Britain’s DEADLIEST Kids | Real Stories True Crime Marathon

[Music] [Music] they should be the most innocent members of society but children can be capable of the most sadistic premeditated and brutal murders they beat him and hit him with a bottle one of them stabbed j straight through the heart what drives these kids to kill men women friends family she was determined that her mother had to die even their teachers this was the first occasion upon which a teacher had been killed in class in the course of conducting a lesson could they be born evil it did have a weird dark sense of humour he was a little bit different to most of the other kids he was aggressive threatening and dangerous or are they victims of their environment there was a lot of gangs there was a lot of violence a lot of drug abusers with exceptional access to real police tapes the voices are talking to me you need to make a sacrifice so we're going to come and get you you need to do it and interviews with those closest to the victims and the perpetrators a red mist had simply descended [Music] we reveal what made them such savage killers [Music] in 2014 police were called to a secondary school in leeds where they were faced with a shocking scene there was absolutely nothing to explain why he became so determined to cause her death a much-loved teacher had been brutally slain in the middle of a lesson she got up and tried to make her escape but he followed and persisted with his homicidal attack the murder sent shockwaves to the country even in a world in which we've become accustomed sadly to knife crime and mcguire's death was particularly shocking more shocking still the killer was one of the teacher's own students fifteen-year-old william cornick a fact which was to make this case and his murder trial the first of its kind in the uk there was absolutely nothing about him that would say to you there is someone who is dangerous let alone someone who is liable to carry out a murder a seemingly model pupil cornick had no history of trouble at home or at school but what was it that made this 15 year old suddenly and so violently decide to murder his teacher you would think you were dealing with very likable young man yet beneath the surface there was a rage that was hidden corpus christi catholic college in leeds is much like any other secondary school corpus christi is a good catholic school all my family went there it's got a good reputation an ofsted report which showed that it was good in terms of its safety record and had a very positive ethos with pupil learning and generally very good behavior throughout the school but on the 28th of april 2014 the school was thrown into turmoil a teacher lay dying after being savagely attacked in class it was the only time in british history that a teacher had been stabbed in her own classroom [Music] the victim of this savage and surprise attack was much-loved spanish teacher anne mcguire miss mcguire was a kind teacher she was i loved doing my eyes what makes this as tragic a story as you can can imagine is that a maguire wasn't just just a teacher she was a stalwart of a whole school community anne had dedicated her entire career spanning over 40 years to corpus christi teaching generations of families from the local area she was said to be an immensely approachable warm-hearted teacher who had the pastoral needs of her students at heart the two things she devoted her life to was a teaching and her family she lived in leeds with her husband don and she had four children her two daughters who were natural children but she also adopted her sister's two sons i think back in the 1980s uh when unfortunately her sister died it would be a total shock to everyone how this hugely well-liked and caring teacher could be murdered and that one of her own pupils had struck the deadly blows the actual circumstances of the killing were savage with gcse exams imminent mrs mcguire had been leading a regular spanish revision lesson for a class of 15 and 16 year olds with the pupils split across two classrooms one of these pupils was 15 year old will cornick during the spanish lesson he got up from his seat where he'd been working took out his knife cornick then concealed the 21 centimeter blade in the sleeve of his shirt going out of one classroom entering the classroom in which she was teaching mrs mcguire who was focused on what she was teaching was caught completely off guard and was totally defenseless she was bent over a desk helping another student he approached her from behind and then stabbed her to the back and to the neck on seven occasions the savagery of this attack and the calmness on the build up to stabbing and mcguire shows his hatred for his teacher he was totally calm and he wanted to enact the most severe pain he could on anne mcguire this shows that this was a personal attack he wanted to cause pain and nothing was going to stop him the worst injuries were in her neck so the injuries were absolutely horrendous she got up realized she'd been stabbed and tried to make her escape but he followed and persisted with his homicidal attack somehow anne managed to escape to the safety of another room mrs gray was dying and she knew that she was in a really bad way cornick meanwhile discarded the knife and calmly returned to his desk where he was apprehended by other teaching staff wilcornick as as we know went sat back in his chair one of the teachers eventually took him down into the reception area to wait for the police news of what happened quickly spread around the school including the lesson zach capitano was in from my english class i could see the front yard of the school and an ambulance response car turned up and then a police car turned up and then the big police van with the armor turned up and i asked to teach what was happening the teacher said oh i don't know nothing and then one of our other teachers came through and said that our lesson will be extended because there'd been an incident with the teacher that said to my teacher i said i bet it's will corny she looked at me in shock as if to wonder how i knew while police detained koenig paramedics tried desperately to save anne mcguire's life maguire he was given emergency treatment taken to hospital but unfortunately i don't think there was very much they could do the injuries were absolutely terrible i think the first paramedic on the scene said that they were some of the worst stab injuries that they'd ever seen [Applause] but what was it that made this 15 year old suddenly and so violently decide to murder and could it have been prevented fifteen-year-old will cornick had become the first pupil in the uk to murder a teacher while in school when he viciously attacked his spanish teacher anne mcguire with a knife stabbing her seven times in the neck and back this was the first occasion upon which a teacher had been attacked and killed in school and indeed in class in the course of conducting a lesson [Music] following the murder attention immediately turned to why the teenager had carried out the heinous crime william cornick was born on the 26th of june 1998. according to his parents he was a loving and caring son who had a good relationship with his older brother and his younger step-brother his parents had separated when he was six years old but the split had been amicable will have been brought up in um the leeds area by a family that were a very close family very loving family and a very supportive family there had been a divorce the parents lived separately but they were both very responsible people there's nothing in the divorce of cornick's parents that raises alarm bells for me many children go through divorce of their parents and it only causes problems when there's hostility and aggression and associated problems we don't see that in this case cornick had never been in trouble with the police at school he was described as a good student with an excellent attendance record he was a young person who was bright intellectually able and in fact had undertaken gcses a year earlier than otherwise he would have done in his school report the year before the murder anne mcguire had even described him as a bright and conscientious student zac capitano was a classmate of cornicks i think we first met when we was maybe about 13 14 years old properly he was in my phone class for two years on the morning i used to play cards with will we play different games like blackjack and scabby queen things like that um before we went to class when we were sat in form i was in the same english and maths as well he seemed normal he went my type of person we had different tastes for things they just seemed like another normal kid in my class he was possibly a bit shy possibly reserved obviously a little awkward or strange in some ways um but in many ways not very different from hundreds of thousands of similar teenagers out there normally as a psychologist when looking at children who murder or commit serious violence i would expect to see telltale signs things such as an unstable environment there was absolutely nothing about him that would say to you there is someone who is dangerous let alone someone who is liable to carry out a murder [Music] so why did will cornick commit murder one thing that was evident was his dislike of anne maguire will always said that he didn't like miss mcguire but we always thought it was just the normal dislike for a teacher it was teachers that i didn't like teachers or other pupils didn't like but would have never dreamed of doing anything like what will did three months before the murder in a seemingly innocuous incident cornick had been reprimanded by mrs maguire there had been a difficult interaction between will and and mcguire in the february and this seemed to have arisen because he didn't do any homework and then was placed on detention which meant that he couldn't go on a bowling trip that was almost like public humiliation for him that how dirty how dare she tell me not to go which he showed that that's what he was feeling because he then turned up and went on the trip anyway so he completely defied what she said to him which suggests he was thinking you have no right to tell me that i won't go on that school trip that led to further repercussions and in fact what they called an internal exclusion which meant he had to work on his own in class that for a day because of that from the school's point of view it was the end of the matter but for cornick this appears to have reinforced his hatred of mrs mcguire there was something some really deep-seated anger going on inside him but nobody seems to know where that's come from and in the months that followed it appears that will's hatred turned deadly it came to a head on monday the 28th of april 2014. william cornick controlled this offence from start to finish at least over the weekend before he'd appeared to be entirely normal with his family did normal things was laughing and joking interacting but all the time he was planning what was to occur on the monday morning on the day of the killing there's no doubt that will kordic went to school intent upon an attack on anne maguire and indeed intent upon a murder he went to his mother's house on the morning armed himself with knives deliberately because he thought they were knives that would be effective in killing her hid them in his school bag and he also took with him a bottle of jack daniels which was in order to celebrate what he was about to achieve despite the fact he was planning to commit murder that day cornick didn't seem to be nervous in fact he appeared very relaxed the morning that it happened i asked will if he wanted to play cards and he said no and i said oh should we play cards tomorrow then and will said i won't be here tomorrow and i just thought he was going to pull us pull a sicky from school or just not come in and skive so we parted ways after falling class went on to the rest of his lessons and then i was in english and he was upstairs in spanish rather than trying to hide what he was planning to do cornick had also gone out of his way to make sure other classmates knew he intended to kill he even showed pupils on the monday morning the knives that he had in his possession telling them what he planned to do but that none of them believed him this isn't something that he had been stewing with himself and plotting internally he actually made this known to people he wanted to brag almost about what he was going to do so maybe then once he's told enough people he almost has to go through it once the lesson with mrs mcguire began cornick carried out his gruesome plan he winked at a fellow pupil after showing him the knife then made his way to the classroom or the part of the classroom where anne mcguire had been seated [Music] and then he began to stump her repeatedly to the back and the neck and other parts of her body hearing