Teenage couple join notorious group of children who kill

THEY were teenage sweethearts whose toxic relationship led to murder. In court, consultant forensic psychiatrist Philip Joseph compared them to the infamous American duo Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow – better known as Bonnie and Clyde – and told the jury: “If they hadn’t got together and had the intense, toxic relationship, they [the killings] would never have happened.

“A group dynamic can lead you to a course of action you would never have contemplated on your own. Bonnie and Clyde... that sort of intense attraction, emotional closeness – them against the world. It’s that sort of thing that led on to this.”

Nottingham Crown Court was told that the teenagers were both just 14 when they murdered Katie and Elizabeth Edwards in Spalding, Lincolnshire, last April.

And now they join a notorious group of child killers including:

• James Fairweather was 15 when he stabbed two strangers to death in Colchester, Essex, in random attacks over three days. He claimed he was possessed by the devil – a defence rejected by Old Bailey jurors – and was jailed in April this year for 27 years. The trial heard he was obsessed with serial killers and was said to have “relished” creating a “climate of fear” in the community following the first murder. He was on the search for a third victim when he was caught by police and appeared unrepentant when jailed.

• Will Cornick will spend at least 20 years in prison after being convicted in 2014 of murdering teacher Ann Maguire. The schoolboy, who was 15 at the time, stabbed Mrs Maguire, 61, seven times from behind as she taught a Spanish class at Corpus Christi Catholic College, in Leeds. The teenager attacked Mrs Maguire after boasting to friends that he was going to kill her. He later told psychiatrists that everything was “fine and dandy”.

• In April, a 16-year-old boy was locked up for nine years for the culpable homicide of 16-year-old Aberdeen schoolboy Bailey Gwynne. The defendant was one of several child killers granted anonymity by the court. Bailey, a fifth-year pupil with four younger brothers, died from bleeding caused by a single stab wound to the heart during a fight in his lunch hour. The youth denied murder and was convicted of the lesser charge.

• The same anonymity was afforded to two of Britain’s youngest recent child killers. Victim Angela Wrightson, a vulnerable 39-year-old alcoholic, was subjected to a five-hour ordeal in the lounge of her home in Hartlepool, County Durham, with her murderers using weapons including a shovel, a TV, a coffee table and a stick studded with screws to harm the woman. The killers, two girls aged 13 and 14, posted a selfie with Miss Wrightson moments before she succumbed to her injuries, and later rang the police to take them home.

• Daniel Bartlam was 14 when he killed his mother, Jacqueline, at their home in Redhill, Nottingham, in April 2011. He was detained for 16 years for the fatal hammer attack, having been inspired by a plot from Coronation Street. He told police his mother – later only identified by her dental records – was attacked by an intruder, but was convicted of murder. The judge, Mr Justice Flaux, said it seemed Bartlam had wanted to “get away with the perfect murder” and spent time hatching the plot.

• Brothers Connor and Brandon Doran, and friend Simon Evans, were handed custodial sentences after being convicted of murdering a homeless man in Liverpool in 2012. Connor, 17, was described as the pack leader and sentenced to 12 years, while Evans and Brandon, both 14, were given sentences of eight and six years, respectively. The court heard how the older teenager had goaded Evans to attack Kevin Bennett while the younger brother stood as lookout.

• Two decades earlier, the city was rocked by the death of toddler James Bulger, lured to his death from the Strand shopping centre in Bootle by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson.

He was tortured and left to die on a nearby railway line. The pair were just 10 at the time – the minimum age of criminal responsibility, meaning prosecutors would not be able to take the case to court had they been any younger. Both have been given new identities since their release on life-long licence in 2001.

• Before James Bulger’s murder, the most notorious child who had killed in the UK was Mary Bell. Bell was just 11 when she was found guilty of the manslaughter of Martin Brown, four, and Brian Howe, three in Newcastle in 1968. Like Thompson and Venables, she was later given lifelong anonymity under a new identity – the first of its kind in England – following her release in 1980.