Killer who stabbed student 66 times let out for shopping trips
AN OXFORD student who murdered a woman in the grounds of Harrow is being prepared for release after serving just 11 years in a secure hospital.
William Jaggs, 34, a former drug addict, was sent to Broadmoor high security mental hospital in 2007, after he admitted stabbing Lucy Braham, a fashion student.
But the former Harrow schoolboy – who recently began cross-dressing and changed his name to Gillian – has now been allowed out of his secure unit for regular shopping trips as part of a phased release.
At his Old Bailey trial the court heard how Jaggs became obsessed with Miss Braham, 25, who lived just a few doors from him in the grounds of the public school, where both of their fathers were teachers. He killed her in a sexually motivated attack after forcing his way into her home, stabbing her 66 times.
In a statement at the time, Miss Braham’s family said: “No punishment on Earth could be appropriate for what Jaggs did. We trust in the expertise of doctors and the judiciary to make sure that he is never freed while he poses a threat to another human being.”
The trial judge also warned Jaggs that, such was the gravity of his offence, he might never be released.
But after being moved from Broadmoor to the medium security Littlemore Hospital in Oxford in 2015, Jaggs is now being prepared to be released back into the community. He has been allowed supervised visits out of hospital and has visited Oxford city centre by bus as well as going on a number of shopping trips.
Because Jaggs was given a hospital order rather than being jailed, his release is not a matter for the probation service, but for the psychiatrists and other medical professionals who have been treating him.
Miss Braham’s father, Jason, 68, who was an art teacher at Harrow, said that he would be writing to the authorities to express his concern over the proposed release.
He said: “On the evidence I know, I feel he is still a danger to the public… If he were to stop taking the medication he was on, and start drug using again, I think there is a serious risk of him going back to his old ways.”
Following the murder Jaggs was judged by psychiatrists to be suffering from schizophrenia and was sent to Broadmoor indefinitely.
A spokesman for the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The trust works with the Ministry of Justice to help patients to safely rehabilitate and recover, including extremely careful monitoring of risk to ensure the safety of both the patient and wider public.”