Torture murder girls win anonymity for life
TWO teenage girls who murdered a vulnerable alcoholic in her own home have won a High Court bid to keep their identities secret for life.
The pair were 13 and 14 when they put Angela Wrightson, 39, through a five-hour ordeal while they posed for Snapchat selfies.
They were handed life sentences at Leeds Crown Court in 2016 and told they must serve a minimum of 15 years.Trial judge Mr Justice Globe refused to lift reporting restrictions preventing them being identified, due to their vulnerability.
That anonymity expired when they turned 18 and their lawyers asked the High Court last October to grant them lifelong anonymity.
In a ruling published yesterday, Mrs Justice Tipples granted the pair, known only as D and F, permanent injunctions which stop them being identified in relation to the murder.
The girls join JonVenables and Robert Thompson, who murdered two-year-old James Bulger in Liverpool in 1993, and Mary Bell – who killed two youngsters in 1968 – in having lifelong anonymity.
Similar orders have been made in respect of Maxine Carr, former girlfriend of Soham murderer Ian Huntley, the so-called “Edlington brothers”, who tortured two boys in South Yorkshire, and Britain’s youngest terrorist – known only as RXG – who instructed an Australian jihadist to launch attacks in 2015.
Mrs Justice Tipples said: “This is a case where there is a real and immediate risk of serious physical harm or death to F at her own hand if her anonymity is not preserved.”
It was an “exceptional” case where “it is necessary to grant F the injunction sought in order to prevent her from being identified in connection with the murder of
AngelaWrightson”, she added.The judge said D too was entitled to an injunction, noting that psychological evidence had shown if her identity was revealed it would “significantly increase her risk of self-harm”.
Edward Fitzgerald QC had said at October’s hearing that both girls suffer “recognisable mental conditions” and are “extremely psychologically vulnerable”.
MissWrightson was hit with a shovel, a TV, a table and a screwstudded stick after she let them in.
She was found dead in her bloodied Hartlepool living room the following morning.