Let out in a dress, junkie who killed Harrow master’s girl
‘I feel he is still a danger’
STROLLING on the street in a dress, this is the junkie killer who slaughtered a fashion designer and was told by a judge: ‘It may never be safe to release you.’
William Jaggs was branded a ‘grave and immediate risk’ when sent to a mental hospital just over ten years ago for stabbing Lucy Braham, 25, to death at Harrow School where her father was a master.
Despite the warnings at his Old Bailey trial, the 34-year- old has been allowed out for day trips to shop for women’s clothes at Primark.
Seen here in Oxford the schizophrenic, who wears lacy dresses and likes to be called Gillian, is also permitted to take supervised trips to his local Sainsbury’s as he prepares for his eventual release from a medium secure mental health unit.
The Harrow-educated drug addict stripped and stabbed Lucy 66 times in a ‘ferocious and unrelenting’ sexually-motivated frenzy after becoming obsessed with her.
Yesterday her family told of their fury at the acceleration of the ‘phased release’ for the killer. Lucy’s father Jason, 68, told The Sun that Jaggs, who once described himself as a ‘complete psychopath’, should be closely monitored. The former art director of the 800-pupil public school in northwest London also revealed that Jaggs had recently alarmed a former neighbour by writing to her to say he would soon be free. Mr Braham said: ‘On the evidence I know, I feel he is still a danger to the public.
‘A woman who knew him was horrified to get a letter saying he was coming out, so it’s still a shock to hear he is already on the streets.
‘If he were to stop taking the medication he’s on and start drug-using again, I think there is a serious risk of him going back to his old ways.
‘I try not to dwell on the horrifying manner of my daughter’s death but wouldn’t want anyone else to go through what my family’s suffered. I shall be writing to the probation service to find out what’s going on.’
Mr Braham told The Sun: ‘They were meant to keep me in the loop and called to tell me that if he behaved he could be out in about four years.
‘I was told he’d first be allowed to walk round the grounds then be allowed out under supervision – but it would take years and be done step by step. So hearing he’s already out wandering about in a dress is alarming.’
Like Mr Braham, Jaggs’s father also taught at Harrow. The families knew each other and Jaggs had long nursed an unrequited love for Lucy who lived near him in a college-owned home. He won a place at Oxford to study English but at the time of the killing was living at Harrow after being suspended from Oriel College for drug-taking.
He began using cannabis as a 14year-old Harrow boarder and went on to become addicted to LSD, heroin and crack cocaine which triggered violent sexual hallucinations.
A day before killing Lucy he emailed an Oxford tutor saying he had dreamed of having sex with her. But Lucy, a graduate of the London College of Fashion, was never warned of his obsession.
In September 2006 he tricked his way into her home while her parents were out by trying to sell her a kitten. When she said she could not accept it he flew into a rage and stabbed her in a drug-crazed frenzy as she screamed for help. Police alerted by neighbours arrived to find 22- year- old Jaggs naked, yelling incomprehensibly and stabbing himself.
He was charged with murder but four psychiatrists agreed that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Jaggs’s guilty plea to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility was accepted but Mr Justice Bean told him at his 2007 trial: ‘You should realise that it may never be safe to release you.’
Jaggs was initially sent to Broadmoor high- security mental hospital, but was transferred to medium-security Littlemore Mental Health Centre in Oxford in 2015. He is allowed out with supervision for 45 minutes a day.
A spokesman for Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Littlemore, said: ‘The trust works with the Ministry of Justice to help patients to safely rehabilitate and recover, including extremely careful monitoring of risk to ensure the safety of both the patient and wider public.’