I’ve never felt such grief, says Brianna Ghey’s mum

The mother of Brianna Ghey said she had “never felt such grief” as her daughter’s killers were sentenced to life for murder.

Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe repeatedly stabbed the 16-year-old, who was transgender, after luring her to a park in Cheshire in February 2023.

Brianna had 28 knife wounds and the pair blamed each other for the murder.

Esther Ghey told Manchester Crown Court Jenkinson and Ratcliffe would always “pose a danger to society”.

Trial judge Mrs Justice Yip told Jenkinson, 16, she would serve a minimum term of 22 years before parole.

Ratcliffe, also 16, was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years before parole.

In a victim impact statement read out in court before the sentences were handed down, Ms Ghey said of the killers: “I would never want them to have the opportunity to carry out their sadistic fantasies on another child.”

She added the “hardest thing” to come to terms with was finding out that one of those charged with Brianna’s murder was someone she believed to be her daughter’s friend.

At Manchester Crown Court, in her victim impact statement, Brianna’s sister Alisha Ghey said she now struggled to trust new people because it was “Brianna’s friend who she trusted who ended her life”.

“No-one can ever make me feel better. The only thing that would is hearing her voice and laughter, and I must carry that pain for the rest of my life,” she said.

Brianna’s father Peter Spooner said being the father of a transgender child had been “a difficult thing to deal with” but he had been “proud to gain another beautiful daughter”.

“We were forming a new relationship and these two murderers have stolen that from us both,” he added.

“I hate how Brianna’s life has been brutally taken away from her and she has been deprived of the life she wanted to live.”

He described his daughter’s killers as “pure evil,” adding: “I cannot call them children as that makes them sound naive or vulnerable which they are not.”

Her stepfather Wesley Powell told the court that while Brianna had a large online following, “in reality she was lonely, vulnerable and in need of a close friend”.

“Both Eddie and Scarlett knew this and preyed upon her vulnerabilities, acting as two predators stalking their prey,” he added.

Brianna and Jenkinson had met at Birchwood Community High School and had spent time together socially outside of school.

A File on 4 investigation found Jenkinson was moved to the school in November 2022 on a managed transfer from nearby Culcheth High School after drugging a younger pupil with a cannabis sweet.

She later tried to poison Brianna before murdering her.

Warrington Borough Council said a review was under way into the incident at Culcheth High School.

Brianna met Ratcliffe just hours before she was killed.

Jenkinson and Ratcliffe, who had known each other since they were 11 when they both started at Culcheth High School, planned the murder for weeks and had drawn up a “kill list” of five children, before settling on Brianna as their target.

Brianna was attacked with a hunting knife in broad daylight in Culcheth Linear Park in Warrington, suffering stab wounds to her head, neck, chest.

Both teenagers, who were 15 at the time, then went home and carried on as if nothing had happened with Jenkinson later posting an online tribute with a photo of Brianna.

Detectives later found a knife in Ratcliffe’s bedroom with his DNA on the handle and Brianna’s blood on the blade.

The 18-day trial heard how Jenkinson and Ratcliffe had a fascination with violence, torture and murder.

Messages between them showed they encouraged one another to think about how they would actually carry out a killing.

Both teenagers blamed each other during the trial, however, Deanna Heer KC, prosecuting, said Jenkinson had admitted stabbing Brianna to a psychiatrist after she was convicted.

Ms Heer said: “She said effectively, at the time of the killing she had in fact administered stab wounds herself.

“She had snatched the knife from Eddie’s hand and stabbed Brianna repeatedly.

“She said Eddie had thrown Brianna to the floor and stabbed her three or four times then he panicked and said he did not want to kill her, so she carried on and stabbed her a number of times.

“When asked how many, she answered, ‘a lot.’ She was satisfied and excited by what she was doing.”

A crumpled, handwritten note of an alleged “murder plan” to kill Brianna was found on Jenkinson’s bedroom floor following her arrest.

Notes were also made on serial killers including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez and Harold Shipman in a black notebook.

Jenkinson also drew up a second “kill list” of staff at the secure youth accommodation, where she is being held, which refers to names of people caring for her, Ms Heer said.

Richard Pratt KC, defence counsel for Jenkinson, told the court he had been instructed to say something different at the sentencing hearing to what she had said to the psychiatrist.

Mrs Justice Yip said the impression she had was that, now Jenkinson had been convicted, she wanted to “paint herself in as bad a light as possible…given her admiration for notorious killers”.

“For the record then, her account now is that Eddie did the majority of the stabbing, but that she certainly enjoyed it?” she said.

To which Mr Pratt replied: “Yes.”

Richard Littler KC, defence counsel for Ratcliffe, denied the teenager had been motivated by transphobia after he shared offensive messages about Brianna, describing his language as “juvenile and immature”.

“The names on Scarlett’s kill list were not gender-specific,” he told the court.

“They were simply people she disliked.

“Eddie simply agreed with her.”

He said Ratcliffe’s motive was to assist Jenkinson “because he wanted to please her”.

“Sadism is pleasure from inflicting pain and we submit that box is well and truly ticked for Scarlett, but not for Eddie,” he said.

“We have two very different people carrying out that offence, but for very different reasons.”

He added that Ratcliffe had essentially been recruited and it was Jenkinson who first introduced the idea and who wrote the kill list.

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