a commotion other staff went to help mrs maguire she ran from the classroom into the arms of another teacher susan francis whose bravery and decency stood in stark contrast to the behaviour of wilcornick she took our maguire who obviously was bleeding very badly into a work room and put a foot against the door to stop cornick getting into this other room she held a maguire in her arms spoke to her about her own children and maguire's children and told her that she was loved strikingly cornick remained calm throughout the attack showing no concern even as ann mcguire lay dying he then returned to where he'd been sat originally and said to the class so that they could all hear good times even when he was arrested by police cornick appeared unfazed and indifferent to the dreadful crime he just committed and by all accounts he waited calmly i think he asked the first police officer to arrive what their favorite movie was he was acting as astonishingly relaxed way there's an element of calmness that's chilling about this case the build-up the way that he was behaving that morning he was behaving no differently the way in which he actually went about killing anne mcguire and the calmness afterwards even to the point when the police arrive tells me that he is completely emotionally disconnected to what he's done in the immediate aftermath there was disbelief that something so horrific could happen we just sat and was just all together waiting for news or waiting to find out what happened the headmaster contacted anne mcguire's husband don he received a telephone call from the school's headmaster informing him that there'd been an incident with a knife and and had been taken to hospital he believed that this was a kind of superficial incident obviously a worry but there was no cause for enormous alarm only to arrive at the hospital and find that his wife's lifeless body was being desperately trying to be revived by a team of paramedics i don't think his brain could actually process what had happened he simply hadn't been prepared we didn't know the extent of what had happened because all of the pupils that was in the classroom with her was taken down to the library and kept in the library to talk to the police we only realized how serious it was closer to the end of the day when we found out that she'd actually died at the hospital anne mcguire's death left the school and the local community devastated [Music] the effect on the schooling community is kind of obvious in some ways i mean the the shocks incredible no no school in in britain's really had to have to uh cope with anything like that before i mean there have been teachers unfortunately who have died but not at the hands of a pupil in a classroom in the days after the school said that they were staying open and the pupils were welcome to come and grieve together the head teacher did an amazing job of looking after us all everyone was writing out like prayers on pieces of paper for miss mcguire and hanging them on the trees in the chapel and things like that it would be really difficult for a school to move on from such a horrific incident you'd have the trauma of the pupils the trauma of the teachers the sadness and the grief that they go through [Music] what would make the murder even harder to deal with though was the discovery william kornick had been telling people for months he was going to kill anne mcguire he exchanged facebook messages with some of his friends in which he'd spoken of his intention to kill her vitriolic messages with incredible violence in them i'm not looking forward to tomorrow we have maguire and i want her to perish will cornick was just 15 years old when he savagely stabbed a teacher to death in the middle of a lesson in front of his classmates she was stabbed seven times in a really brutal fashion showing no remorse he seemed to revel in what he had done he then returned to where he'd been sat originally and said to the class good times with cornick in police custody an investigation now began to try and work out why a bright pupil with no apparent issues could carry out such a brutal act one of the things that the police did was to seize any electronic devices that will koenig was the owner or user of that included his mobile telephone and when the police interrogated what was on his mobile telephone they discovered that there were many photographs of knives when he starts to become obsessed with knives this is the indicator that something darker is going on in william cornick's mind many children are withdrawn as teenagers many teenagers hate their teacher but not many teenagers become obsessively interested in knives and violence investigators would also make another shocking discovery when they looked into cornick's social media accounts he'd not just been posting about how much he hated anne mcguire he'd been publicly telling everyone he wanted to murder her so in the build up to the to the to the killing william kornick uh exchanged a number of social media messages with friends of his at school in which he expressed his absolute hatred for a maguire and also expressed his intention to do her serious harm and indeed to kill her two months before he killed anna maguire he sent a message on facebook which said of her the only one absolute effing [ __ ] that deserves more than death more than pain torture more than anything we can understand another message he said as long as she's alive i'll be depressed sad and angry so there's only one thing to do perhaps one of the most chilling messages he sent was simply i'm not looking forward to tomorrow we have maguire and i want her to perish many teenagers hate particular teachers and that can become quite consuming but what we see in this case is an absolute daily all-consuming hatred of anne mcguire he talks about it in facebook he talks about it in text messages it's part of his daily conversation with his peers at school he hates anne mcguire to do the degree that he says it's either her or him cornick confessed he'd actually made the decision to turn his twisted fantasy into reality and commit murder three years earlier when he was just twelve shockingly it would also be discovered that he'd talked about carrying out more than one killing william konig killed anne mcguire but that wasn't his only intention um he'd said that he'd planned a triple homicide and he'd said that to other pupils he'd also said it to the psychiatrists involved in this case he wanted to get the ahead of year and one of the science teachers was pregnant and said that he wanted to get the pregnant teacher to kill two in one cornick has never revealed whether his plan to go on a killing spree was serious and if it was why he didn't carry it out but what wasn't in doubt was that he had killed anne maguire prosecutors now needed to decide if they could charge him with murder once the police had concluded their investigation the focus of the work both of the defense and of the prosecution shifted onto another issue we needed to know what was will kornick's state of mind what was it that had caused him to act as he did and was he suffering from a mental illness an abnormality of mind that meant that he had a partial defense available to him following his arrest cornick was held in a secure hospital where he was assessed by a team of doctors led by eminent psychiatrist dr john kent i saw him for probably seven or eight hours in total over three or four interviews he sat there very calmly there was nothing outstanding about the way in which he said things the outstanding thing was the content of what he said which was brutal and quite shocking he said the following i wasn't in shock i was happy i had a sense of pride i still do i know it's uncivilized but i know it's incredibly instinctual and human past generations of life killing is rooted survival it's kill or be killed i didn't have a choice it was kill her or suicide why he's become so fixated in this regard has been a puzzle to me as a psychiatrist and i think to the world looking in on this case what was apparent throughout cornick's assessment was a complete disregard for the consequences to others of his actions i also asked him how the children who'd witnessed this offence must be feeling and how the family of uh and mcguire must be feeling and generally he made some very derogatory comments saying things like i couldn't give a [ __ ] but one comment that was very notable he said i know the victim's family will be upset but i don't care in my eyes everything i've done is fine and dandy dr ken concluded that will cornick was an extremely dangerous offender because of exactly how he presented you would think you were dealing with a very calm very ordinary very likable young man yet beneath the surface there was a rage that was hidden and could not be seen but which could manifest itself in acts of extreme violence [Music] what caused this rage wasn't clear but konig did discuss in detail a couple of potential factors if you were trying to find a trigger or something in his life that had changed him and made him the way he was the only thing obviously that you could see was that when he'd been um a couple of years younger he had very suddenly uh collapsed in a diabetic coma um and was diagnosed as an insulin dependent diabetic one of his biggest ambitions early on was to join the army well that then became impossible because of the nature of his diabetes having type 1 diabetes does not predispose you to any kind of violence what can happen though is when anybody is given any kind of diagnosis that has a significant change in their life it can cause associated low mood depression anxiety uncertainty about the future particularly if it changes their aspirations of what they want to do it can have a big impact on somebody cornick's friends had noticed a change in him after the diagnosis including a new dark sense of humor i used to sell luca's eggs and chocolate bars in school and sometimes if i asked him if he wanted one he was a diabetic and he said oh yeah i'll have a luca's head i like the taste of death he used to take his artificial pancreas out of his pocket which is like a machine that acted as his pancreas and put it in his mouth and say my party trick is i can put my pancreas in my mouth his diabetes though would be discounted by doctors as a factor that could be used in his defense the diabetes itself doesn't seem to have played any part in this offense because it's too calculated it's too well thought through so there's nothing spontaneous or delirious about it if you like and a suggestion by cornick that he'd been hearing voices was also ruled out after damning evidence was revealed in december 2013 in fact it was christmas eve wilcornick posted to a friend that he had thought of brutally killing mrs mcguire and that he would then say that he heard voices in order to get eventually what he described as comfy walls and in fact he later did assert that he was hearing voices i thought that he was possibly or probably using those expressions as a way of trying to manage the court process in my opinion william cornick is testing the water for possible defenses to get off murder for example the psychosis comment and referring to his diabetes but actually he might be bright but he's not bright enough to understand the complexities of the legal system there were clearly disturbing attributes to william cornick's character but ultimately he was assessed to be of sound mind when he killed anne mcguire once we've seen the expert report prepared by the prosecution what was absolutely clear from those reports was that nobody was saying that will was suffering from any sort of psychotic episode or other form of psychotic illness at the time of the killing uh in in other words we could rule out uh anything like schizophrenia or any other type of um psychotic episode what they were all sure about was that he'd intended to kill anne maguire and that he remained extremely dangerous left with no credible defense cornick was advised that his only option was to plead guilty to the murder of anne mcguire when a person enters a guilty plea there is no trial and no evidence is called what happens is that there is a hearing at which the prosecution outlines to the judge the factual circumstances of the killing on the 3rd of november 2014 william kornick was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 20 years as he was sentenced cornick showed little emotion i didn't ever think that will cornick seem particularly concerned about the situation he was in his parents were incredibly concerned for him but i never had the impression that wilcornick himself was very frightened of the consequences if you like he continued to view this as being a necessary evil by which i mean that it had been necessary for him to kill anne mcguire and therefore it was necessary for him to serve a long sentence