Killer showed ‘lack of empathy and no remorse’ in confession, says psychiatrist

SCARLETT Jenkinson lacked empathy and showed no remorse when she confessed to stabbing Brianna Ghey, a psychiatrist said yesterday.

Dr Richard Church interviewed the 16-year-old before and after her conviction for the transgender schoolgirl’s murder in December.

‘There was a lack of empathy, certainly,’ he said. ‘She was very calm. No remorse. For a child going through a murder trial, that was noteworthy.’

During the trial, Jenkinson blamed her friend and accomplice Eddie Ratcliffe for Brianna’s death.

She claimed she never expected him to carry out her fantasy and was not responsible for any of the 28 stab wounds Brianna suffered. But, on Friday, before the pair were sentenced to life in jail, prosecutor Deanna Heer KC told Manchester Crown Court that Jenkinson had confessed to Dr Church last month.

She told him she ‘snatched’ the knife off Ratcliffe when he ‘panicked’ and continued stabbing Brianna ‘a lot’ as she lay dying on the ground.

Dr Church told The Sunday Times that Jenkinson, who was obsessed with serial killers, may have been mirroring language used by American murderer Jeffrey Dahmer when she said she was motivated to kill her ‘friend’ because she was afraid Brianna would leave her.

Dahmer, the recent subject of a Netflix drama, told police that he killed and dismembered 17 boys and men between 1978 and 1991 for the same reason.

‘She had watched certain documentaries and was interested in particular serial killers,’ Dr Church said.

‘Jeffrey Dahmer was saying things like “I wanted them to always be with me”. The challenges are whether she was saying that because she was copying what another serial killer said or whether she was experiencing those emotions and thoughts, and watching these documentaries and thinking, “Oh that’s like me”. It’s hard to know.

‘We live in an age where [when] young people are asked what you want to be, they say, ‘I want to be famous,’ and is notoriety a form of that?’