Gracie Spinks | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | |
| Died | 18 June 2021 Derbyshire, England |
| Cause of death | Homicide |
| Occupation | Lifeguard |
| Known for | Victim of murder by a stalker |
Gracie Spinks was a lifeguard from Old Whittington who was murdered by a former colleague. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Spinks was a swimming instructor and lifeguard but had been working as a warehouse operative at the time of her death. [1] [2] She was a keen horse rider and kept a horse at Blue Lodge Farm in Duckmanton. [2] [6]
In February 2021 she had reported a former colleague, Michael Sellers, to police for stalking. [6] He had been her supervisor at a warehouse where she once worked. [6]
Gracie was last seen alive by her mother at 7:30am on 18 June 2021, when she left home to tend to her horse. [1] She was found unconscious in the horse's field after 8am and a man was seen running away. [2] Initially it was thought she had been kicked by the horse, but paramedics realised she had been attacked and called police. [2] She was declared dead at 8:50am. [2]
Sellers was found dead in a field less than a mile away, at 11am the same day. [2]
Separate inquests were held into the two deaths. [2]
A post-mortem examination determined that Spinks died from a stab wound that severed an artery and her spine. [2] There was no evidence she was sexually assaulted. [2]
It is believed by police that Michael Sellers was responsible for her stab wounds, and that he killed himself afterwards. [6]
After the incident, Derbyshire police referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct due to their previous contact with Gracie. [2] After an investigation disciplinary notices were served on five police officers. [6]
Two were served with notices over their handling of her allegations of stalking against Michael Sellers. [6] A sergeant and two constables were served with misconduct orders over the steps they took after discovering a bag of weapons which included a hammer, an axe and knives in May 2021 near the site where Gracie was eventually stabbed. [6]
Her family has campaigned for "Gracie's law", which would increase funding for investigating stalking cases. [6] Her parents said she was failed by police. [5]
Peter William Sutcliffe, also known as Peter Coonan, was an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering thirteen women and attempting to murder seven others between 1975 and 1980. He was dubbed in press reports as the Yorkshire Ripper, an allusion to the Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper. He was sentenced to twenty concurrent sentences of life imprisonment, which were converted to a whole life order in 2010. Two of Sutcliffe's murders took place in Manchester; all the others were in West Yorkshire. Criminal psychologist David Holmes characterised Sutcliffe as being an "extremely callous, sexually sadistic serial killer."
In 1974, 17-year-old Stephen Downing was convicted of murdering Wendy Sewell, a 32-year-old legal secretary, in the town of Bakewell in the Peak District in Derbyshire. Following a campaign by a local newspaper led by Don Hale, in which Sewell was purported to be promiscuous, Downing's conviction was overturned in 2002. The case is thought to be the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, and attracted worldwide media attention.
Mary Ann Nichols, known as Polly Nichols, was the first canonical victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who is believed to have murdered and mutilated at least five women in and around the Whitechapel district of London from late August to early November 1888.
Carl Eugene Watts, also known by his nickname Coral, was an American serial killer dubbed "the Sunday Morning Slasher" who murdered numerous women and girls over an eight-year period. He is suspected of being the most prolific serial killer in United States history. He died of prostate cancer while serving two sentences of life imprisonment without parole in a Michigan prison for the murders of Helen Dutcher and Gloria Steele, although the number of his victims may have exceeded 100.
Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride is believed to have been the third victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated at least five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888.
The backpacker murders were a spate of serial killings that took place in New South Wales, Australia, between 1989 and 1993, committed by Ivan Milat. The bodies of seven missing young people aged 19 to 22 were discovered partially buried in the Belanglo State Forest, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south-west of the New South Wales town of Berrima. Five of the victims were foreign backpackers and two were Australians from Melbourne. Milat was convicted of the murders on 27 July 1996 and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences, as well as 18 years without parole. He died in prison on 27 October 2019, having never confessed to the murders for which he was convicted.