in custody if that's what it needed to get the job done cornick may have been convicted but for anne's family lots of unanswered questions remained why i was unkilled is the question that the family are still asking today fifteen-year-old william cornick brutally stabbed his spanish teacher anne mcguire to death in a classroom full of fellow pupils he pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 20 years in jail but for anne's family unanswered questions about her murder still remained [Music] i think the particularly fascinating element of this terrible story for me is the fact that the family feel that while somebody is serving a prison sentence for anne's murder they don't feel that justice has been done and that's because they don't fill the questions as to why a boy can walk up to a teacher in a classroom and stab her with a knife seven times has satisfactorily been answered in the aftermath much have been made of whether anne mcguire's murder could have been prevented given there were opportunities to stop it will connie went into school with knives in his bag including a large kitchen knife which used to kill mrs mcguire and a bottle of whiskey he told around about 10 children on in the first lesson and during the morning what he was going to do in quite explicit terms none of those children raised the alarm but don mcguire has always argued that somebody at some point should have asked those children why there were two reasons given for this one was that um they thought this was part of his persona that he was joking that he was being demonstrative showing off because he was used to making comments about death and people should die when they upset him but one other thing that was very notable was that he made threats to those when they were alarmed by what he'd shown them he showed at least one of the boys the knife itself and told him how sharp it was and i think that boy was quite scared and he basically told some of the children that um if they told members of staff then what he did would be worse a lot of people said to the pupils that was in the class or why didn't you stop him or why didn't you jump up and attack him but i don't think in that moment anyone knew how to react it was an absolute shock to everyone i think it was just so out of the ordinary and no one expected it that there was nothing that could have been done to stop it or to prevent it questions were also asked about why nobody reported the deadly threats cornick was making on social media i think what happened is that none of his friends reported what he was saying on facebook or by direct message because they just assumed it was part of his dark humor they didn't take him seriously pupils or young people use social media sites to let off steam and make very disturbing thoughts available to others on a relatively frequent basis but then as the threats became more specific where he actually said he was going to kill her people almost assumed that somebody else would do something about it we call that bystander apathy where we don't alert somebody because we make an assumption that somebody else will alert somebody [Music] for those involved in the case it's clear there was no way of preventing this awful tragedy all i can say is that on the basis of the the evidence that i saw which was substantial there was nothing to indicate that any person without the benefit of hindsight at any point prior to the murder would have been able to predict quite what an extraordinarily awful thing william cornick was going to do [Music] she was supposed to go to watch a dark dance and that's what made it worse because of what will did on that day but i believe that if she hadn't been in that day he would have only done it the next day or the day after following a campaign by anne maguire's family there was an official review that looked into what happened that review has concluded that the school were not to blame the pupils were not to blame and that there were no obvious signs no obvious risk indicators that this level of violence was going to be used if somebody had been making threats to kill a teacher who had a history of offending had came from a bad family had made lots of threats to lots of different students and was in trouble with the police already maybe they would have dealt with that differently maybe it was the fact that they were almost biased in their decision-making because he didn't fit the profile of somebody who would do something so violent probably the most important person interviewed by the review was william cornick himself will's explanation for why he did what he did was that a red mist had simply descended and he was powerless to resist it but the interviewer challenged him and said actually you weren't in that classroom then you weren't getting angry you weren't in front of anne mcguire so he then kind of changed slightly and said that what he actually wanted was to be stopped and the interviewer again challenged him that the evidence didn't say that he wasn't trying to stop he went along with his plan to murder and mcguire so it's interesting for me that at the point and this is after the case he has an opportunity there to show some regret and say i'm sorry so he's still showing that lack of remorse [Applause] the biggest question that still remains unclear is why william kornick has such an irrational hatred of anne mcguire which led him to viciously attack and kill her i'm not sure that we've entirely understood why he's become so angry and homicidal about this particular teacher we've got some of the background factors but i don't think i've really or any of us have really understood this as yet as a psychologist i can try and understand what led a young person to take a life but the actual physical act of carrying a knife walking across a classroom in front of a whole class of students and plunging a knife into another person taking the life of another person that is something that everybody struggles to understand and it's even harder to understand that when it's a child the only person that will be able to give those answers and hopefully one day he will is will cornick perhaps the biggest clue to explain the murder is in the assessment of the doctors who saw cornick afterwards i have assessed hundreds of people who've committed homicide and occasionally there are people who are as callous but i've never come across in someone as young as this i had no doubt that will understood exactly what he had done he knew that he had killed anne mcguire he had no difficulty with comprehension but his difficulty was with feeling any empathy about the fact that he killed her and by that i mean that he couldn't understand or process why anybody would be upset about the fact that she was dead that measure of control and knowledge of the impact on others i think says something about his personality it says something about the excitement that he was going to get from the offence but also something about his callousness and lack of empathy and in fact he's boastful about this and again to me that suggests something very abnormal about the way his personality has developed and i thought these were traits is will cornick a psychopath well he's too young is his behavior showing traits of psychopathy yes psychopaths can't be diagnosed until they're over 18. but given the psychopathic traits he's already shown it's likely william cornick will spend significantly longer in jail than the minimum 20 years he was sentenced to the question of whether wilcornick will ever be rehabilitated so that he can be released remains to be to be seen but there are some challenges for him ahead not only does he have a personality disorder or adjustment disorder with psychopathic traits but he was also adept at convincing people in authority that he presented no harm and that was one of the features that resulted in john kent concluding that he was a particularly dangerous individual despite william kornick's horrific crime in the aftermath there was one enduring feature the resilience and spirit shown by pupils of corpus christi college i don't think will could have done anything worse he did it right we did it two months before his exams it was just a mess after that the whole top floor was closed off from lessons where to have lessons in the cafeteria and the main school hall and then we all had to go and sit as exams but we did get the best results today everyone said either we did it for miss mcguire or miss mcgraw was watching over us we all knew what a hard task we had and i think that's why everyone put the extra effort in because we'd miss we had missed out on a lot of lessons and things like that so i think everyone put extra effort in with the revision and that's why we did so well they should be the most innocent members of society but children can be capable of the most sadistic premeditated and brutal murders they beat him and hit him with a bottle one of them stabbed j straight through the heart what drives these kids to kill men women friends family she was determined that her mother had to die even their teachers this was the first occasion upon which a teacher had been killed in class in the course of conducting a lesson could they be born evil it did have a weird dark sense of humor it was a little bit different to most of the other kids he was aggressive threatening and dangerous or are they victims of their environment there was a lot of gangs there was a lot of violence a lot of drug abusers with exceptional access to real police tapes your voices have talked with me you need to make a sacrifice so we're going to come and get you you need to do it and interviews with those closest to the victims and the perpetrators a red mist had simply descended we reveal what made them such savage killers [Music] [Applause] in march 2014 the body of a man was found stabbed to death in colchester's castle park the day jim died is the day i died three months later a university student was brutally murdered in broad daylight he came from behind and launched his knife attack on her the serial killer on the loose the town was gripped by fear the whole community were just scared to go out after a 14-month manhunt the killer was finally caught while he laying weight for his third victim she said that she saw pure evil in his eyes shockingly the person responsible was a 15 year old schoolboy james fairweather he was a deeply disturbed young man but what turned a boy once described as well-behaved kind and sensitive into a murder-obsessed teen now dubbed britain's youngest serial killer [Music] we were alerted to a major incident and there was a real sense at this point that something something bad's happened in the early hours of the 29th of march 2014 colchester in essex was rocked by a shocking murder brutal and tragic murder the family have been left devastated james was murdered he was attacked friendly by james fairweather to the point there were more than 100 stab wounds some of these stab wounds were really vicious including stab wounds to the eye and that was one of the real standout details [Music] the victim of this deadly attack was james atfield a 33 year old father of four known as jim by his friends and family smashing smile cheeky grin just all around funny guy really jim had suffered a brain injury in a traffic accident affecting his mobility and reasoning several years on he'd made huge progress in his recovery and was just getting his life back to normal he always had a little joke on hand and things like that he loved his karaoke he used to get on his chopper bike and he used to race around with me on the back and stick his bum out so i'd fall off so yeah it was good childhood [Music] [Applause] i was due to meet jim that night but he cancelled i don't know why i remember actually messaging him and saying how upset i was i wish i hadn't now because i'll see what happened to him that night i could never take those words back [Music] jim atfield had been on a night out in colchester as he often did he went for a few drinks by himself and he was making his way home james decided to walk through castle park that night which was a short cut stopped halfway to have a cigarette or she must have dozed off at some point during the evening and then that's when he got attacked this vulnerable slumbering person was then set upon for no apparent reason and with no motive and and violently killed [Applause] jim was actually still alive when he was found he must have laid there in pain and just bleeding to death it's the sort of thing you really don't want to imagine let alone live what was particularly scary was that james atfield was such a vulnerable man and who had no beef with anyone [Music] we had extensively covered the initial murder we'd run a lot of appeals including with jim's family and at the time the coverage was starting to fall away a little bit so