‘I’ll kill for a tenner’
Boast of boy, 15, who knifed teacher Ann Maguire to death in class
A BOY of 15 who stabbed his teacher to death in her classroom had boasted on Facebook that he would murder her ‘for a tenner’, an inquest has heard.
On the day of the killing in Leeds, Will Cornick told at least ten of his friends ‘precisely’ what he was going to do.
Ann Maguire, 61 – whose parents were from Co. Mayo and whose widowed husband is from Co. Cavan – ‘stood absolutely no chance whatsoever’ when the ‘strapping’ teenage boy came at her with an eight-inch kitchen knife in an ‘enormous crescendo of rage and violence’, the inquest was told.
He stabbed the ‘petite’ mother of two eight times, severing her jugular vein, during a Spanish lesson at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds in April 2014.
Another teacher bravely put herself between Cornick and his victim after she had staggered into a corridor, but Mrs Maguire, who was a foot shorter than the teenager, died in hospital. The teacher’s Cavan-born widower, Don Maguire, told the court the idea that his wife’s killer had an ‘irrational and historical hatred’ of his wife ‘seems as strange now as it did then’.
Yesterday, it emerged that the GCSE pupil had told others ‘precisely’ what he was going to do and had written about killing the teacher numerous times on Facebook.
In class an hour before the attack, Cornick showed friends the ‘vicious-looking’ knife and said: ‘Mrs Maguire will die.’ He told a fellow pupil to film the assault on a phone.
Cornick, who played the violent video game Assassin’s Creed and was obsessed with Quentin Tarantino’s ‘killing spree movie’ Pulp Fiction, held a grudge against Mrs Maguire, the inquest heard.
The gruesome attack was the first murder of a teacher in a British classroom. Mrs Maguire had taught Spanish to two generations of pupils at Corpus Christi and was described as the ‘fulcrum of the school’.
During a lesson, Cornick calmly got up from his seat, stabbed the teacher and then returned to his seat ‘like nothing had happened’.
Detective Superintendent Nick Wallen said Cornick had told ‘at least ten pupils precisely what he was going to do’. The teenager had also hinted at his sick plan in a string of chilling Facebook messages to friends, Wakefield Coroners’ Court heard.
Around four months before the killing, he had boasted: ‘As long as she’s still alive, I’ll be depressed, sad and angry.’ He later wrote: ‘Anyway, for a tenner, I brutally kill Maguire. By that I mean I’ll give you a tenner to do it. So if I do kill Maguire on Tuesday in school will you bail me out?’
In a separate message he said: ‘Btw [by the way] no bulls***, I am full on honest about being your assassin.’
The inquest also heard that the disturbed teenager changed his cover photo on Facebook to a Grim Reaper during the message exchanges in December 2013.
The posts continued into 2014. In January, he wrote: ‘I want power. I want…to get told off by Maguire and for me to turn around with skill, pride and power and axe her f ****** cockles with a long and shiny blade.’
He asked a fellow pupil if he was willing to film him attacking Mrs Maguire on a mobile phone, the pupil’s witness statement said.
His comments were not reported to staff, the jury heard, and even when he showed other pupils the knife on the day of the murder they failed to take him seriously.
Det Supt Wallen said: ‘He was a young man who was prone to saying things that weren’t true.
‘That’s the reason that on the day most people who Will spoke to thought, “That’s just Will, that’s what he does.”
‘He [a fellow pupil] did not believe what Cornick was saying and [thought] that this was a fantasy being lived out on Facebook.
‘This attack came completely out of the blue. Nobody in the classroom saw this coming. I would say she stood absolutely no chance whatsoever.
All of the children were very upset and all suffered different degrees of trauma.
‘I absolutely am of the view that there is one person responsible for Ann Maguire’s death – that is William Cornick. He has pleaded guilty to Ann’s murder.’
During the police investigation, officers were instructed not to ask the children why they had not reported what they heard.
In the first of two incidents highlighted at the hearing, Cornick stormed out of a meeting that had been called to discuss his Spanish work after Mrs Maguire argued that he should not be allowed to drop the subject.
She later tried to prevent him from going on a school bowling trip and put him in detention.
Cornick, now 19, had said he was prepared to go to jail ‘so as not to have to worry about life or money’. After the murder, he said: ‘I know the victim’s family will be upset but in my eyes everything I have done is fine and dandy.’
Mrs Maguire’s husband Don, a company director, said: ‘This was a good lad. He was bright. He was doing well at school. He was from a good home.
‘He had a bit of a dark sense of humour. He did this terrible thing. There’s no explanation and no logic to it. I personally have always struggled a little bit with that narrative.’
Recalling the moment when he saw his wife in hospital, he added: ‘As soon as I walked in, I knew she had gone. I knew she had gone because not one set of eyes looked at my direction. They said I could hold her hand and it was cold.’
Mr Maguire added that his wife had discussed retiring on the morning of the attack.
Nick Armstrong, counsel for the Maguire family, said Cornick had told friends he was depressed, had tried to commit suicide and was drawing ‘disturbed’ images at 13.
But Cornick was not known to police or safeguarding agencies.
The teenager pleaded guilty to murder in November 2014 and was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum tariff of 20 years.
The inquest into Mrs Maguire’s death is due to last two weeks.
‘As long as she’s alive I’ll be angry’