An Unimaginable Crime: The Murder Of Kayleigh Haywood

we want to give you an opportunity if you know her if and if you indeed know where she is tell us right now at the beginning of the day um i can't remember if i added her or she added me i'm not sure honestly i've been drinking we've all been drinking i have a habit of accepting anyone who tries you know i mean regardless of whether the name rings about or anything i've got like 2 000 people we're asking if you can you can explain what's happened i actually cannot explain that fifteen-year-old kaylee hayward lived with her family in a village called misham in leicestershire england kaylee was part of a big family and was close to all her brothers and sisters her mother stephanie said that she was like a second mom to her younger siblings she was bubbly and popular amongst her group of friends outgoing friendly and positive kaylee's headteacher said she had a real determination to be successful in life as is typical of most teenagers kaylee spent a lot of time on her phone and social media she was always active on facebook and loved sharing pictures and statuses with friends and family friends she knew from school and new people she was meeting and engaging with online friday 13th 2015. just after 3pm kaylee sent a message to her friend katie saying she wouldn't be able to see her later as she said she would be staying at her aunt's house that evening kaylee asked her father martin for a lift to ipstock around a 10-minute drive away from her home in misham she told him she was going to meet her friend and would be staying over that weekend martin dropped kaylee off outside ipstock community college at around 6 pm that evening all seemed well and the following morning kaylee was in contact with her parents asking if she could stay at her friend's house for another night after that they heard nothing for someone that was glued to her mobile phone this unnerved her parents they reassured themselves that she was just busy with her friend and remained as calm as they could but on sunday the 15th what turned out to be kaylee's smashed and broken iphone was found on a street by a member of the public upon finding the phone the man called the last number in kaylee's call history this number belonged to one of kaylee's friends as soon as the phone call ended kaylee's friend phoned stephanie kaylee's mother and told her what had happened stephanie was shocked as the friend that had phoned her was the same friend kaylee had said she'd been staying with but this friend hadn't actually heard from her in days there was nothing on kaylee's social media and nobody had spoken to or seen her family knew they had to get the police involved and she was reported missing later that sunday detective chief superintendent david sandol of leicestershire police was leading the investigation and the case started to move very quickly i'm appealing for your help in trying to locate kaylee hayward a 15 year old girl who's currently missing this is a message for kaylee herself please contact your family or the police we just want to check that you are safe and well if anybody else has seen kaylee since friday the 13th of november then we're asking you to contact the police school girl kaylee haywood her disappearance is described as totally out of character the 15 year old left home in misham on friday evening she was dropped off a few miles away at ibstock community college where she'd been a former pupil kaylee spoke to her parents on the phone on saturday morning but there's been no contact from her since over 400 police officers were working on the searches and interviews katie's laptop was seized and her smashed but still working phone was taken in for an inspection too police began to check through all her messages and social media interactions and posts they asked about kaylee's state of mind when she left the family home on friday but by all accounts she seemed to be her usual and happy self nothing seemed amiss stephanie said she knew something bad had happened to her daughter and despite kaylee's father martin and the police doing their best to reassure her stephanie's gut was telling her that something was deeply wrong tragically just two days later this missing person's case would escalate as inquiries have been completed we have become increasingly concerned that she may have come to harm and today we have told the family that we are treating her disappearance as a murder inquiry kaylee told multiple stories about who she was going to visit that weekend but one of her friends gave some compelling new evidence kaylee had confided in this friend and told her that she had started talking to someone on facebook she said she was going to visit him on friday the 13th and asked if her friend would go with her however shortly after the plan was set in motion kaylee cancelled and said she was no longer going monday 16th two days since anyone had heard from kaylee to the public and media's shock the police announced that two people had been arrested on suspicion of kidnap after a property in ipstock had been searched over the next couple of days searches were carried out across the whole of ipstock and surrounding areas items of clothing confirmed to be caylees were found scattered over a 10 mile radius less than 24 hours after the two suspects had been arrested on suspicion of kidnap they were re-arrested this time on suspicion of the murder of kaylee haywood on the 18th of november at around 10 pm the police made a tragic discovery police searching for missing teenager kaylee heywood have found a body in a field in leicestershire in the uk the discovery was made at around 10 pm last night although formal identification is yet to take place what happens now well police will move forward with their investigation as you say they have two men in their 20s in custody they've now been arrested on suspicion of murder and a key line of inquiry will be kaylie's facebook page with friends and family both saying that she was speaking to a man online in the run-up to her disappearance it was confirmed that it was kaylee hayward's body she had been beaten to death her jaw and nose were both broken and her body was covered in injuries and self-defense wounds there were 42 breaks to her body 16 breaks to her face and six lacerations to the back of her head the postmortem examination also determined that she had been subjected to a horrifying sexual assault the suspect still in custody on suspicion