Briton murdered dating app teen who f lew from Canada to be with him
A BRITISH man yesterday admitted stabbing his Mormon Canadian girlfriend to death just days before the flight she had booked to escape him.
Jack Sepple, 23, murdered Ashley Wadsworth, 19, at his Essex home after the pair met via a dating app.
Miss Wadsworth flew across the Atlantic to meet him in November – but relatives bought the aspiring lawyer a ticket back home after she begged them to help her escape his possessive and abusive behaviour.
Her sister, Hailey, 21, said she witnessed Sepple beat her while they were on a FaceTime call. Hailey claimed Sepple had deleted Miss Wadsworth’s social media content, leaving up only photographs taken with him.
Miss Wadsworth had posted several photos online of her ‘amazing trip to London’, but beneath the carefully curated image of a happy relationship was a far darker, violent reality. ‘He had been very possessive over her belongings – her phone especially,’ said Miss Wadsworth’s cousin Kali, 18.
‘He was going through her social media... the reason this entire fight started from the beginning was because he had seen an old chat where she flirted with somebody.
‘He freaked out over it and Ashley was on FaceTime with Hailey and she watched him just start beating her.
‘ Then [ Hailey] reached out and tried to get her an earlier plane ticket.
‘He had logged into all her social media [accounts], deleted all her posts and changed all her passwords and smashed her phone.’
Miss Wadsworth had flown to Britain from the city of Vernon in British Columbia in November to ‘escape small town life’.
The teenager, who had converted to Mormonism aged 18, was staying with Sepple. She was found unresponsive with stab wounds to the chest at his home in Chelmsford in February.
When the murder charge was put to Sepple in court yesterday, he simply replied: ‘I’m guilty.’ Miss Wadsworth, a fluent French and Spanish speaker, had dreamt of becoming a lawyer and had been accepted to Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia.
In a family tribute released by Essex Police earlier this month, Ashley’s family celebrated her ‘spontaneous, witty, kind personality’ and remembered her ‘unforgettable laugh’.
They added: ‘ Ashley, you are beautiful to us, and we will miss you very, very, much.’
Her grandfather, Jeff, 66, said he had encouraged his granddaughter to travel to Britain because he thought she would have the time of her life.
‘I never thought something like this would happen in England – I thought it was the safest place in the world,’ he added.
Sepple, who has tattoos on his face and hands, admitted to the murder yesterday at Chelmsford Crown Court. Judge Christopher Morgan told Sepple: ‘By your plea of guilty to murder there’s only one sentence that can be passed and that’s a life sentence.’
He remanded the defendant in custody until a date still to be fixed, when he will be sentenced.
‘I thought England was safe’