The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Obsessed with serial killers – teen murderer named
A SADISTIC teenage girl who murdered her transgender schoolmate after becoming obsessed with notorious serial killers has been named.
Scarlett Jenkinson, 16, had enjoyed the killing of Brianna Ghey, wanted to paint herself in “as bad a light as possible” and said she had a desire to kill again.
Yesterday, she was sentenced to life in prison and ordered to serve a minimum of 22 years for the “brutal” stabbing of Brianna, a 16-year-old trans girl who attended the same school.
Jenkinson’s accomplice Eddie Ratcliffe, 16, was also given a life sentence and told he must spend at least 20 years behind bars before he could be considered for release. Both were convicted of murder. The pair had been referred to as Girl X and Boy Y throughout the trial, but at Manchester Crown Court their anonymity was lifted by Ms Justice Yip, who said their crime had been motivated by sadism and transphobia.
However, Peter Spooner, Brianna’s father, told Sky News that he thought his daughter’s killers should not have been named and instead “forgotten about, locked up and not even spoken about again”.
Jenkinson and Ratcliffe were both 15 when they killed Brianna on Feb 11 2023, having drawn up a “kill list” of potential targets from their classmates and after spending weeks plotting the attack. After pretending to be her friends and arranging to meet her at Linear Park in Culcheth, near Warrington, they ambushed her and stabbed her 28 times in an attack of “exceptional brutality”.
At the hearing, it emerged that Jenkinson had admitted to stabbing Brianna to death herself after Ratcliffe “panicked” and said he did not want to kill her.
Ms Justice Yip said that, after being found guilty of the killings in November last year, Jenkinson confessed to psychiatrists that she had stabbed Brianna because she had an “admiration” for “notorious killers” and wanted to be seen in “as bad a light as possible”.
Sentencing her, the judge said: “You have expressed the desire to kill again. If those thoughts continue, you will not be released.”
Jenkinson also admitted to previously attempting to kill Brianna with ibuprofen pills in the weeks prior to her death. It emerged yesterday that she had previously been investigated by police after being expelled from a school for “poisoning” a fellow pupil by giving them a cannabis edible and that she had drawn up another kill list, with names of staff at the secure accommodation in which she was being held after being arrested.
Esther Ghey, Brianna’s mother, felt unable to read her emotional victim impact statement to the court in which she said the idea of her daughter’s killers ever being released from prison was “horrifying” and that the “hardest thing” to come to terms with was finding out that one of those charged with Brianna’s murder was someone she believed to be her daughter’s friend.
“I don’t believe that someone who is so disturbed and obsessed with murder and torture would ever be able to be rehabilitated,” she added.
Family criticise ‘monsters’ who killed their girl and reveal the difficulty of raising a transgender child
BRIANNA GHEY’S father described struggling to form a relationship with his transgender daughter before she was murdered by two teenagers she thought were her friends. Speaking at the sentencing of Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, who yesterday were named when an anonymity order was lifted by the judge, the 16-year-old murder victim’s father said being the parent of a transgender child was “difficult” to deal with.
Peter Spooner said: “Without people accusing me of dead-naming my child [referring to a transgender person by their previous name], most of my memories are with my son Brett. Our memories are engraved on my heart. He was funny, cheeky and would pull faces to make me laugh. He was my baby, my only son and his decision to transition was such a brave and confident thing to do. Even though I grieved the son I lost, I was proud to gain another beautiful daughter.
“Her appearance changed as she blossomed into a lovely young girl, her eyes were the same, she had my eyes when I looked at her. We were forming a new relationship and these two murderers have stolen that from us both.” Mr Spooner continued: “Now my world has been torn apart, justice may have been done with the guilty verdicts, but no amount of time spent in prison will be enough for these monsters. I cannot call them children as that makes them sound naïve or vulnerable which they are not. They are pure evil, Brianna was the vulnerable one.
“They were determined to kill and never gave up until they had blood on their hands, my Brianna’s blood.”
The pair, identified throughout the trial as Girl X and Boy Y and who are now aged 16, spent weeks plotting the attack on Brianna, who was anxious and rarely went out alone.
After posing as her friends and arranging to meet her at Linear Park in Culcheth, the then 15-year-olds ambushed her and stabbed her 28 times in an attack of shocking brutality.
Following their arrest, the pair sought to deny responsibility and blame one another for the murder.
The teenagers had automatic anonymity throughout the legal proceedings because of their age, preventing them from being publicly identified. However, following an application by the press that was supported by Brianna’s family, Mrs Justice Yip, the trial judge, said the anonymity order would be lifted when the teenage killers were sentenced for the murder.
In a Sky News interview aired on the day of the sentencing, Mr Spooner said: “At first I thought, yeah, they should be named, why should they be protected?
People should know who they are. And now... their names always going to be connected, you know, tied with Brianna all the time.”
“I just think they shouldn’t be named,” he said before breaking off, adding: “I think they should just be forgotten about, locked up and not even spoken about again because they’re nothing.”
“I just don’t know how there were no