of her murder were luke harlow and stephen biedman i am detective chief superintendent david sandal head of crime for leicestershire police a 28 year old man tonight has been charged with the murder of kaylee hayward stephen biedman of george avenue in ipstock has been charged with murder and a sexual offence luke harlow 27 of george avenue ipstock has been charged with sexual offences but how and why had this come to happen and unravel so quickly in the months leading up to kaylee's murder luke harlow had attempted to contact a string of underage girls the youngest being just 13 years old in some of the messages he spoke of wanting to kidnap the girls and keep them as slaves he said having sex with drunk and conscious girls is my favorite on the 31st of october 2015 less than a month before kaylee's body was found kaylee had received a friend request on facebook from luke harlow which she accepted as soon as she did she got a message from him hey how are you kaylee replied fine who are you within about 10 minutes they had exchanged phone numbers and went on to send over 2 600 messages back and forth over the course of two weeks kaylee and luke both initially lied about their ages kaylee made herself 19 and luke told her he was a year younger however kaylee quickly admitted that she was only 15 years old but this didn't deter luke harlow and he continued to shower her with attention and compliments over the next two weeks he said they needed to keep their relationship a secret and the messages got more graphic and explicit as the days went on luke asked kaylee if she would meet him at his house and they could watch movies and have food together luke quickly added more to this plan and he asked kaylee if she wanted to get drunk with him as he would be buying vodka for both of them they made a plan to meet on friday the 13th of november two weeks since they had started talking luke told kaylee to lie to her family and friends about where she was going and who she was meeting so that their relationship could remain a secret it is unknown exactly what happened on that friday night but kaylee's friend said she had woke into a message sent from kaylee's iphone just after 9 00 pm on friday night the message simply said help her friend texted her back and asked her what she'd meant she said she got a message straight back saying i meant hello her friend described the messages as unusual and said they didn't sound like her sometime on sunday morning kaylee asked her parents if she could stay over at her friend's house for one more night and they agreed believing she was safe and with someone they knew at some point during the saturday evening luke ran out of alcohol and went to his neighbors to get some more stephen biedman a landscape gardener lived just a stone's throw away from luke but he had no alcohol either both men went to the shops for more drinks and then both returned to luke's house there was no mention of stephen's name in any of the chat logs or messages between luke and kaylee so it is fairly certain she had no knowledge that stephen even existed the events that transpired in the following hours are nothing short of horrific in the late evening of saturday night neighbors heard banging and crashing sounds coming from inside the house kaylee having been plied with alcohol was sexually assaulted by harlow she fled the house without her shoes naked from the waist down being chased down by biedman a witness whose house overlooked the pathway near harlow's home looked outside his window that night and saw what he initially thought was a police officer attempting to restrain a young girl by pinning her to the ground he then assumed it was a young couple having some sort of domestic argument as he saw the pair get up and walk away holding hands he said he didn't see or hear anything from them again biedman marched kaylee to a car park where he subjected her to a horrifying sexual assault he then proceeded to walk with kaylee to a park area kaylee managed to break away and start running but biedman caught up with her and kaylee hit biedman in the face with a brick biedman then picked up some brick and beat her to death with it the wounds on biedman's face showed just how hard kaylee had fought until the end as soon as she was reported missing just a day later police quickly discovered the messages between luke and kaylee lucarlo's property was then searched police saw that the house was in chaos and some of kaylee's belongings were still there lucarlo was immediately brought in for questioning and placed under arrest for kidnap he admitted that kaylee had been at his house and said that he knew it was wrong because of her age yeah i obviously felt bad though why do you feel bad because he's too young for what for coming and staring my mind for starting out and what else one of the stuff what's the other stuff um did you become friends on facebook how did that come about um um i can't remember if i added her or she added me i'm not 100 sure but like i've got loads of people on it and i have a habit of accepting anyone who tries you know i mean regardless of whether the name rings about or anything i've got like 2 000 people in it but i'm not sure whether she added me or i did her but basically as soon as we were friends on here we just started talking just like no oh hey how are you and then like where are you from how long ago was that not long ago only about i'd say roughly a month right but he said he had woken up the next morning to find her missing and assume that she had gone home during the night he told police that he and his neighbor stephen biedman had gone to go and buy more alcohol and return to the house together harlow then claimed that he went to bed drunk leaving kaylee and biedman alone with this the hunt was on to find stephen biedmann he was found at a family member's house and was swiftly brought in for questioning and arrested on suspicion of kidnap we want to give you an opportunity if you know her and if you indeed know where she is to tell us right now at the beginning of the day you don't know where i'll tell you where she is i met her saturday night at eight hour seven eight o'clock and then about four hours police were immediately taken aback by the scratches covering biedman his face was a picture that instantly spoke a thousand words biedemann also denied knowing where kaley was and said he had left luke harlow and her together on the sofa in harlow's house both men said they had