IT WAS just another dark day that December 2014. Just another bleak day in the troubled lives of the two teenagers and their victim, a chronic alcoholic who had been their friend.

Those teenagers were just 13 and 14 and had known each other since they were little girls.

Their victim was Angela Wrightson, a 39-year-old woman who weighed just six-and-a-half stone and was so ravaged by drink she looked to be in her 60s.

The girls’ relationship was intense since primary school. But it was destructive. Both were in care and their carers and social workers had tried to keep them separate. On the night of Angela’s death, the girls had rejoiced in rebelling, in hanging out together.

But the carers were surely right in wanting to keep them apart. Separately, according to one former neighbour, “they were all right, quite sweet,” but together; “they were devils.”

The older girl, with an IQ somewhere in the 60s, meaning she had “mild learning difficulties," had the tougher life. Before being taken into care she grew up with several siblings and none of them had the same dad as her. The fathers of each of the other children had served time in prison and all the children were taken into care.

The Northern Echo:

A CCTV still of the girls returning to Angela Wrightson's home

She witnessed her mother being attacked routinely. Diagnosed with a mental condition, ‘abnormality of mental function,’ her defence and one psychiatrist argued that violence had been “trivialised” for her.

Drugs added to her problems. She started taking amphetamine, Tramadol and drinking cider aged just 11. This terrible day, Tuesday, December 8, she was given drugs by her own mother. A mother told her to ‘go and f****** kill yourself,’ for good measure.

The younger girl’s background wasn’t as horrific as her friend and she didn’t have any learning problems. Her parents were together. Her father worked full time. Social workers observed her mother tried to ‘implement behaviour plans.’ But she too was often in trouble, to the extent that her family struggled to cope and she was in care and fostered.

And, as the old neighbour said, they were certainly trouble together: the girls absconded from their respective care home no fewer than 18 times in the 30 nights leading up to the murder.

On the day of the murder the older child had met her mother and had her upsetting conversation at about lunch time. Her older sister came round and took her home. At about 4.30pm the girl left to meet another friend.

There was no plan to meet the younger child, who had been buying clothes with her new foster parents, but she too went to the mutual friend’s. The two “devils” were together.

Shortly after 7.15pm the two entered Number 14, Stephen Street, the home of Angela Wrightson. They were not invited and in fact their knocking had been ignored. But they knew Angela’s weakness and, shortly afterwards, the chronic alcoholic went out to a nearby shop to buy cider.

The trio the stayed inside the home for three-and-a-half hours. A fight had broken out between the younger girl and Angela, possibly over allegations Angela made about a broken window. The older child intervened and there followed serious, horrific violence including the frail, vulnerable woman being beaten with a table, a shovel, a television and a stick.

Afterwards the two friends left, blood on their jeans, and met a mutual friend on the street. They boasted of their violence; 'we sliced her face,' before returning to the home at about 2am, leaving at 4.12am.

Unable to get home and knowing they were reported as missing they called the police for a lift, laughing with the police operators. When the police van came they covered their bloodied jeans with their coats. The younger girl even took a photograph inside the van.

Their victim was almost certainly dead.

Angela Wrightson was so thin and unwell she had to wear layers of clothes in the summer just to feel any kind of warmth. To feed her alcoholism she had taken to low level crime, like shop lifting. She would be served ASBOs for drunken antics and then break them, leading to jail. She had been sectioned under the mental health act. Her neighbours called her ‘alco Angie.’

And yet, when sober, she was kind and caring. Her home was kept meticulously tidy and clean. She loved dogs. She went to church.

Her friend, hairdresser Donna Jenkins, paid tribute. "Angie was a lost soul,” she said, “and found life much easier in prison, she felt safe in there and had become largely institutionalised.”

One of eight children from Darlington, Ms Jenkins said it was losing; “the one man who really mattered to her,” a man called Billy who died young, that caused Angela’s life to spiral out of control and said she felt her friend was lonely.

A lost soul with serious problems. A vulnerable, frail woman. She needed help but ended up being beaten to death in her own home; her one source of pride.