Teen lovers who killed mother and younger sister
15-year-old murderer is named as the daughter of victim whom she killed for ‘favouring’ her sibling
A TEENAGE girl murdered her own mother and younger sister after they fell out over her new boyfriend, it can now be reported.
Kim Edwards was just 14 when she roped in her boyfriend, Lucas Markham, also 14, to carry out the “brutal executions” of school dinner lady Elizabeth Edwards, 49, and 13-year-old Katie as they slept at their home in Spalding, Lincolnshire.
After stabbing the pair to death, the teenage lovers took a bath together, had sex and then watched the film Twilight while eating ice-cream.
During a police interview in which Kim was asked why she had done it, she replied: “Just that, well, ever since like I was young like I never got on with my mum. I knew that she favoured my sister more than me and even though she said that she didn’t I knew that she was lying.”
After being asked how this made her feel, she added: “I was okay with it, just the fact that it happened so quickly that like gave me peace of mind ’cause like, you know, it wasn’t like torture or anything.” Reporting restrictions during the trial meant that the teen killers could not be named and it could not be revealed that the suspect was Mrs Edwards’s own daughter.
But the ban on naming the pair was lifted by Sir Brian Leveson, Mr Justice Blake and Mr Justice Lewis following a lengthy court battle.
Sir Brian said: “In the circumstances of this case, notwithstanding that the appellants are only 15 years of age, we have no doubt that the lifting of reporting restrictions is in accordance with law, pursues a legitimate aim and is a reasonable and proportionate measure... properly balancing the welfare of the appellants... against the Article 10 rights of the press and the interests of the public.”
Both defendants were given life sentences last year for the killings, which were planned in a Mcdonald’s restaurant.
During the trial, the court heard how Markham had inflicted the fatal knife wounds, but Kim had been just as guilty in carrying out the “cold, calculated and callous killings”.
Kim, who spent time in foster care when she was younger, developed a huge crush on classmate Markham when, aged 12, he threw a chair across the classroom.
His mother had died of leukaemia when he was six years old and he lived with his two brothers at an aunt’s house in Spalding.
When he learnt of her obsession with him, he contacted her via Facebook and the pair became inseparable, developing what was described as a “very intense”, but very “toxic” relationship.
Mrs Edwards became concerned that Markham, who had been expelled from school by this point, was a bad influence on her daughter and tried to keep them apart.
But her dislike of Markham only served to drive the couple closer together and following a huge row the week before the murders, the couple barricaded themselves in his bedroom and refused to come out.
Two days before the murders on April 12 2015, the pair met in a local Mcdonald’s and hatched their plan to kill Mrs Edwards and Katie.
Jurors were told that Kim’s grudge against her mother was so intense that she had fantasised about killing her for some time, while she was angry with her little sister because she felt she got all the love and attention.
Mrs Edwards was killed first before Markham went into Katie’s room stabbing and then smothering her. During the planning of the killings they had agreed to stab them through the throat in order to damage their voice boxes to prevent them from screaming for help.
Det Supt Martin Holvey, of Lincolnshire Police, said in a statement after the Court of Appeal’s ruling: “The judges have ruled that there is a strong public interest in the full facts of this exceptional case being known, meaning that Lucas Markham and Kim Edwards can now be named.
“The murders of Elizabeth and Katie Edwards were horrific and brutal and the whole country shared a sense of shock that two juveniles, who were only 14 years old at the time, could have carried out such a horrendous act.”