we got a call to say there's a lot of place activity in this particular area along the sally brook trail just just outside the greenstead estate we had been told that every entrance in the salary brook trail had been blocked off by police cars just three months after jim atfield's death a second frenzied knife attack struck colchester the victim was thirty-one-year-old student naheed al-muniyah from saudi arabia nahid al-munir was on her way to the university of essex campus where she was studying an english course and she was stabbed on the salary brook trail naheed had come to the uk to study english as part of her phd she'd moved over with her brother and had only been in the country for six months she always walked in from the university with her brother and people were wondering why on a particular day actually walk by herself the morning her brother hadn't been there to chaperone her to university was the same morning the killer had been lying in wait for his next opportunity she had done that walk many times it's a lovely walk which is a local nature reserve he came from behind and launched his knife attack on her he took off her sunglasses in order to stab her in the eye and during the course of the short but brutal assault he stabbed her more than 30 times the family had been left devastated by the terrible murder of naheed naheed was a remarkable and gentle person who was loved for her kind and caring nature in the first murder what we see is the use of extreme violence there's 102 knife wounds and many of them are what we call knife tip wounds they're not going to kill the victim they're purely done to cause pain in the second murder what we see is a reduction in the number of knife wounds but he still keeps the knight tick wounds so it's almost like he's honing his technique but the most striking similarity in these two murders is the stabbing of the eye in the first murder we see the victim has been stabbed in the eye but we don't know at that point was it planned so it's really chilling that then we see the second murder where the killer actually planned to stab the victim in the eye and we know this because he removed her sunglasses in order to stab her in the eye what we're starting to see here is a merging mo it's almost like the killer wants that to be the feature of his murders the police were careful not to release the stabbing of the eyes linking the murders yet with two brutal stabbings that happened just months apart fear gripped the community and people had begun to make their own connections many people were looking at the two attacks as looking very similar and ultimately related so the talk in the time and of course the talk through the papers was that there could be a serial killer on the list [Music] the whole community were just scared to go out because nobody knew who the person was that done it i was walking around in colchester with my sister one evening and i remember saying to her we could have walked past the person that has done this i was born and bred in essex i've lived here all of my life so i myself as well as covering the murder as a journalist was also part of the community and felt that that fear and concern about walking around alone late at night there would have already been intense fear because a man had been murdered in a what is usually a quiet town but something that the public do in a case like that it's it's called just world belief it's that they think well it won't happen to me that was night time he was drunk he was in a vulnerable position i'm okay so then when a second murder occurs that happens in the morning when a young girl is just simply walking to university that then changes things that means it could be me everybody is potentially a victim and that would have really heightened fear no one expected the killer would turn out to be a 15 year old schoolboy after the murders of jim atfield and naheed al-muniyah in early 2014 colchester was on high alert you could not mistake that there had been something bad happening in the time the police presence was almost overbearing at times and the police were working tirelessly to catch the killer you had more police than anyone in the town's ever seen on the streets they were patrolling day and night and at the time i remember thinking that's actually what people needed because they were scared but frustratingly for the police the killer had covered their tracks well the community were of course extremely alarmed that a person who had killed had not been arrested and the result was that police from other areas were brought into the area i was drafted into colchester to work in the additional manpower requirements the other problem for the police was that we didn't have an awful lot to go on we had no sightings no witnesses no phone call had come in to say oh you know there's a fight going on there's a row or there's someone acting strangely we've taken over 1300 statements spoken to over 950 witnesses there are now four and a half thousand exhibits uh in the system and we continue to work our way through over 150 000 hours of cctv all the police could do is keep appealing to the public in the hope that someone would come forward with information after nahid almanee was killed we were given handouts of specific items of clothing that the police had interest in i'm keen to identify and speak to a man who was described as being on the salary brook trail what's distinctive about this man is the jacket he's described as wearing at the time he described us as an italian designer jacket so we ran that extensively [Music] the police had to commit quite a lot of resources in a bid to catch the killer the total policing operation cost in the order of 2.6 million pounds yet despite the extensive police effort a year on from the murders police were no closer to catching the killer essex police control room hi i wonder if you can help me i'm actually on the salary brook um the long bridge end of the trail where that murder was last year but then in may 2015 the police got lucky and there's a very suspicious guy down there he's just standing there he's got a jacket that looks very similar to what was all over the paper and everything a call came in from a local dog walker who'd spotted someone acting suspiciously he was hiding under a bridge wearing gloves one of the things that really stood out for her was the italian jacket she said she'd seen that all over the media that really stuck in her mind the suspicious individual was james fairweather a police officer who was unarmed came to investigate and the dog walker stayed at the scene to direct the officer to the right place and also won others walking along the path not to approach that area where she'd spotted james she said that she saw pure evil in his eyes i think for her she found it a very troubling experience to realize how close she had been to a double murderer who potentially was looking to kill again she could have been his next victim so the police attended and arrested him initially on suspicion of possession of a bladed article in an unbelievable stroke of luck the police had finally found the killer only to be stunned that he was a 15 year old schoolboy i made the assumption it was done by a male adult because of the nature and ferocity and violence of the attacks statistically speaking this type of crime would be carried out by an adult so when we find out that it's actually been carried out by a 15 year old school boy that makes this shocking he was taken to the police station and interviewed initially about having the knife but he spontaneously confessed to the two murders i saw him it was where it was laying on the grass just fastest sleeps where he was drunk he described in detail what what he had done went up to him stood over like that i stabbed him first there he admitted to um both killings i've done it a few times while i was doing that my voices were laughing and laughing laughing and nailed her louder and said at that stage that voiced had told him to kill some voices were talking to me you need to make a sacrifice so we're going to come and get you you need to do it [Music] who was james fairweather why did this boy described at primary school as a quiet and well-behaved child sensitive to the needs of others go on to commit such violent crimes in his teens james as a young teenager was a was a good boy he attended school he had good attendance we have new school newsletters praising him for that he had an interest in darts and other hobbies and interests and nothing about him particularly stood out certainly to his peers and those that knew him james fairweather requented a darts club in colchester with his dad his fellow players they all spoke highly of him i remember one man saying clearly that he was like a dormouse he hardly made a sound and he was a perfectly reasonable nice boy he looked like it looked like a son who respected his father and what i see here by looking at this person's early childhood is there's no telltale signs there's no evidence of trauma or neglect he's part of a loving family he's got a close relationship with his parents a close relationship with his grandmother he's described as a kind quiet and sensitive to the needs of others boy however when i start to go through his timeline we start to see those early teens and there's now some indicators of a more troubling boy he was bullied quite intensely at school due to his ears he had nicknames of dumbo and fa cup it's absolutely certain that the bullying had an impact on him the impact of bullying on any young person is really quite devastating and it has long term damaging effects on them it has effects on their personality it has effects on their mental health that they feel low in mood it has effect on their confidence as they develop into an adult so it's it's devastating what can happen to a child so this definitely would have been part of the picture that helps us understand how he changes in those early teens age 13 james also had to deal with the sudden loss of his grandmother who'd been a key influence in his life any one of the factors that we can see in his life doesn't explain his behavior in any way because many young people mourn a close relative a grandparent and don't turn into a violent murderer and his grandmother was a huge protective factor for him so the loss of head would have been hugely significant for him certainly after the death of his grandmother he seemed to become a bit more violent and engaging negatively with his peers at school [Music] the big turning point came when james had his first violent confrontation with a knife he was on a local estate and he was targeted and threatened by a group of youth with a knife and all those feelings of resentment would have potentially built up again so now we've got this young man who's been bullied feels vulnerable feels different to everybody else has been isolated and he's probably feeling angry and then we see him then using a knife that for me is quite big trigger i spent a lot of time with james fairweather's former classmates one of the things that came up was his dissent i suppose into being for one for a better phrase a bad boy in school he had told teachers that when he grew up he wanted to be a murderer he had told everyone in the school that he was going to bring in life into school and carry out a massacre he was fantasizing about killing in a school he wanted to kill his head teacher he wanted people to know that he was capable of killing a year after james was mugged at knifepoint his burgeoning obsession with violence began to escalate further james fairweather had actually committed a knifepoint robbery at the parade of shops close to his home stealing cigars and a number of other small low value items this was the start of the change of his personality he then has a knife in his hand that he gains control in that robbery of the local shop and i think that was the first time that james fairweather had a sense of feeling empowered but it made him feel good and i think that is the point that he realized the sense of power that violet would give him it's only three months after robbing the shop with a knife that he commits his first murder so we see an escalation in violence james was not given a custodial sentence this is often the case for it for a youth committing a first offense as a result of robbing his local shop james fairweather had been known to police throughout the whole investigation and soon after naheed's murder police had even spoken to him as part of routine questioning of anyone previously involved in a knife offense his mother actually gave him an alibi having spoken to him on the phone earlier she believed he'd been at home the whole time i don't think for a moment having met her and spoken to her that she was deliberately lying to cover up for james i think she genuinely believed that