TRIBUTES TO MURDERED GIRL’S MUM
POPULAR SUPERMARKET WORKER DIES AFTER LONG BATTLE WITH ILLNESS
TRIBUTES have been paid to the mother of murdered teenager KellyAnne Bates, who has died after a long battle with illness.
Supermarket worker Margaret Bates, from Mottram in Tameside, passed away in hospital just before Christmas. She was 65.
Kelly-Anne was just 17 when her much older boyfriend James Smith drowned her in a bathtub in 1996.
Over the three weeks leading up to her murder he had tortured her and stabbed her in the mouth, face and body while she pleaded in vain for her life.
Smith, then 49, got life imprisonment and must serve a minimum of 25 years behind bars. He becomes eligible for parole next year.
Friends said the imminent release of her daughter’s killer had been weighing heavily on her mind.
Margaret was a popular figure at Tesco in Hattersley, where she loved working since it opened in 2012.
She was said to have felt closest to her daughter when she worked on the Tesco check-out as this was the site of the family home until it was bulldozed to make way for the supermarket.
Margaret had twice battled breast cancer and had radiotherapy treatment earlier this year, which diminished her immune system. An asthma sufferer, she died in hospital on December 17 due to respiratory failure, according to her family. She leaves husband Tommy and their two sons. Devastated Tommy, 71, a retired lorry driver said despite her health struggles she had been ‘doing well considering.’
“But she didn’t have any immunity with the radiotherapy. Anything that was going round, she got,” he said.
He added: “She was always saying ‘I want to get back with Kelly.’” Tommy said Margaret had not tested positive for Covid-19 and he insisted, although she never got over losing Kelly-Anne, the death had not been a factor in her recent ill-health. Margaret had always been ‘very popular with the customers’ at Tesco, he said.
Friends and Tesco customers have also paid tribute to Margaret.
Leighton McMylor said: “She always had a smile for everyone and was so warm and friendly. I could always have a nice chat and a laugh with her. Being old school she always addressed people sir/madam and would often help people pack their shopping.”
Despite suffering awful personal tragedy ‘Margaret managed to carry on daily being friendly and chatty to complete strangers - how brave and strong she must have been,’ said Leighton.
Margaret and husband Tommy believe Kelly-Anne was secretly groomed by Smith for two years before she finally brought him home when she was 16.
The couple didn’t speak publicly about the death until 2015.
At the time Margaret said: “The first time I met him, he swaggered in, and it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. He was much older than I expected. I vividly recall seeing our bread knife in the kitchen and wanting to pick it up and stab him in the back. It was a bizarre thought - I would never normally think of anything so violent and now I wonder whether it was some sort of sixth sense. “Looking back, it’s my greatest regret that I didn’t kill him there and then. It would have saved my daughter’s life.” Despite pleas from her parents, Kelly-Anne moved in with Smith the following year. Though they alerted police and social services, they were powerless to intervene.
Margaret pleaded with her daughter to return home, but she refused.
Margaret said: “Smith exuded evil. When I visited once, he showed me a hole in his floorboards where he said he’d had a gas leak. Just a few weeks later, he kept my daughter prisoner in the hole whilst he tortured her.
In the period before her death, in April 1996, Kelly-Anne endured unimaginable torture.
Over three barbaric weeks, Smith subjected her to 150 separate injuries.
Her body was so badly mutilated that police and pathologists said it was the worst case of abuse they had ever seen.
She was always saying I want to get back with Kelly
Margaret Bates’ husband Tommy