After Mail shames Facebook over Lucy murder, Met chief says: Hand over password
LUCY McHUGH should have been getting ready for the first day of the new school year yesterday. She should have rolled out of bed, excited about seeing friends, teased younger brother Dylan about his first day at senior school and spent just enough time fussing about her appearance to put her in danger of being late.
A morning much like that faced by countless other 13-year-old girls returning to school after the summer break.
But Lucy wasn’t among the 1,000-odd students pouring into Southampton’s Redbridge Community School in their freshly ironed navy polo shirts and smart black trousers yesterday.
Tragically, Lucy enjoyed just four days of her holiday before her life ended in the most dreadful way imaginable — she was stabbed to death and her body dumped in woods near a sports centre, where it was found by a dog walker on the morning of July 26. It was almost 24 hours after she had disappeared.
A few simple facts are known about Lucy McHugh’s last morning.
She got dressed in typical teenage garb — camouflage leggings, white vest top and black jacket with white sleeves, red lettering on the back and the logo of a favourite band on the front.
At about 9am on July 25, she left the family’s redbrick terrace home in Mansel Road East and set off; destination unknown.
In the following 30 minutes, she was captured on CCTV three times.
First, wearing her jacket, at 9.06am walking past a convenience store in Wimpson Lane, then at 9.22am walking ‘with purpose’ on Coxford Road, by the General Hospital, past, with terrible irony, the cemetery where she is now buried, then finally, at 9.30am, outside a Tesco Express store, half a mile from where her body was found.
The alarm was raised that evening. Lucy’s body was not discovered until 7.45am the next day, in woodland overlooking a cricket pitch and athletics track at the 150-acre outdoor centre.
More than 200 police officers have been involved in trying to solve Lucy’s murder, one of the largest investigations carried out by Hampshire Police.
They have sifted through more than 15,000 hours of CCTV footage from 250 locations, collected more than 900 items and received more than 200 reports from the public.
SOME 40 publicspirited volunteers grouped together to try to find the murder weapon, while others have contributed to raise funds for Lucy’s funeral.
Yet so far no murder weapon has been found and one valuable piece of potential evidence police want to examine has been withheld: the prime suspect’s Facebook password.
Detectives are desperate to access Facebook accounts belonging to tattoo artist Stephen Nicholson, who was jailed for 14 months on Friday for refusing to reveal his password to police.
At the time he was already on bail, having been arrested on suspicion of murder and sexual activity with a child after Lucy was found dead. But, amid a growing controversy that has piled more agony on Lucy’s grieving family, the internet giant has refused to hand over the password.
Facebook claims to be ‘working closely’ with law enforcement and says that there are ‘wellestablished legal mechanisms the police follow to obtain information in criminal investigations like this’.
That such ‘legal mechanisms’ are delaying a murder inquiry drew a stinging response from senior MPs and police.
As for Nicholson, he pleaded guilty to failing to co- operate with police under the Regulation Of Investigatory Powers Act, claiming police would find information relating to cannabis on his Facebook timeline.
It is no small irony that much of this tragic tale has been played out on Facebook. Yesterday — six weeks after her daughter’s death — Stacey White, 30, posted this message on the site: ‘There are no words describing the pain I am feeling right now in my heart.
‘Today I’m sat here by your resting place thinking of all of what you would be doing, how eager you would be to get to school with your friends to talk n [sic] laugh the day away, how you would be teasing Dylan about going to school and how he shouldn’t talk to you all day . . .
‘Always running late cause you couldn’t find the colour you wanted or it just wasn’t put on right. Spraying enough perfume to fill the house and doing your hair at least ten times. Yet those things will not happen today.’
So what do we know of Lucy, her death and the man who remains the prime suspect?
Lucy and Dylan were raised by Stacey, a care worker, after the breakdown of her relationship with Andy McHugh, 36. Lucy had not had a relationship with her father, it is believed, for at least three years. Lucy’s mother said her daughter wanted to be known by her surname, rather than Mr McHugh’s.
Mr McHugh, who married
Michele in 2009 and has had two more children, describes himself as a ‘ family man and businessman’.
The online ‘vape’ store boss was away at a Christian festival when his daughter was killed.
He later held his own memorial service and said: ‘I’ve had my heart ripped out over and over, but through the pain of losing my daughter I’ve had an amazing bunch of people to support me through the start of this season of my life.’
Last night Will Rose, a friend of Mr McHugh, said: ‘Lucy was a lovely little girl growing up, always bubbly and happy, playing with Andy and Michele’s other children. Andy is a devout Christian, heavily involved in the church, and Lucy would go with him on Sundays and be singing and dancing.’
