Family condemn release of man who killed mum
THE family of a Birmingham murder victim have condemned the release on parole of her “remorseless” killer, saying they are ‘terrified’.
The daughter of Jean Bellis spoke out after Peter Hastings, who was jailed for life in 1999 over her murder, was released.
Hastings was convicted of the brutal killing six years after Ms Bellis was killed in April 1993, thanks to DNA breakthroughs.
But this week her daughter Vanessa Watts issued a plea to the Parole Board, demanding he be kept jailed.
Hastings was released in July, the board later confirmed.
Vanessa was a teenager when Ms Bellis was murdered. She said she had been devastated by the decision.
Petty criminal Hastings, of Druids Heath, was convicted after developments in DNA profiling and forensic science identified a bloodstain belonging to 38-year-old Ms Bellis on the instep of his shoe.
At the time of the killing, forensic scientists were only able to establish the blood type would match with one in ten of the population.
But just five years later, DNA profiling had advanced to such a stage that scientists were able to prove the chances of it not being Mrs Bellis’s blood was one in 58.9 million of the female population.
Hastings was arrested twice over the murder of the mother-of-two in Wardour Road, Kingstanding, on April 13, 1993. The charges against him were later dropped and the case was discontinued.
He was arrested again five years later, after Ms Bellis was subjected to a frenzied attack in the kitchen of her home.
She suffered a total of 29 stab wounds to her neck, chest and abdomen and was thought to have lain dead for up to 10 days before she was found.
Her murder shocked the city and and her family launched a poster campaign and put up a £1,000 reward for help to catch the killer.
“He’s the only one with that information,” Ms Watts said.
“He’s shown no remorse, no explanation... he’s still denying that he even killed my mother.
“It hurts me and my sister to think she was alone in that house, dying.” Ms Watts said his release made her “sick to my stomach”, branding the decision a “massive slap in the face”. “I’ve been having nightmares since I found this out,” she said.
Her sister, who still lives in Birmingham, is “frightened to death”, she adding: “I feel powerless. It doesn’t feel like justice.”