Transgender murderer to see out life sentence in men’s prison
Scarlet Blake will serve a minimum of 24 years after hitting victim with a vodka bottle and choking him
A TRANSGENDER cat killer who murdered a stranger will be sent to a men’s prison as a judge said the attacker used a transitioning story to “shift responsibility to others”.
Scarlet Blake, 26, was sentenced to life in prison, with a 24-year minimum term at Oxford Crown Court yesterday.
Prosecutors said Blake hit Jorge Martin Carreno over the back of the head with a vodka bottle in July 2021 and choked him before pushing him into the River Cherwell where he drowned.
Carreno, who was a stranger to Blake, had been coming home from a night out when he encountered his killer.
The murder came just four months after Blake killed a cat before placing it in a blender, on the instruction of a former girlfriend.
Yesterday in his sentencing remarks, Judge Martin Chamberlain said Blake had derived “pleasure” from killing the 30-year-old and that a Netflix documentary Don’t F--- With Cats had “played a part” in cementing in the murderer’s mind the killing of a person and a cat.
Blake, who is a transgender woman, previously spoke of how coming out to relatives at 12 years old led to an “emotional rift” within the immediate family. Judge Chamberlain highlighted this complaint, along with unsubstantiated claims of mental illness, as an attempt by Blake to “rationalise” the crime.
Addressing Blake in his sentencing remarks, the judge repeated Blake’s claims of not wanting to “kill a living creature, let alone a person” and the blame the murderer placed on former girlfriend Colorado-based Ashlynn Bell, who is also a trans woman.
In court, Blake claimed Ms Bell had been a driving force behind the killing, saying: “She was wanting to make me do this thing and I was pretty much... well at a limit after going through with the killing of the cat.”
Judge Chamberlain said: “You attributed your morbid interests to a split or dissociative personality, using the language of psychiatry or psychoanalysis.
“You adopted the persona of a cat. You talked about difficulties you had had since transitioning in childhood to live as a woman and about your troubled relationship with your parents.
“All this was part of an elaborate attempt to rationalise what you had done and shift responsibility to others.”
Judge Chamberlain stressed that the murder was “not the fault” of Blake’s parents and that whatever role Ms Bell played in “encouraging” an “interest in killing”, it was the killer’s decision.
Fang Chen, Blake’s mother and a clinical researcher at Oxford University, gave no reaction when Blake nodded at her on the way out from the dock.
Judge Chamberlain previously told the jury who sat on the two-week trial that the fact Blake was trans “on its own has no particular relevance to the case”.
“It doesn’t make it any more or less likely that she is guilty of the offence with which she is charged,” he added, as he summed up the evidence heard.
But he said jurors were allowed to consider Blake’s “stature” and if they believed the defendant was “physically able” to carry out the attack on Carreno.
At approximately 10st 12lb (69kg), the court heard Blake weighed almost 2st more than her just under 9st (57kg) victim and was as tall as Mr Carreno, at around 5ft 7in (171cm).
Blake, who was born in China and emigrated to the UK in 2002, told jurors that never exercising was a means to avoid “masculine muscle gain”.
In a victim impact statement read in court by Gerardo Carreno, one of Carreno’s brothers, the family said: “We miss Jorge every day, thinking, ‘What would life look like if he hadn’t met Scarlet that night?’ This loss feels like a traumatic, devastating blow, leaving a void impossible to fill.”
The judge remarked that Blake’s crime was “very much more serious” than most cases of its category and that there was a “clear sexual motivation” for the murderer, with the Oxford resident telling a former girlfriend of killing “because my lover said it’d be hot”.
Judge Chamberlain gave a 24-year minimum term with a life sentence for Carreno’s murder. Two concurrent sentences of four months and two months for unnecessary suffering to an animal and criminal damage, were also handed down in respect of the cat incident.
Blake gave no visible response as the sentence was handed down.