Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Unmasked: Twilight Killers
» Judges lift ban on naming 14-year-olds » Victims were girl’s own mum and sister
THE 14-year-old lovers dubbed the Twilight Killers murdered the girl’s mother and younger sister, we are now able to reveal.
Judges yesterday overturned an order banning the naming of Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham who slaughtered dinner lady Elizabeth Edwards, 49, and daughter Katie, 13. The pair, who watched vampire film Twilight after the slayings, are the youngest double murderers in UK history. The twisted pair’s “us against the world” relationship was compared to that of US killers Bonnie and Clyde. They planned the gruesome murders while enjoying cheeseburgers and milk shakes in a Mcdonald’s. Edwards was jealous of her mum and sister’s close relationship and admitted she had “felt like murdering for quite a while”. Prosecutors said she was the driving force behind the plot, described as “beyond anyone’s worst nightmares”. The pair carried out the killings in April last year. They were convicted in November and given 20-year minimum terms which were cut to 17½ years yesterday. Edwards and Markham met at school. Elizabeth disapproved of the romance and warned the authorities they were a “time-bomb” waiting to go off. With Markham’s family, she forcibly tried to stop them seeing each other. Elizabeth and her daughter were repeatedly stabbed in the neck by Markham as they slept. Edwards watched as he smothered them with pillows. They had planned suicide after the killings, writing a note titled “f*** you world”. But they could not go through with it and instead climbed into a bath to wash off the blood. They then dragged Kim’s mattress downstairs and had sex on it before tucking into ice cream and tea cakes. Over the next 36 hours they bingewatched Twilight while their victims lay upstairs. Edwards told detectives she hated her mum and thought of her as a “problem” she “wanted to get rid of ”. After her arrest she told police: “Ever since I was young I never got on with my mum. I knew she favoured my sister and even when she said she didn’t, I knew she was lying. “They would talk together and I felt left out and suicidal. Until Lucas came along no one listened to my thoughts.” When asked how long this had been going on she replied: “Three years. I felt like murdering for quite a while.” Edwards told a psychiatrist: “I don’t feel any emotion towards my mum. She deserved it. I’m glad she’s dead.” Prosecutors told jurors that “brutality and contempt oozes from every pore of this girl”. She held the lives of her victims as cheaply as she would a “hamster or a goldfish”. Markham went to the teen’s home in
This girl held the lives of her victims as cheaply as she would a hamster or a goldfish PROSECUTOR AT TRIAL OF 14-YEAR-OLD EDWARDS
Spalding, Lincs, around midnight with four knives in a rucksack. Edwards, wearing Minion pyjamas, heard him knock three times on the window of the room she shared with Katie and let him in through the bathroom window. The pair, in the same class at Spalding Academy, took the knives out as they crept along the landing. Markham was going to kill Elizabeth and Edwards her sister but she backed out. She later admitted: “I didn’t feel capable of killing my sister. If I had been strong enough, I would have killed my mum.” Markham went into Elizabeth’s room and plunged an eight-inch kitchen knife repeatedly into her throat. Edwards told police: “Mum was struggling. I could see her arms and could hear her legs kicking out. “I sat on the floor, put my hands back and got into a cradle position. I rocked back and forth saying ‘It’s going to be OK, keep calm, it will be over soon’. “After about 10 minutes she was dead. I looked around and she wasn’t struggling any more and had gone limp.” Markham then took off his shoes and crept to Katie’s room. She was stabbed in the neck with so much force the knife went through to her spine. Edwards told police: “All I could hear was her screaming ‘Get off me’ all croaky. I was shaking.” Police found the pair on a mattress in the lounge. Asked where her mother was Edwards replied: “Upstairs”. When asked what had happened to her, Markham responded: “Why don’t you go and see?” Edwards later told a psychiatrist: “Neither of us felt that bad about it. I did it because I did not like my mum. I didn’t want her to ruin anyone else’s life.” The sisters were taken into care in 2008 after Elizabeth punched Edwards. They went back to their mother after a social services assessment. But later that year Edwards complained to social workers she “felt left out” at home. Elizabeth was divorced from Katie and Kim’s dad Peter and in a relationship with van driver Graham Green, 50. A 2013 social services document noted Edwards had warned she may do “something really stupid”. She wrote: “I feel I do not belong to my family. I feel trapped at home. When I am trapped I feel like I will burst and do something really stupid.”