Fourteen-year-olds who ‘brutally executed’ mum and sister are named
THE “horrific” story of how a teenage girl and her boyfriend brutally murdered her mother and 13-year-old sister can be revealed for the first time after leading judges allowed the pair to be named.
Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham (both 15) have previously been protected by an order banning their identification. But three Court of Appeal judges in London lifted the order, meaning it can now be reported that the couple’s victims were Edwards’ mother, dinner lady Elizabeth Edwards (49) and sister Katie. The mother and daughter were stabbed in “executions” as they slept at their home in Spalding, Lincolnshire, last April.
Over the course of the next 36 hours the “besotted” teenagers, then both 14, had sex, shared a bath and watched ‘Twilight’ vampire films after the killings.
Both were detained for life with minimum terms of 20 years last November by a judge at Nottingham Crown Court. The order preventing their names being made public was overturned by Mr Justice Brian Leveson, Mr Justice Blake and Mr Justice Lewis yesterday as they ruled that the minimum terms should be reduced to 17-and-a-half years.
Edwards held grudges against her mother and sister and Markham came to “share her grudges and hatred”. They “jointly decided” to kill Edwards’ mother and her “entirely innocent” sister.
Sentencing judge Mr Justice Haddon-Cave said: “The killings were brutal in the form of executions, and both victims must have suffered terribly in the last minutes of their lives.’’