satisfied with fairweather's alibi the police ruled him out of their inquiries and he'd remained at large for another year while colchester had stayed overwhelmed by fear [Music] a year after he committed two violent murders james fairweather was arrested as he hunted for his next victim he was brought in by police and spontaneously confessed to the killings of jim atfield and naheed al-muniyer then he goes he goes you're the one he's the one he's the one so i went up to him can i stand up what was quite remarkable was how emotionless and flat james was in describing what he had done watching a 15 year old describe what he did and how he used the knife was chilling there's almost a complete detachment from what he's saying and from what he's describing some of the voices were talking to me you need to make a sacrifice are we going to come and get you you need to do it and i saw him that was where it was laying on the grass his fastest sleeps where he was drunk then he goes he goes the other one he's the one he's the one it's almost like he's reveling in it but without the emotion can i stand up yes went up to him stood over like that i stabbed him first there i've done it a few times and what that says to me is that he was really dangerous and if he wasn't arrested he would have absolutely gone on to kill again while i was doing that my voices were laughing and laughing and laughing nailed her louder [Music] on the same day fairweather confessed police charged him with both murders and news spread that these horrific killings had been committed by a 15 year old child i was angry i was confused because i was like how could somebody that age even dream of doing anything like that to another human being the atmosphere around the time at the time of the arrest was still one of disbelief because we all knew at this point how brittle and how violent the murders had been and there was really no understanding this could have been the work of a boy aged 15 or 16. with fair weather in custody the investigation turned its attention to why a teenager had committed such shocking crimes when police searched the home of james fairweather they discovered a lot of violent pornographic movies and very violent content films as well and also a number of knives were discovered in his home that seemed to belong to james they quickly built a picture of a young man obsessed with violence and murder he had a dangerous interest in serial killers specifically peter sutcliffe he played violent computer games he had spent considerable time researching extreme violence and indeed pornography on the internet and he had unfettered access to the internet when his parents were both at work james spent an awful amount of time alone but he also spent a lot of time unsupervised at home he's watching material that no child should be watching watching violent pornography or watching violent films or playing violent video games doesn't turn a non-violent individual into becoming a violent murderer however what it does is it desensitizes them to violence particularly in the case of james fairweather where we know he had an obsession with violent pornography abs an obsession with serial killers there's a reason why they're given that certificate of 18. there's a reason why we don't allow children to watch that kind of material because it will have a direct impact on their developing brain [Music] during my career i've covered a few different murder trials unfortunately comes with with the job but this murder trial really stood out the tension in the courtroom was palpable eleven months after his arrest fair weather would stand trial at guilford crown court close to where he was being held in a psychiatric unit i attended court every day and it was difficult but i felt i had to do it for jim it was like heartbreaking sitting there listening to all the evidence we walked out every evening with tears rolling down our faces in disbelief in the trial that spanned two weeks fair weather's defense hinged on his mental state at the time of the killings [Music] because james fairweather had admitted to the killings the prosecution had a relatively easy task of laying out the case and they had to set out that james felt weather was capable and was fully aware of what he was doing when he committed those two murders in contrast the defense were not there to say that james fairweather was not responsible for these killings in a practical physical sense but actually his mental state at the time meant that he couldn't be held accountable for his actions i think james always maintained and maintained at trial that voices in his head were telling him to sacrifice people which is how he phrased it and so we were able to focus the defense on the soul issue of diminished responsibility if a person's responsibility is diminished which would reduce a murder charge from murder to manslaughter to suggest james couldn't be held fully responsible for murder the defense built their case around the voices he'd claimed to hear and look to james's autism only diagnosed shortly before the trial to explain his obsessive nature and detached manner i stabbed him first there i've done it a few times he was a very troubled young man he was only 15 years of age at the time he was very suspicious of everybody that he came into contact with he was convinced that the prison authorities the warders of the prison were spying on him he he was very difficult to engage with he found it very difficult to answer straightforward questions he you couldn't make eye cont contact with him at all he'd stare at the table and just look down and the minute i met james it struck me that he may very well be autistic and that only was diagnosed once the psychiatrists who were caring for james during his time on remand started to carry out their tests on him a symptom of autism is a fixation an obsession on something but mostly that is on benign things obsessions with things that don't harm what we see in this case is that james fairweather was fixated on violent pornography serial killers murder and that obsession grew to the point that on a daily basis he was fascinating about committing murder the fact that somebody suffers from autism of course is no defense to any criminal charge least of all murder it's a factor which the psychiatrist took into account in determining whether he was suffering from diminished responsibility or not everyone at the trial accepted fairweather's recent diagnosis of autism but ultimately concluded that it wasn't a defense for murder now the focus was on fair weather's alleged psychosis that manifested itself in the voices that told him to kill three psychiatrists said that they believed that james fairweather did have psychosis psychosis is abnormalities in functioning in certain domains for example delusions and hallucinations so hearing voices is the most common form of hallucination voices were talking to me you need to make a sacrifice so we're going to come and get you you need to do it it's a very separate entity to their own internal voice it's them hearing another person's voice it's often commanding them to do something then he goes he goes you're the one he's the one he's the one do it [Music] we called three psychiatrists on behalf of the defense all three have diagnosed james as suffering from psychosis they accepted the genuineness of his claim that he was hearing voices in his head however the prosecution's psychiatrist dr joseph took a very different view the psychiatrist for the prosecution believed that james fairweather was lying about the voices and some of the reasons put forward for that is that the nature in which he planned the murders he went along wearing gloves to cover up his fingerprints knowing that his fingerprints were on the dna database he threw away the knife it seemed to be that on the one hand we've got this description of a very distressed young man who's hearing voices commanding him to do something but on the other hand we have this very lucid organized offender who is able to cover their tracks after the murder and those two don't sit together is he psychotic or is he this manipulative controlled individual dr jc evidence is quite powerful and undermines the account he was giving of psychosis and the fact that he had carried out the stabbings whilst he was a rage and then suddenly came to was fairweather falsely betraying himself to the jury as a psychotic teenager so he could get away with murder colchester had been gripped by fear for 14 months the whole community were just scared to go out the killer was searching for his third victim when finally the manhunt came to an end she saw pure evil in his eyes resulting in the shocking revelation that the murderer was 15 year old james fairweather i stabbed him first there fairweather confessed claiming voices made him do it a claim his defense lawyers took to trial because the voices are talking to me you need to make a sacrifice so we're going to come and get you you need to do it the jury had to decide was it the result of psychosis driving him to kill or was this cold-blooded murder could fairweather have faked hearing voices was this all part of his plan to get a lesser sentence during the course of the trial we discovered that he'd been searching up things on his phone and on the internet around serial killers but also defenses they'd used in court to try and reduce their sentence or get off their crimes and the prosecution pointed to this as a suggestion that james was making up his mental difficulties in order to avoid a conviction for murder there was no evidence that james had researched symptoms of psychosis for example all of his research was in relation to serial killers and what they had done rather than any medical defenses that they had advanced at trial and so it meant essentially that a 15 year old boy with no medical experience had successfully deceived three experienced psychiatrists what is really difficult to determine in this case is whether james fairweather was trying to get off with manslaughter and therefore faking his psychotic symptoms or was he really in a psychotic episode when he committed those murders it's interesting for me that when he was interviewed as part of his pre-sentence report for the robbery on the shop with the knife he made no mention at that point of the voices even though he later said that the voices started before then he also seemed to be very lucid at the time of the murders and also there's the other aspects of his personality that seemed to be quite disturbed my closing speaks to the jury i described it as a perfect storm of his autism his psychosis and the lack of supervision that he was getting at home i don't believe that james fairweather was here in voices night i believe he was saying that to get off from man's law tier the day jim died is the day i died why has this happened to jim you know what has jim ever done to deserve something like that he was just such a lovely guy and we always called him gentle gym because he was just wouldn't hurt anybody with the defense claiming fairweather's mental state meant he couldn't be held responsible for the killings and the prosecution painting a picture of a cold-hearted murderer in control of his actions it came down to whether the jury believed fairweather's claim of psychosis ultimately the jury did not buy his account of these hallucinations and on the 22nd of april 2016 three months before his 18th birthday the jury were unanimous in finding james fairweather guilty of double murder james fairweather was sentenced by a high court judge to 27 years in prison and colchester breathed a sigh of relief an order was made for him to be transferred to a secure unit and he will remain there until that treatment comes to an end until he is considered to be fit and from there he will be transferred to spend the rest of the time of that sentence in custody the reaction of the local community to james's sentence was one of relief and the general feeling i got from people was that the sentence did fit the crime when we got the verdict of guilty it was just a wave of relief that come over our bodies getting that actually made us feel as though there was just a little bit of justice for jim in the head [Music] the local community felt justice had been done safe in the knowledge that this serial killer obsessed teen was now behind bars we now know he collected the our newspaper cuttings on his first killing of jim atfield as i suppose people would say that's as a trophy to what he was doing he kept a scrapbook of all the clubbings of all the stories that we did he clearly wanted to revel in the difficulty he was putting the public through he was reading every day about the anguish of jim matfin's mother and jim arfield's family he was reading about the fear that people were experiencing not only in grinstead but across colchester