Bare-chested and taunting his victim’s grieving mother from his cell. Vile video of zombie knife killer that makes you despair of our justice system
The bare-chested youth in the photograph (right) is Marques Walker. It’s a still from a video he recorded on a mobile phone smuggled into his cell in Feltham Young Offender Institution, following his arrest for stabbing a 14-year-old boy to death with a so- called zombie knife in Croydon town centre in November, 2021.
When the video is playing Walker, now
17, can be seen rapping, dancing and smoking. Could there be a more graphic illustration of the failings in our criminal justice system?
Indeed, this case, disturbing for so many reasons, is littered with failings — otherwise you would not be reading this story and Jermaine Cools might still be alive.
The white patch on Walker’s forehead, visible in the picture, is a dressing for a wound he sustained during an altercation in Feltham.
Police were alerted to the existence of the video, which was circulating on social media, by outraged locals.
We have been told the footage showing Walker’s complete lack of remorse — and obtained during our own inquiries into the killing — was passed to the judge who sentenced him to life at the Old Bailey this week after he pleaded guilty to murder.
Aged 16 when he carried out the killing, he was the first child murderer to be sent down at a televised hearing. Walker had little choice than to admit his guilt.
his merciless assault outside a fast food outlet, not far from the bus station, was captured, frame by chilling frame, on multiple CCTV cameras in London Road as he plunged the knife seven times into Jermaine’s chest, abdomen and shoulder while the teenager lay defenceless on the pavement.
What the judge did not know is that Walker has also used the phone to communicate with gang associates on the outside, which continues to cause distress for Jermaine’s family, especially his mother Lorraine.
One of these illicit conversations was saved on Snapchat, the popular messaging app.
At one point, Walker is asked if he wanted to ‘say something to everyone’ [fellow gang members], a resident of Feltham, who did not wish to be identified, revealed.
Walker replies: ‘Free me now. Free me. F****** free Tiny St.’
This was Walker’s ‘name’ in the Shrublands gang, also known as S-Town, based on the notorious Shrublands council estate in Croydon, which has been involved in bloody tit-for-tat feuds with rivals.
Walker’s voice was recorded by the friend he was speaking to and was then used on a drill video, the music genre blamed for fuelling many of these turf wars.
But the purpose of this two-minute film, Lorraine believes, which opens with a shot of the Shrublands Avenue street sign and a map of the estate saying ‘Welcome to Shrublands’, was to glorify the murder of her son — and taunt her.
Viewed more than 1,000 times on YouTube in the past fortnight, sinister figures in hoods, balaclavas, masks and gang colours can be seen roaming the area.
Jermaine’s mother has seen the video and heard Walker’s voice (‘F****** free Tiny St’) on it amid barely decipherable lyrics about ‘blades’. The lyrics also mention ‘tots’, which Lorraine believes is a reference to the killer being prepared to knife children.
This is the sociopathic world, prevalent in almost every inner city in the country, which Marques Walker came from.
Lorraine has also seen another video, which refers to ‘3Tiny St’ [Walker] . . . Really made man go out [ killed him], his Marg [mum] upset . . .’, accompanied by emojis of a skull and crying and then two tears of joy emojis. This film culminates in a final sickening insult: ‘#STown done that. Now he touching clouds’ [meaning ‘ he’ is dead], with emojis of a cloud, skull and tears of joy.
Jermaine is the only youngster to have been killed in such circumstances in Croydon in 2021 so it is hard to believe this was not a reference to him.
The videos were made by Marques Walker’s Shrublands gang. They have been taken down by police and then inevitably resurface with altered lyrics or less obvious references to Jermaine and his poor family.
‘They made me sick to my stomach, laughing, goading, seeking fame out of my son’s murder,’ said Lorraine, who refuses to be intimidated or stay silent when many in her position, understandably, might decide not to speak out.
Jermaine was an Arsenal fan, like his father Julius, who owns a Caribbean takeaway.
he also loved fashion, particularly trainers. More than ten pairs (including the Nike Air Jordan brand) are in his bedroom, which has remained untouched.
There is a giant picture of Jermaine covering his bed. ‘I couldn’t bear to go into his bedroom without seeing him,’ said Lorraine, 36, in a softly spoken voice, still numb with grief. But both she and Julius are haunted by the fact that their precious son should still be here, should still be on his PlayStation, still be going to the football with his dad.
every parent who has lost a child must feel that way. But their agony has been compounded by shortcomings in the justice system which allowed Marques Walker to be in London Road, the main drag through Croydon, on the evening of November 18 2021, when Jermaine was walking with his much older brother on the opposite side of the street.
Many — not just Jermaine’s family — believe Walker should never have been there in the first place.
Three times he had been caught with knives in two years. Three times he remained free to kill.
It would have been hard to find a more dangerous teenager on the streets of London than Walker when he saw Jermaine and his older brother.
In January 2020, when he was just 15, Walker was found with a 10in commando knife in his rucksack at school. he was cautioned and given a nine-month referral order, which usually involves undertaking a programme of interventions and activities to address offending behaviour. It didn’t work. Then in
‘If he hadn’t been bailed, my son would be alive’
April 2021, he was charged with possession of a 9in hunting knife, criminal property and crack cocaine with intent to supply during a county lines operation in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.
