‘Oozing with brutality’... girl accused of 2 killings
THE teenage girl on trial for killing a Scots dinner lady and her daughter was yesterday accused of ‘oozing brutality and contempt’ for her victims.
On what would have been victim Katie Edwards’ 14th birthday, prosecutor Peter Joyce, QC, pointed his finger towards the 15-year-old defendant in the dock and said: ‘The sheer brutality and contempt for her [victims] oozes from every pore of that girl.’
She is on trial for the murder of Elizabeth Edwards, 49, and her daughter Katie, who were stabbed in the throats as they slept in bed.
The girl’s boyfriend has already admitted both murders. Neither can be named due to legal reasons.
Yesterday, after a five-day trial at Nottingham Crown Court, the jury
‘Determined to take two lives’
retired to consider whether or not the defendant is guilty of murder.
Having heard her plea of guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, they must decide whether or not the girl was suffering from a mental condition which impaired her ability to form rational judgment.
Over the course of the trial the jury has been subject to harrowing detail of the killings, which the girl fully admits she planned with her boyfriend.
They heard that the girl had a ‘grudge’ against Mrs Edwards, a church-going dinner lady originally from Edinburgh, who lived in Spalding, Lincolnshire.
The girl and her boyfriend hatched a plan to kill Mrs Edwards, meeting after school at McDonald’s and at a riverbank spot which was ‘special’ to the young couple.
On April 13, the couple were able to enter the house, with the plan being for the boy to kill Mrs Edwards and the girl to kill Katie Edwards, the court was told.
The jury heard that after stabbing Mrs Edwards the boy smothered her with a pillow, then checked her pulse to make sure she was actually dead.
With the girl standing by, the boy subsequently did the same to Katie.
Afterwards, the couple removed the boy’s bloody clothes and had a bath together – also part of the plan.
Making his closing speech to the jury, Mr Joyce said the girl held the lives of her victims as cheaply as she would ‘a hamster or a goldfish’.
He accused the girl of being the ‘driver’ out of the couple and said ‘from her first interview’ the girl demonstrated ‘just how determined these two children were to take two lives’.
Andrew Stubbs, QC, defending the girl, urged jurors to look at psychiatric evidence which showed she was suffering from an adjustment disorder at the time.
The jury will resume their deliberations today.