Sef Gonzales is a Filipino Australian man who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the July 2001 murders of his father Teodoro "Teddy" Gonzales (46), his mother Mary Loiva Gonzales (43), and his sister Clodine Gonzales (18), in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. As a result of notoriety surrounding the sale of the house where the crimes occurred, the New South Wales government made it illegal to not disclose information related to the history of a property.
Peter Norris Dupas is an Australian convicted serial killer, currently serving three life sentences without parole for murder and primarily for being a serious habitual offender. He has a very significant criminal history involving serious sexual and violent offences, with his violent criminal history spanning more than three decades, and with every release from prison has been known to commit further crimes against women with increasing levels of violence. His criminal signature is to remove the breasts of his female victims.
Paul Charles Denyer is an Australian serial killer currently serving three consecutive sentences of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of three young women in Melbourne, in 1993. Denyer became known in the media as the Frankston Serial Killer as his crimes occurred in the neighbouring suburbs of Frankston.
On 21 April 2001, Hannah Williams, a 14-year-old English schoolgirl was murdered after going missing during a shopping trip in Dartford, Kent. Williams's body was discovered on 15 March 2002 at a cement works in an industrial area of Northfleet.
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was also called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.
George Bagster Phillips was, from 1865, the Police Surgeon for the Metropolitan Police's 'H' Division, which covered London's Whitechapel district. He came to prominence during the murders of Jack the Ripper when he conducted or attended autopsies on the bodies of four of the victims, namely Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. He was called by the police to the murder scenes of three of them: Chapman, Stride and Kelly.
The Whitechapel murders were committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points some or all of these eleven unsolved murders of women have been ascribed to the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez, known as Richard Ramirez, dubbed the Night Stalker, the Walk-In Killer and the Valley Intruder, was an American serial killer and sex offender whose crime spree took place in California from June 1984 until his capture in August 1985. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989, and died while awaiting execution in 2013.
Breck David LaFave Bednar was an English-American teenager from Caterham, Surrey, who was murdered by 18-year-old Lewis Daynes on 17 February 2014, at Daynes' flat in Grays, Essex. Bednar knew Daynes only through online gaming, and had never met him in person until he visited Daynes' flat on the day of the murder. Daynes pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years.
On the afternoon of 23 March 1988, Deborah Linsley was murdered on a train between Petts Wood and London Victoria stations in Greater London. Although there were about 70 people on the train, and Linsley apparently fought and injured her attacker, only one passenger reported hearing anything suspicious. The killer has not been identified. Stored blood evidence from the scene allowed the case to be re-examined a decade later using DNA technology, and in 2002 it was re-opened with a major publicity campaign. A police reward is on offer.
The death of Helen Bailey is a British child murder case dating from 1975 in which an eight-year-old girl's death was originally classified by a coroner as being due to undetermined causes and potentially sourcing from an "accident or [a] practical joke gone wrong" despite the fact the child was found in a secluded area and that her jugular vein had been severed. The original verdict into Bailey's death was overturned and replaced with one of unlawful killing in 2019.
On 20 June 2020, shortly before 19:00 BST, a man with a knife attacked people who were socialising in Forbury Gardens, Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom. Three men died from their wounds, and three other people were seriously injured. Khairi Saadallah, a 25-year-old Libyan male refugee, was arrested shortly afterwards. Saadallah was a former member of the Libyan militant group Ansar al-Sharia. He was charged with three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder; he pleaded guilty. In January 2021, Saadallah was sentenced to a whole-life term.
The Belize Ripper is an unidentified Belizean serial killer responsible for the abduction, rape and murder of five girls in Belize City between 1998 and 2000. Despite extensive investigation, aided by the FBI and Scotland Yard, nobody was ever convicted of the murders, all of which remain unsolved.
Shandee Blackburn was a 23 year old woman who was murdered in Mackay, Queensland, Australia in February 2013. Blackburn's ex-boyfriend, John Peros, was initially charged with her murder, but was then acquitted in 2017 at trial. A 2019 coronial inquest, however, later identified Peros as the main suspect. A podcast by The Australian's Hedley Thomas was released in late 2021 which detailed the entirety of the case and issues concerning the investigation. As a result of the renewed interest created, the coronial inquest was reopened in February 2022.