He wasn’t prosecuted because he was treated as a victim of modern slavery who had been lured into the gang.
Giving him a second chance was a mistake.
Six months later, in October 2021, Walker was carrying a 20in zombie knife — so-called because they are often used by characters in zombie films — in his waistband when he was arrested on a bus in Croydon.
He appeared before magistrates charged with possessing a bladed article and was bailed.
The following month Jermaine Cools was dead. Walker was still on bail at the time. One of his bail conditions was that he was banned from this part of Croydon.
‘They had ample opportunities to intercept this boy to prevent him killing somebody,’ says Lorraine, in a tone that reflects her quiet fury.
‘He had already been caught twice with offensive weapons when he was bailed again, including once in school at the age of 15. School is the one place where you are supposed, as a parent, to feel your children are safe. If he hadn’t been bailed, my son would be still alive.’
It was the second devastating tragedy Lorraine has suffered. In 2006, she lost a three-year- old daughter from a previous relationship to cancer.
‘The chance of losing one child is one in a million but I have lost two,’ says Lorraine. ‘One was unavoidable. The other was. Nothing worse could happen. I don’t live any more. I just exist.’
She blames the youth justice system. The ethos underpinning the system is to avoid criminalising children and young people unnecessarily.
They should, to quote the sentencing council, ‘ be given the opportunity to learn from their mistakes without undue penalisation or stigma’.
Hence the reason why Walker was issued with a referral order when he was caught with a lethal knife the first time, was not prosecuted on the second occasion and given bail on the third.
The statistics for knife crime, at least, suggest the policy of restorative justice, however laudable in principle, is failing badly.
Figures from 37 out of 44 police forces in England and Wales show machetes, which can be ordered online for as little as £9.99, are being used in almost 700 offences a month — every hour on average.
The true total is even higher as the Met, Britain’s largest police force, did not provide data for the Freedom of Information request.
The loss of a young life is always a tragedy, but the past also tells us that teenagers who are killed in such circumstances can also be part of the problem. But Jermaine Cools wasn’t part of the problem. And the motive for the savage attack?
Jermaine’s half-brother Deloney Cools, 30, a married father-of-two — he and Jermaine shared the same father — was involved in a confrontation with Marques Walker a few months earlier. On that occasion, says Lorraine, Deloney had stepped in to separate Walker from a younger boy whom he was picking on.
Deloney then became embroiled in a fracas with Walker himself.
On the terrible evening in question, Jermaine and Deloney, a delivery driver with Sainsbury’s, were together in London Road.
Walker, brought up by his mother after his father was killed in the Caribbean it is believed, was among a group who crossed the street to meet them.
Moments later, he pulled out a zombie knife.
A tussle ensued culminating in what was described as a ‘senseless and merciless’ assault on Jermaine after he stumbled to the ground.
‘It is clear that Jermaine Cools did not stand a chance,’ is how his predicament was described in the sentencing note, a document issued by the Crown Prosecution Service, which outlined the case.
‘He could offer no resistance. He was unarmed, he was on the floor and he was totally vulnerable.’
Walker was arrested six weeks later while police were searching a friend’s house in relation to another matter. He was held on remand in Feltham Young Offender Institution.
A Prison Service spokesperson said: ‘We are urgently investigating these videos. Phones are not tolerated in prisons or young offender institutions and those who break the rules face tough punishment — including extra days behind bars.
Our £125 million investment in airport- style security has already blocked more than 28,000 attempts to smuggle contraband — including phones — into prisons.’ While at Feltham, Walker led a group who turned on an inmate in the exercise yard, kicking and stamping on his head and torso until he lost consciousness, leaving him in need of lifesaving brain surgery. ‘Finish him off,’ he could be heard saying as he was pulled away by guards. Jermaine was London’s youngest murder victim of 2021 when Croydon was called the city’s ‘knife crime capital’. He was among five teenagers who were murdered there, more than any other London borough. There has been a recent upsurge in the violence that has plagued this part of south London.
In a two-week period alone in March this year, four young people were stabbed and two firearms were discharged. Shrublands, built in the 1950s to solve a post-war housing shortage, has been at the centre of much of the violence historically.
In July last year, 16-year- old Cameron Smith was stabbed to death with a zombie knife in front of his mother when balaclava-clad thugs, involved in drug-dealing in nearby Thornton Heath, stormed
‘Giving him a second chance was a mistake’
‘A child has to die before action is taken’
his home on the estate in a revenge attack after one of their number was targeted.
Smith, like Marques Walker, was a member of the rival and lethal Shrublands gang. Walker sat emotionless in the dock at the Old Bailey, flanked by three custody officers, when he was sentenced this week.
Relatives in the public gallery covered their eyes as CCTV footage of the murder was shown.
He will serve a minimum term of 19 years.
‘This is yet another case of the senseless murder of a young teenager committed for reasons no mature adult could fathom,’ Judge Sarah Munro told him.
She was right. But wasn’t Jermaine’s death also an indictment of the youth justice system?
A child has to die, it appears, before tougher action is taken by the courts.
Today, the spot in London Road where Jermaine Cools was stabbed is marked by a plaque in a doorway with a picture of Jermaine alongside the words: ‘The best son ever, truly loved and deeply missed, but never forgotten. A shining star.’