it's pretty clear that he was enjoying what he was doing i think james fairweather committed these murders because he was a deeply disturbed young man however there was clearly something there in his environment in the material he was viewing that all combined to create someone that ultimately went on to to kill twice and potentially could have killed again in the judges summing up in this case he talked about how jane's fair weather wanted to carry out his sadistic violent fantasies and how he was obsessed with other serial killers peter sutcliffe he stabbed his victims in the eye and it said that he did this because the eye remained open and he got some kind of pleasure from doing that and fairweather purposely stabbed his victims in the eye so it's almost like he wanted to emulate the serial killers that he was so obsessed with and the notoriety that comes with that would have been something he desired but could the authorities have picked up on fair weather's dangerous obsessions before they went too far i was quite angry when i heard that he had already caused upset by holding up a shop at knifepoint and to find out that he only got a slap on the wrist and was then allowed to walk free and just a few months later then go on to kill despicable really i think jim's death could have been prevented yes because if james fairweather had been given a harsher sentence for carrying a weapon in the first place then he may not have been out there to have committed the crimes he committed it was a unique case my understanding is that james is the youngest person in this country to have been convicted of two separate murders the ferocity of them makes them unique in my view given his young age the minimum term that the judge set in james's case is 27 years that is for a boy of that age a very long minimum term indeed fair weather will be in his 40s before he can even be considered for release by the parole board given his disputed mental health does this teenage boy deserve life in prison one of the difficulties with the jury's finding of murder rather than manslaughter is that james will be kept in a normal prison there isn't the medical and psychiatric support that there would be in a psychiatric unit had he been convicted of manslaughter the judge could have made what's called a hospital order which has pretty much the same effect as a life sentence except the decision as to release is made when a panel of psychiatrists felt that he didn't present a dangerous to the public rather than the parole board which is made up of non-specialists the james fairweather case is a a case that no one involved with it will ever forget one can't help but wonder whether if his autism had been diagnosed at a much earlier stage and a suitable support system put in place including input at home from his parents whether with greater supervision and with more assistance for his difficulties which were undoubtedly there uh he may not have carried out these killings that's a question that's impossible to answer but one can't help speculating on whether actually failure of that diagnosis meant that the system let him down james fairweather was bullied he had been targeted because of his physical appearance he had been vulnerable because of his autism because of his potential developing personality disorder and because of his the question mark over whether he was in a psychotic episode or not and he carried knives that says to me that there were signs there and if he had got help younger maybe we could have prevented these terrible murders occurring [Music] [Music] they should be the most innocent members of society but children can be capable of the most sadistic premeditated and brutal murders they beat him and hit him with a bottle one of them stabbed chased straight through the heart what drives these kids to kill men women friends family she was determined that her mother had to die even their teachers this was the first occasion upon which a teacher had been killed in class in the course of conducting a lesson could they be born evil it did have a weird dark sense of humour he was a little bit different to most of the other kids he was aggressive threatening and dangerous or are they victims of their environment there was a lot of gangs a lot of violence a lot of drug abusers with exceptional access to real police tapes the voices were talking to me you need to make a sacrifice so we're going to come and get you you need to do it and interviews with those closest to the victims and the perpetrators a red mist had simply descended [Music] we reveal what made them such savage killers [Music] in the summer of 2013 nineteen-year-old sean mchugh was found bleeding to death in an alleyway in liverpool did you destroy his life he'd been chased into a launderette and cornered in the back room and it was six and a half minutes of sheer terror where he was fatally stabbed by a gang of five teenage boys deemed by the media as baby faced killers now what exactly happened behind that door i don't think we'll we'll ever know led by that 19 year old ringleader some of these boys were as young as 13 years old in my 26 years this is the only time that i've dealt with a murder that's involved people charged with a murder under the age of 16. with the cctv released to the police the boys were quickly arrested even at trial they appeared totally unfazed by the seriousness of their crime their only remorse was that they got caught what turned these young individuals into a marauding mob out for blood [Music] anfield liverpool is a residential district the north of the city centre those who live here say it has a strong sense of community however there's no ignoring it has its issues anfield itself is it's a tough gritty rough and ready inner city suburb um you know there are some great salt of the earth people there it's a tight-knit community but there are you know massive issues with uh deprivation and poverty and and kids entering crime at an early age having worked as a probation officer in north liverpool for 18 years james riley has experience working with convicted young killers i run a program called get away and get safe which is an intervention which is delivered around the country for young people hopefully to deter them from getting involved in gangs like many other inner-city areas we have problems with gangs and sleep violence [Music] sean mchugh was a 19 year old boy from the neighboring suburb of walton with a job as an apprentice bricklayer he lived with his girlfriend close to anfield but on the 30th of september 2013 what should have been a mundane evening for sean in and around the local area turned into a living nightmare sean and his friend joshua williams were on priory road to do some laundry he wanted to wash his and his girlfriend's clothes and they they gone to the the liver laundrette to do that he didn't realize that it probably took 30 to 45 minutes for the wash cycle to take place so decided to walk with his friend josh round to the the local stores around the corner whilst there he obviously he was confronted by or bumped into the the lane heads as they called themselves they were a group of young kids who were involved in relatively low level antisocial behavior a bit of verbals were exchanged the group actually basically said to sean what was he doing around there that wasn't his area both the lads knew something bad was going to happen um so they ran the victim ran in to a local laundrette being pursued by a number of males he was split up from his friend at the time who ran in another direction shawn ran into the back room but not before he'd handed a phone to to a person working there telling her call the police some detergent so if he tried to get away slip up and fall over and make him an easier break before they actually began the chase some of the group went and recovered some weapons from the cinder path which was very close to the shop they even took out this antique sword stick this cane sword and went back to the laundrette there was one man in the laundrette who is who was doing his washing who later said that he tried to act like he was the manager of the laundry in the hope that these these users would scarpa the boys took no notice of him so that that in itself shows an intention you look at the cctv they're running around him and to his credit he stays there as long as he can but i think he he must have feared for his own safety and and leaves the police had already been alerted to this point and the gang knew that so their mission was all the more urgent break through that door as soon as the the door had been forced into the the staff area sean then managed to escape out of the rear of the premises into the alleyway members of the gang followed him into the alleyway where you know sean stumbled fell to the floor and one member of the group which member we don't know used the sword stick and stabbed shawn through his left leg went in to a depth of approximately 11 centimetres and severed his femoral artery [Music] and it was six and a half minutes of sheer terror what must have been going through his head knowing that he was trapped like that and that there were these yobs armed trying to get at him god only knows [Music] it's difficult to comprehend how much fear shawn mchugh would have been in when faced with that mob the natural instinct in human beings when in dangerous situations is to do one of three things fight flight or freeze in this situation sean mchugh couldn't fight there was simply too many of them he couldn't freeze because they would have attacked him so he did the only thing he could he ran sean was found bleeding really heavily in the back of the laundry and a member of the public tried his best to stem the bleeding having lost too much blood sean mchugh died in hospital four days after the attack this was a shocking crime um for liverpool as it would be for any city there's no getting away from it that you know there are areas in liverpool which which are uh unsafe and you can find trouble if you go looking for it but never do you think that when you go into a laundrette to do your washing that you're about to lose your life he was someone's son he was someone's brother he was someone's best friend [Music] sean mchugh's tragic murder left his family girlfriend and his whole community totally devastated sean was very close to his family especially to his you know his mum lorraine lived with his girlfriend stephanie again close to his brothers and sisters real close-knit are described as a real typical liverpool family really looked up to and respected his mum is his gang here his little girlfriend she was 40 and when he met sean mchugh nicknamed shorty was really popular in his community in walton more than a thousand people turned up at his funeral he was short hence his nickname but um full of character he was into fishing and motorbikes everybody liked sean that was the the thing that came through very quickly through the investigation that nobody really dislikes you and there's nothing to dislike about sean he wasn't involved in criminality or gangs everybody was shocked that this would take place in their community [Music] despite steering clear of the violence that plagued his local streets that night shawn had found himself spotted on the laneheads gang territory quite simply they call the lane heads because they congregated and hung around upon the cinder path on townsend lane i wouldn't say they were a notorious gang they were a group of young kids who were involved in predominantly low-level anti-social behavior for some of them the first ever offence they committed was murder the lane heads head honcho was reese o'shaughnessy there was kaifa dykstra who was his kind of second in command he was kind of this big for his age teenager who um kind of used this size to intimidate others then there were the cue cousins corey and andrew and joseph mcgill their fierce rivalry was with the walton village heads who they nicknamed the walton rats the people that sean would hang out with in walton would have been members of the walton village heads um they would have known people who were members of the walton village heads and because of that um the the lane heads would have known that sean was affiliated to them several months before the attack on shaun kaifer dykstra got stabbed during a fight with members of the walton village heads and when the opportunity arose they'd set out to avenge that stabbing so when they saw him in primary road given two and a half months earlier when kai for dykstra had been stabbed in the chest by somebody linked to the walton village heads that's why he was targeted for reprisal the only reason he was attacked because he come from walton so he was picked on merely because of his postcode [Music] what's critical in this case is that sean mchugh unfortunately for him was in the