What went wrong in their relationship is unclear, but as a result Lucy’s grandfather, Keith McHugh, had not seen his granddaughter since 2015.
Yesterday, he told the Mail he was devastated by the loss of his ‘lovely, playful’ granddaughter.
Mr McHugh, 64, said when Lucy turned 16 she was set to receive a precious jewellery box left behind by his late wife, Lucy’s grandmother. Now the Army veteran, who has remarried, intends to name a star in her memory.
‘She was a lovely girl who enjoyed life and loved her friends and family. She loved going shopping with her mum and buying clothes — for Christmas and her birthday all she would want from us was clothes, vouchers and money for clothes. She was a massive part of the family, my first grandchild, and I’m devastated.’
As for the apparent reluctance of Facebook, he said: ‘ I can’t understand why Facebook won’t open up his account. It’s terrible — it’s a murder investigation.’
Lucy lived with her mother and her mother’s fiancé, Richard Elmes, in Mansel Road East — where Stephen Nicholson, 24, also lived until several months ago with his mother.
More recently, Nicholson had been living with Lucy’s family, setting up a tattoo studio in the family home and finding work as a carer through the same agency as Stacey White. He moved out, Southampton Crown Court heard, only days before the murder and admitted contacting Lucy on Facebook on the evening before and morning of her disappearance.
Lucy was a popular girl who loved playing football, cooking, making cakes and was on the school gymnastics team.
Photos of the teenager, several of which have been released as part of police appeal for information, show a striking girl with long, blonde hair — in one image freshfaced and in school uniform, in another wearing red lipstick.
At her funeral last week she was described as a ‘hurricane of smiles and lipgloss, wearing the brightest colours possible, with no care for what anyone thought’.
‘She was a real individual and never followed the crowd,’ said Reverend Sean Blackman, in his eulogy. ‘Lucy respected everybody regardless of colour or creed.’
Lucy’s main Facebook profile picture was of heavily tattooed rocker Ronnie Radke, founder of U.S. band Falling In Reverse.
CCTV footage showing Lucy on her final journey sees her wearing a distinctive black jacket with white sleeves with the band’s logo on the front and the motif ‘RADKE 01’ in red on the back.
Her profile included a quote from another tattooed American rocker, Andy Biersack: ‘Life gives you enough scars, you don’t need to manufacture your own.’
Intriguingly, her Facebook profile also reveals that three times between February and April, Lucy posted that she was ‘in a relationship’. She did not say with whom.
Several curious female friends asked the identity of her new boyfriend, speculating that it was a classmate. She told them to message her privately and she would tell them.
Have those secret exchanges been shared with police? At least one girl told Facebook users she had spoken to detectives. Clearly there is more to uncover.
On Monday, Detective Superintendent Paul Barton renewed an appeal to Lucy’s friends: ‘We know it will be a difficult time for Lucy’s friends as they return to school without her.
‘We’re asking Lucy’s friends to think about conversations they had with her in the lead up to Wednesday, July 25 — the day she went missing.
‘Did Lucy tell you about someone she was planning to meet that day or has met before in the sports centre area? You may have kept something secret, but you won’t betray Lucy if you help us find her killer.’
YESTERDAY, at the spot where her body was found, a few floral tributes remained as testament to the tragedy that unfolded there. Meanwhile, a mile-and-a-half away, a woodland area called Tanner’s Brook was the focus of the hunt for the murder weapon — which police have said could be a knife, or a pair of scissors.
Police have said a man in a dark jacket and blue jeans on a mountain bike was seen riding away from the sports centre towards the new search area on July 25.
Det Supt Barton said there was a new ‘ clear line of inquiry’. But the murder still remains a baffling mystery with Nicholson still apparently the main suspect.
He was arrested on July 27, two days after Lucy’s disappearance, on suspicion of murder and sexual activity with a child, and was charged with failing to co-operate with police on July 31.
In court, Nicholson’s barrister, Richard Tutt, said he’d had numerous jobs, including in a butcher’s company and in a warehouse, since the age of 16.
He said Nicholson had worked for around nine months as a care worker and a tattoo artist from a room he set up in Lucy’s house.
He has a Facebook account showcasing his ‘designs’.
The main picture for this account is of a tattoo reading ‘The Boss’ above a man’s nipple. It is unclear whether the shot is of Nicholson, who has a tattoo on his neck and a tongue piercing.
Another Facebook profile is full of pictures of him playing with a young boy, thought to be his son.
But it’s what the police can’t access that is the issue now.