been drinking excessively and a lot of the night was either hazy or a total blackout however between the messages the witness statements and the marks on biedman's face it was clear for all to see that both harlow and biedman were the people responsible for what had happened to kaylee hayward police also later found images of child abuse on biedman's computers a series of interviews later stephen biedman admitted that he and kaylee had left the house together that night pretty much walking because so is she resisting you at this point or she's just walking no not when you're walking okay are you having to control her by holder or she walking independently by this point she's walking independently but up until that point and how are you managing to control that just pulling up and pulling around by your hand yeah all right okay are you using anything else is it just your presence is there any weapons you're not doing anything so what's happening i honestly can't remember i've been drinking we'd all been drinking see the issue is she's run out possibly with her phone without her trousers and there's a complete as you've described disarray in the flat the speakers are wrong it's obviously been a struggle well that's the implication but we're asking if you can you can explain what's happened i actually cannot explain that he asked investigators if he could talk with his appropriate adult he then finally told the police where kaley was when officers finally found kaley's body it was so damaged that the police could not allow stephanie and martin to see their daughter in that state instead they arranged for the pair to hold kaylee's hand but nothing more kayley's body was identified using dental records on the 20th of november 2015 shortly after being arrested leicestershire police announced that stephen biedmann had been charged with rape and murder and luke harlow had been charged with grooming and two counts of sexual activity with a child in january of 2016 kaylee's funeral was held bows were tied around trees in kaylee's favorite colour purple hundreds of mourners packed out the streets of misham as her coffin was carried on a white horse-drawn carriage outpourings of grief sadness and anger for what had happened was apparent in the whole community carlo and stephen biedemann eventually pled guilty to the crimes but the prosecution weren't satisfied with these pleas and put another charge of false imprisonment forward for both men both of them pled not guilty to this charge and so with the blessing of kaylee's family prosecutor miranda moore qc took it to trial in june 2016 the trial of stephen biedman and luke harlow began in nottingham crown court with judge mrs justice cox presiding prosecutor miranda moore argued that the way in which luke harlow's house was found by the police showed obvious signs of a struggle and that kaylee had been held there against her will things were smashed and broken items were knocked over and the house was in disarray she also said that luke harlow's claims of being asleep and having no idea what had happened to kaylee didn't add up either luke's glasses had been smashed presumably due to cayley fighting him off the stake that the house was in was further backed up by neighbours who said they had heard banging and crashing sounds and this likely would have woken harlow if he was asleep stephen biedman simply said that kaylee was free to leave the house at any time she wanted after a painful two-week trial for the family and friends of kaylee hayward the jury had reached their verdict both luke harlow and stephen biedmann were found guilty of false imprisonment alongside their previous guilty pleas lucarlo was sentenced to 12 years for meeting a child following sexual grooming two counts of sexual activity with a child attempting to meet two other 15 year old girls following sexual grooming and false imprisonment stephen biedman was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 35 years for the false imprisonment rape and murder of kaylee hayward justice cox said of the case the pain terror and anguish that would have been suffered by this young girl is truly horrifying to contemplate i am entirely satisfied on the evidence that she would have been acutely distressed and frightened it seems to me this is every parent's worst nightmare it is absolutely clear to me absolutely no blame can be attached to them for what happened in april 2021 it was announced that stephen biedmann had died in prison in a statement a spokesperson said the prison service cannot confirm the cause of death which is rightly a matter for the coroner following the tragic events that unfolded on november 13th kaylie's family set up kaylie's cause which would campaign to increase the minimum age for use of social media websites to 16. the family wants site operators to request some sort of legal document like a passport or driver's license to prove a child's age even if they have permission of their parents to open the account alongside this a short film entitled kaylee's love story was created by leicestershire police in affixious films it aims to highlight the dangers of speaking to strangers online and raises awareness for the cease campaign commitment to eradicate abuse and sexual exploitation with the permission of kaylie's family the film reenacted some of the events that transpired during the last 14 days of kaylee's life it went on to receive numerous awards and has proven to be leicestershire police's most successful campaign it has now been seen by thousands of school children across the country and millions more across the world online making sure that people become aware of kaylie's story i've left a link to this video alongside some other resources in the description box below we are determined that keela lives on and not just in our hearts we want to help protect children today and in the future when the police asked us last december if they could make this film about kaylee we didn't hesitate to give them our total support we wanted this bill made it served as a warning to children and parents of the very real dangers of online women on every child age 11 and upwards to see this film both in this country and abroad because this film is our beautiful daughter george's tragic legacy thank you you

Channel: Truly Criminal

Views: 571,712

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Id: UW10XqnJiHY

Length: 22min 10sec (1330 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021