wrong place at the wrong time it was not planned i don't think they saw sean mchugh as another human being they saw him as an object i think they saw him as a symbol of the opposing group from another area and they were attacking him because of what he represented in their eyes that one of them had been stabbed by another group in a different geographical area and they wanted to take revenge and it didn't really matter that it wasn't shawn mchugh who committed that act of violence they just wanted to seek revenge to anybody who was different to them the opposing group to them what factors in these teenagers lives turned them into a gang of knife-wielding killers these were school-age kids killing another kid in the early evening on the 30th of september 2013 19 year old sean mchugh had been doing his and his girlfriend's laundry when he was cornered and fatally stabbed by a local gang shockingly a gang with members as young as 13 years old these five teenage boys had outnumbered shaun and hunted him down as a pack when these young people are together they behave differently i often look at some of these high profile cases and think would that person or would those boys have acted the same way if they were on their own and the answer is usually no but when they're with us they feel less responsible for their actions when i examine the cctv it's particularly horrifying to watch what we see here is a pack mentality going towards the door determined to break down that door to commit harm to sean in a pack mentality it's a group situation and in that group the individuals lose their own singular identity and they take on the identity of the group acting for one thing and in this case the group's identity was about committing harm was about being violent some people describe it as you know being like animals on a hunt i would sometimes describe them just as simply being like sheep and following one another with more than one suspect to track down and in a climate where there was fear of reprisals for talking the police had a daunting task ahead of them in anfield after the killing in the days after um graffiti started to to emerge snitches get stitches and ftm which means [ __ ] the matrix the matrix is the police's kind of anti-gang unit there is there is an attitude amongst the gangs that you know the matrix are the enemy this could have been a notoriously difficult case for police to solve because the gangs wouldn't speak to the police but these tear aways with their lust for violence were kind of victims of their own downfall they caught themselves by posting messages on facebook and sending text messages you know just hours after the event evidence recovered from the mobile phones of the offenders was crucial that gave us evidence to show their involvement and knowledge of what happened to sean there was derogatory comments about r.i.p shorty always knew you were a [ __ ] these messages were whizzing through the ether saying things like um watch out you might see something that we we've done on priory in the paper tomorrow or he's only got three days to live we need to look here at the activity of the boys on facebook after the incident they were bragging about what happened how long it would take him to bleed to death etc when you look at that it looks like the boys are callous and show no remorse but what isaac is going on why are they so detached from what they've done when we look at knife crime we see a total disrespect for life like life isn't important and when somebody is so detached from how absolutely wonderful life is it means that they can joke about it because it's something they're seeing everywhere they're seeing crime they're seeing knife crime it's not as shocking as it is to most people in society so when they're making these jokes online it's shocking to us to them it's just part of what they do after their gloating on social media and having been identified on the cctv the police were able to quickly arrest the members of the lanehead gang and it soon came to light that these teens were local troublemakers the leader of the gang was rhys o'shaughnessy he was 19 years of age he was almost this pied piper who kind of led this merry band of marauding jobs who were aged as young as 13 you know in anfield along priory road they would do his bidding they were known to the local local policing teams so some of our uniform colleagues did know them because again they were just involved really in low-level anti-social behavior in the area causing a nuisance really these were kids with real issues they were kind of in and out of school they they bunked off all the time they were hanging around late at night and causing misery for the community when they would go to school they'd finish and kind of loiter around on street corners intimidating others you know a general catalogue of anti-social behavior when i'm looking at the profile of the boys involved here we see a pattern of poverty they all come from what we call vulnerable locations areas that have high crime high unemployment they were in trouble with the police they were often not in school they were getting into lots of trouble in the local area what that tells me is that there must have been some lack of boundaries in these young boys lives with few boundaries at home and having been assessed as having very low iqs the boys struggle to fit into conventional schooling and turned to the streets they were all in alternative education provisions george had been excluded from mainstream school some of them had problematic family lives none of them struggled at school they were persistently absent from school the boys had low intelligence and poor cognitive ability and what that means is that they would be more easily led less able to make sensible decisions and less aware of the consequences of their actions and in the case of kyori hewitt he had an iq of 69 that puts him in the very low category of intelligence so he actually had a mental age of about a six or seven year old so for him to understand the consequences of what he's doing is really difficult he's in a situation where he's going along with the group activity and he has this low iq and he almost isn't aware of the consequences of what he is about to do what led these four young teenagers to follow and look up to a 19 year old and become part of his gang they entered gangs as a way to belong to a kind of fraternity um they weren't necessarily involved in drug dealing it was being part of a gang um sticking up for your turf and you know dispensing violence and threats on on people from rival gangs who would come into your territory there's a whole host of reasons why young people will get involved in gangs maybe being excluded from school being on the streets having no purpose no identity time on the hands nothing better to do the gang gave them that sense of belonging sense of group sense of purpose that maybe they didn't get through school in or at home some of these young people just simply lacked a positive male role model sadly they farm that role model on the streets someone they thought was a friend someone they thought cared about them but actually they're just about to be used with the boys looking up to their older leader it's evident they found a sense of belonging in the lane heads given how young these teenagers were to what extent was them joining the gang a conscious choice i think sometimes we can be slightly naive with gangs i think that if you're a young person living on a house in the state and a gang is on that housing estate there are kids that would tell you that if you're not part of the gang you must be against that gang and therefore that gang will turn on you in these suburbs of liverpool there's enormous peer pressure and one of the ways to kind of get your kudos is to be a member of a gang so if you were in a gang while the rest of society would see you as a bit of a street urchin to your peers and to other people of that age you know there was a mark of respect young people don't think that deep about why they join in a gang you know they might be a group of friends that they know they might be a group of friends that they've born and been brought up with there's massive appeal to these boys to belong to a gang what belonging to a gang often gives young people is a sense of identity they're often referred to as street families where they don't have their own positive identity they take on the identity of the gang and also in an area where there's high crime that also gives them a sense of security a sense of belonging a sense of protection i'm with my gang and i'm okay when i'm here it gives them support so to not be part of that group would have been very difficult by virtue of growing up around townsend lane in anfield these impressionable young boys became part of the lane heads gang by entering into this world of street violence had they lost their sense of what was right and wrong my personal view is that you may have an iq of 69 you may have a limited vocabulary you still at that age know the difference between right and wrong you still know the difference between getting a weapon chasing somebody and stabbing them and killing them to not doing that at all from my point of view you can say so what you like about fractured backgrounds you can say what you like about about opportunities that these kids have but there are plenty of other kids in hamfield and walton that don't go around killing people since the police were unable to determine who had delivered the fatal blow would the whole group go down for murder [Music] in september 2013 sean mchugh from walton liverpool was stabbed simply for being on a rival gang's turf despite never having been involved in a gang himself the suspects were all identified and arrested within 24 hours of the attack these tear aways with their lust for violence were kind of victims of their own downfall led by nineteen-year-old risa shaughnessy shockingly the other four gang members responsible for sean's death were under 16 years old with the police investigation unable to identify which boy had delivered the fatal blow the court proceedings would have to decide if they should all be found guilty of murder it was tense in court it really was you know these were these were young kids their families insisted that although they were involved in in the incident they didn't they didn't stab sean so they weren't guilty of murder whereas shaun's family were insisting you know throw away the key these kids were together their actions led to the death of sean everybody involved in this were charged with the murder of sean mchugh the law at the time allowed for the charge of joint enterprise the lord joint enterprise at that time as a common law offense been around for a number hundreds of years which is for a group acting with a common purpose and the common purpose we said on that evening was to cause significant harm and significant injury to sean mcqueen in cases like this allows all that charge take place when actually we don't know who delivered the fatal blow having been charged under joint enterprise the trial centered on the intentions of the five boys the night sean was stabbed it was a prosecution's case that they intended for the deceased to suffer serious harm that day for me they it was just swept along in a in a series of events that unfortunately for the deceased for everyone concerned had fatal consequences under joint enterprise they all had this mob mentality sean died as a result of them acting like this pack of animals so from from my point of view it was clearly right to charge them all with murder and take it to tribal individually these were young people who were anti-social they were in trouble with the police they were up to no good but individually were they all murderers we don't know what we do know is when they collectively came together they turned into murderers in court all five of the boys pleaded not guilty to murder however using evidence from the cctv and witnesses the prosecution suggested the group had serious intent to harm sean the gang went in there screaming we're going to kill you we're going to get you whether it was intended or not they had the they had the foresight that sean would be caused really serious injury as you see with kind of knife crime incidents all too often there's no safe place to stab somebody if you plunge a blade into somebody there's no telling what damage you'll do it only takes as in this case to use the knife once to use it on a part of the body where you don't think it will cause death in the case of sean they they stabbed him in the leg he died very quickly as a result [Music] the moment that they all knew that at least two of their members were armed that was when in fact joint enterprise came in it didn't matter who actually delivered the fatal injury the whole group as a collective knew