many periods in a Darlington psychiatric unit, was manipulative and violent in relationships, during which he had fathered possibly 11 children to various women.

Baxter claimed wrongly that he was the father of Paula Moore's 14-month-old baby Jake, and he persuaded her to register the baby as Jake Baxter.

He told the psychiatrist that he dragged Jake up by the neck and shook him.

Baxter called an ambulance to their home in Middlesbrough last August and Jake died in hospital 16 hours later from brain damage caused by violent shaking.

He had also been bitten on both cheeks and had 27 separate injuries.

Dr Green said Baxter claimed that, since then, he often heard a child screaming in his head and that he had made 40 attempts to kill himself.

Baxter, of Hodges House, Central Mews, Middlesbrough, denies murdering Jake on August 29. But the jury were told that he pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

The case is continuing.