In pictures, Brianna’s last journey ... to meet her killers

‘You’re not going to get caught’

IT could have been any ordinary Saturday afternoon encounter between teenage friends.

Captured on CCTV, ‘ socially anxious’ Brianna Ghey was seen meeting Scarlett Jenkinson after alighting from a number 28 bus. Excited but nervous, it was the last time Brianna would be seen alive.

Eddie Ratcliffe, his hood up over his long hair, initially loitered some distance behind Jenkinson, who Brianna considered a friend, before catching up with the two girls.

He, like Jenkinson, was there for one thing – to kill.

Little more than an hour after meeting her killers at 1.53pm on February 11 last year, Brianna was dead.

Footage of the bus stop encounter was released yesterday, adding to previous images piecing together her last day.

It shows her leaving her family home in Birchwood, a suburb of Warrington, Cheshire, at 12.45pm, and boarding the bus to the nearby village of Culcheth.

She was dressed in a short grey tartan skirt, long white socks and a fluffy white hooded jacket, and carrying a pink and white checked shoulder bag.

In what their trial would later hear was a ‘sinister’ sign of their true intentions, Brianna was advised by Jenkinson to buy a single ticket. Jenkinson had lied to Brianna, who rarely ventured out alone, that they were going to a beauty spot to take drugs, even setting up a bogus Snapchat account for her fictional ‘dealer’.

Bus driver Kieran Mercer recalled how ‘very timid and quietly spoken’ Brianna appeared to be ‘ going out of her way not to be seen’ when she boarded.

At about 1.41pm, Brianna sent her mother, Esther, a WhatsApp message: ‘I’m on the bus by myself, I’m scared.’

‘Well, that’s well good xx,’ Ms Ghey replied, later explaining how she was ‘really proud’ of Brianna for having the courage to go to meet her friend.

But in a statement read to the murder trial she said: ‘I don’t think she ever saw it because it showed as being delivered, but (the two ticks to indicate a message being read) didn’t turn blue.’

Passers- by saw Brianna walking towards Culcheth Linear Park with Jenkinson and Ratcliffe, whom she had never met. In a cruel twist, one witness was Rachel Powell, mother of Esther Ghey’s partner Wes, who recalled ‘nothing appeared out of the ordinary’ with the teenagers ‘talking and laughing’.

Jenkinson and Ratcliffe were next filmed at 3.15pm after they half-ran, half-walked across a field after leaving Brianna bleeding to death. Dashcam and Ring doorbell cameras filmed the pair walking ‘ in lockstep’ towards Jenkinson’s home. Soon after, a horrified dog walker raised the alarm after finding Brianna’s body.

The pair then split up, with Jenkinson entering her house at 3.20pm, deleting a Snapchat conversation with Brianna in a ‘cool and calculated’ move.

Ratcliffe – seen in some footage wiping blood from his hands – then caught a bus home to Leigh, arriving just after 4pm.

Grotesquely, in their first communication half an hour later Ratcliffe sent a message which read: ‘So how’s your cat?’ This referred to messages they exchanged before the murder in which he typed ‘cat’ instead of ‘car’. Jenkinson replied: ‘Good lol. How’s yours?’ ‘It keeps trying to purr,’ Ratcliffe wrote.

Through the evening the pair swapped messages feigning ignorance as social media posts about the killing began. Then at 11.11pm Jenkinson asked Ratcliffe: ‘Do you have anxiety about getting caught?’ ‘Probably,’ he answered. Jenkinson wrote: ‘You’re not going to get caught don’t worry. Police are sh*** here.’

But the following morning they began to panic, with Jenkinson sending a message to Brianna’s phone asking ‘Why did you ditch us for some random man from Manchester?’ – the start of her bid to create a false defence.

First to friends, and then her parents Brian Jenkinson and Emma Sutton, she began repeating the lie about Brianna going off with the ‘random’ man. Realising this was key information, unsuspecting Ms Sutton, a teacher, called police at 5pm that Sunday.

Speaking to officers on the phone, Jenkinson repeated her false account of Brianna having ‘stormed off’. She then messaged Ratcliffe to ensure they got their story ‘straight’. To bolster her deceit, at 6.25pm she posted a Snapchat tribute describing Brianna as ‘one of the best people I have ever met and such an amazing friend’.

At 7.30pm – just over 28 hours after Brianna was stabbed – police in body armour arrived at both teenagers’ homes and arrested them.

Continuing to lay her false trail, Jenkinson was calm enough to tell officers: ‘Me being a suspect, is it cos I’m the last person to see her?’ before becoming tearful as her lies began to unravel. Ratcliffe simply said: ‘I can explain.’ Searches of his home yielded a jacket spattered with Brianna’s blood and the six-inch hunting knife believed to have inflicted the fatal injuries.

Under police interview, while Jenkinson repeated her story, Ratcliffe eventually claimed that he had been present while Brianna was killed, but that it was his friend who had stabbed her.

In court, both blamed each other and denied responsibility for killing Brianna.

In distinctive long white socks and grey tartan skirt with a pink and white bag on her shoulder, Brianna walks towards Culcheth Linear Park, flanked by Jenkinson and Ratcliffe. Jenkinson had lied to her that they were going to meet to take drugs

Brianna Ghey leaves home in Birchwood, Warrington, at 12.45pm on the day of her death in footage from a doorbell camera

Jenkinson at the moment of her arrest at 7.30pm the following day in an image from an officer’s bodyworn camera

Wearing a fluffy hooded jacket, she pauses to look at her phone as she closes the gate before heading to the bus stop

Ratcliffe during his police interview, in which he told detectives: ‘I can explain.’ A 6in hunting knife was found at his home

Bunches of flowers wrapped up in pink – Brianna’s favourite colour – left on a bench by the path where the teenager was found by a horrified dog walker. Although police were on the scene within minutes, they were unable to save her life. In court, Ratcliffe and Jenkinson blamed each other for her killing

Dashcam video from a passing car taken at 3.16pm – shortly after the murder – shows Jenkinson and Ratcliffe walking ‘in lockstep’ away from the park and towards Jenkinson’s home. They dropped Brianna’s bloodied phone down a drain

Having separated from Jenkinson, Ratcliffe – his long hair hidden under the hood of his coat – boards a bus that will take him home to Leigh. Other footage shows the teenager wiping blood from his hands

CCTV footage shows Scarlett Jenkinson – labelled by police as X – waiting for Brianna to arrive. Loitering behind her is Eddie Ratcliffe, labelled as Y, who had never met Brianna before

In police interviews, Jenkinson repeated her claims that Brianna had gone off with a ‘random’ man from Manchester – but became tearful as her story fell apart

At 1.41pm she messages her mother Esther: ‘I’m on the bus by myself, I’m scared.’ Esther doesn’t know if Brianna ever saw her encouraging reply

Brianna boards the bus that will take her to the village of Culcheth. The driver said she seemed to be ‘going out of her way not to be seen’