there was knives presence they knew the knife was going to be used and they knew the knife was going to be used to cause significant injury to sean one of the things that stuck with me since this trial is not only the manner in which sean was killed but the foresight shown by a then 13 year old boy to spray detergent on the floor just in case sean did manage to get back out from the back room that his escape would be impeded and that he'd slip you know you can see the intent there from joseph mcgill pouring down the detergent to corey hewitt picking up and disposing of the murder weapon down a drain shaw mchugh's murder was presented in court as a collective endeavor what role they played in this murder made it a joint effort by them to intend to cause serious injury to mr mchugh what happens when we look at joint enterprise we have people who are actively involved we have people who are goading the person who commits the violence along so therefore are actively involved and then we have people on the fringe who may be feeling anxious and nervous but go along with the situation because they feel that they can't get out of it so within joint enterprise it's always a hierarchy of who has committed the most serious aspect of the incident [Music] despite being on trial for murder the boys never seem to gauge the seriousness of what was unfolding in court the atmosphere in court was different depending on which way you looked you know if you looked to the victim's side there was you know a kind of constant flood of tears you know tissues and sobbing and then if you look to the defendants it was like they were on holiday they were laughing and joking and smirking they were tossing paper at one another one of the boys who was on bail was actually remanded into custody during the trial because of his conduct their true age kind of shone through throughout the court process they were misbehaving within the dock for me they just didn't take that whole process uh the whole trial as serious as it was for them and for the justice for sure and family what do you think about the conduct of these boys during the trial and they're really showing no respect for the courts [Music] there were kind of almost constant warnings from the judge telling these boys to behave and and and they would for a little bit but then they'd get distracted one would laugh which would set off the other and it got to a point where judge goldstone just thought well you know the jury can see this they can see how you're acting so we're just going to carry on um you know behaviors you will we've got a trial to crack on with [Music] with all of the boys being so young and three of them suffering from adhd sitting together in the dock proved problematic one of the boys who suffered from adhd was 14 year old kaifa dykstra the more that i dealt with kaifa that i realized just how severe that condition was in his case his concentration clearly went out the window he would make inappropriate remarks at inappropriate times i would not deem it as behaviour that you would not expect outside the classroom it was obviously young boys put in a very adult situation looking at their behavior is it disrespectful yes is it a sign of how antisocial they are yes but i also think it shows how they've got absolutely no respect for the law and that's something we see in cases like this they've got no respect for authorities but then i think we also have to consider some of the factors involved here we know at least three of them have got adhd we know that they've got problems with cognitive reasoning which means that they would struggle to retain information would struggle to understand information and would struggle to remember what is being said which means they then get distracted in addition the fact that they were all together they're continuing with the bravado the act look i'm hard this isn't bothering me i don't care about the system that's why we saw the behavior we saw in court you could say that okay they had low intelligence their iq was low did they understand the gravity of what they'd done or was this a front were they putting on a show to go you know we're hard and we're tough the big i ams and and you know we don't care what you do to us and my view is that it falls on the latter um they understood what was going on in court they understood what they were up for um i think i think to a large part they they enjoyed being there they didn't like the result but they certainly like being the center of attention with the boys acting up in full view of the jury was their behavior the result of an inability to understand the consequences of the crime or did they simply not care that they were on trial for murder on the 30th of september 2013 a gang of teenagers from anfield killed 19 year old sean mchugh from the neighboring suburb of walton sean was still a young lad himself the offenders in this case were even younger so that is for me one of the saddest things about this whole case throughout the trial the five boys some as young as 13 showed little remorse under the law of joint enterprise the jury had to decide if all the boys had intended to cause sean serious harm that evening and as a result were each guilty of murder know i met lorraine probably 24 hours after this happened and lorraine is still as emotional today as she was then did you destroy that after more than 17 hours of deliberation the jury found ringleader nineteen-year-old riso shawnessy and kaifa dykstra who was 14 at the time of the murder guilty by a unanimous decision fifteen-year-old andrew hewitt corey hewitt and joseph mcgill both 13 years old at the time of the murder were also found guilty by a majority verdict of 10 to 2. when the guilty verdicts were given at the end of the trial again they were kind of nonchalant with their reactions it was they weren't bothered about what they'd just been convicted of when judge goldstone came into court to deliver his sentence the first thing he did was issue a warning to everyone in the court to stay quiet when the sentences were delivered and if they didn't they would have him to answer to but when those verdicts were delivered the kind of rules and decorum went out the window there were shrieks on one side of kind of joy these life sentences being handed out there were shrieks from the other side of disbelief um that their their sons have been convicted and murdered and were gonna be detained for life a sentence of that magnitude is a lot for an adult to take in let alone a child the judge sentenced on the basis that risa shawnee plunged the cane sword into shawn's leg he had never admitted it but the evidence of another of the boys implicated him it was a perfect way of bringing this gun to justice this was a way of saying hang on if you're gonna associate in these gangs you're gonna do things like this then if somebody dies you're all gonna go down [Music] in total the five people convicted of sean's murder received 53 years in prison the shorter sentence was six years and the longest sentence of 18 years was given to the oldest member of the group for me justice was served with the guilty verdict of the five people um that brought some closure for the reign and the family i'm just glad we got justice shawn's family were so torn up by his killing that no sentence that could have been handed out by the court would ever give them true closure you know they were happy that they were given life sentences they were happy that they were all convicted of murder under joint enterprise you know it was a justice of sorts but as the judge said the the real life sentence will always hang over the mckee family they're the one whose son's never coming back [Music] the judge said in all of these boys lives there was a lack of structure and absolutely i can see that in looking at the cases they didn't have boundaries they didn't have that they needed to be home and doing their homework and attending school and when you have children without boundaries that is a recipe for disaster two of the most important things i see are the importance of attachment and the importance of boundaries and if a child hasn't got that they're led to their own devices and on the streets of an area that's got a high crime rate they're going to be attracted to antisocial behavior in the judge's summing up of the case he concluded that it spoke volumes for the advantages of a structured lifestyle and with all the boys having displayed very little regret would the structure of prison yield any change i don't know if time will change them i really don't um during the trial could i say that any of them showed had shown an ounce of remorse no obviously have served a hefty chunk of time in prison they all have had to undergo rehabilitation programs but the truth is we'll only know when they get out we'll only know when they get out at the time the offense took place i don't think they regretted it throughout the trial i don't think they took it seriously and i don't think they regretted it then but i think as as time has passed and they've had time to really reflect grow up and you know be educated further within the prison establishments that has helped them come to understand the consequence of their actions and actually regret what they did on that night i do have genuine belief in you know the prison system will help them rehabilitate themselves if they want to be rehabilitated so yeah i do feel that there is opportunities for all of them to rehabilitate i do hope that they're a chance for them in the future when we look at them and we look at what they did and where they come from actually a young defenders institution could offer them particularly the younger ones more stability more boundaries more hope more structure than they've ever had before so they could end up having an education and turning their life around rehabilitation however will be harder for the older offender he'll be going to an adult prison and depending on what therapy or treatment program is available to him he will struggle to change his behavior more because he's older and his behavior is more ingrained in the judge's sentencing remarks he described the boy's involvement with knives as part of their way of life had they never been drawn into street violence shawn would still be alive and it is a problem that continues today i think if you fast forward to now the uk is gripped by a knife crime epidemic uh you know this is six years later and there are still kids walking around with knives they're not afraid to use them they say they have them for protection um it's not a defense so you look back at six years and six years ago and you go well how much has really changed the answer is not a lot as the problem got worse probably we need to completely rethink our outlook to knife crime we should have learned more really from from what happened to sean we should have got tougher then and we really need to get tougher now [Music] people do not think of the consequences of arming themselves with a knife if you take a knife out you are more likely to use a knife on this occasion they arm themselves with a knife with the intention to use it without thinking of the actual fatal consequences of what happened to sean [Music] with the problem of knife crime deemed to be endemic in the uk how could sean's murder have been prevented and what can be done to stop young people being drawn into this way of life young people are carrying nerves nowadays because they think many of the young people are carrying knives there's a very small minority of people carrying knives that's been proven young people should never be in a position where they think carrying a weapon any weapon at all makes them safer because in a moment of madness they could use that weapon and lives will be changed forever if you don't give someone hope and if you don't if you can't make life excited and give them exciting opportunities they have less choices and i think that's our problem with young people these boys were living a life with no hope with no opportunity their life was the streets and because they had no hope that led to them having little respect for life because what is life life wasn't giving them anything so to take a life was no big deal you

Channel: Real Stories

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Keywords: documentary 2023, full length documentaries 2023, documentary movies - topic, free documentaries on YouTube, Real stories uk, real stories full documentary 2023, innocent on death row documentary, innocent on death row documentary netflix, innocent on death row film, innocent on death row clinton, innocent on death row documentary clinton, innocent on death row imdb, clinton young foundation, clinton young interview, clinton young released

Id: WX_2z4SnZNM

Length: 129min 33sec (7773 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 08 2022