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On 21 May 2020, Louise Smith, a 16-year-old, was found murdered in Havant, Hampshire, England. She had been missing for 13 days prior. She was staying with her cousin Chazlynn and her uncle Shane Mays, who later murdered her. [1] [2] On 8 December, Smith's uncle, Shane Mays, was convicted of her murder by a jury at Winchester Crown Court. [1] [3]
In the trial, the prosecution said that Mays had lured Smith to walk to the woodland, with the aim of sexually assaulting her. [1] [3] Smith's body was found after an extended search by specialist teams, involving 306 people, drones, and dogs. [4] It was described as "dreadfully treated", with "repeated, heavy blows to the head", subsequently defiled with a stick and burned in an attempt to "destroy her body". The exact cause of death could not be determined due to extensive burns. [1] [3] A clinical review of Mays found that he had an "extremely low" IQ of 63. [1] Mays was sentenced to a minimum prison term of 25 years. [5]
Sarah Evelyn Isobel Payne, was the victim of a high-profile abduction and murder in West Sussex, England in July 2000.
The murder of Jodi Jones is a Scottish murder case from June 2003 in which a 14-year-old schoolgirl was murdered in woodland in Dalkeith, Scotland. Her semi-nude body was discovered behind a wall by her 14-year-old boyfriend Luke Mitchell’s dog Mia, hours after her death. An autopsy revealed the teenager had died of several stab and slash wounds—primarily inflicted to her neck and torso, with a defensive wound to her arm.
On 21 March 2002, Amanda Jane "Milly" Dowler, a 13-year-old English schoolgirl, was reported missing by her parents after failing to return home from school and not being seen since walking along Station Avenue in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, that afternoon. Following an extensive search, her remains were discovered in Yateley Heath Woods in Yateley, Hampshire, on 18 September.
It is possible to convict someone of murder without the purported victim's body in evidence. However, cases of this type have historically been hard to prove, often forcing the prosecution to rely on circumstantial evidence, and in England there was for centuries a mistaken view that in the absence of a body a killer could not be tried for murder. Developments in forensic science in recent decades have made it more likely that a murder conviction can be obtained even if a body has not been found.
Peter Britton Tobin was a Scottish convicted serial killer and sex offender who served a whole life order at HM Prison Edinburgh for three murders committed between 1991 and 2006. Police also investigated Tobin over the deaths and disappearances of other young women and girls.
Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher was a British student on exchange from the University of Leeds who was murdered at the age of 21 in Perugia, Italy. Kercher was found dead on the floor of her bedroom. By the time the bloodstained fingerprints at the scene were identified as belonging to Rudy Guede, an Ivorian migrant, police had charged Kercher's American roommate, Amanda Knox, and Knox's Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. The subsequent prosecutions of Knox and Sollecito received international publicity, with forensic experts and jurists taking a critical view of the evidence supporting the initial guilty verdicts.
The history of violence against LGBT people in the United Kingdom is made up of assaults on gay men, lesbians, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex individuals (LGBTQI), legal responses to such violence, and hate crime statistics in the United Kingdom. Those targeted by such violence are perceived to violate heteronormative rules and religious beliefs and contravene perceived protocols of gender and sexual roles. People who are perceived to be LGBTQI may also be targeted.
Anni Ninna Dewani was a Swedish woman of Indian origin who was murdered while on her honeymoon in South Africa after the taxi in which she and her husband Shrien Dewani were traveling was hijacked.
The Babes in the Wood Murders were the murders of two nine-year-old girls, Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, on 9 October 1986, by a 20-year-old local roofer, Russell Bishop in Wild Park, Moulsecoomb, Brighton, Sussex, England. Bishop was tried and acquitted in 1987. The case remained open until 10 December 2018, when Bishop was found guilty of the murders in a second trial. The investigation into the two girls' murders is the largest and longest-running inquiry ever conducted by Sussex Police.
The murder of Tia Sharp was a high-profile case of child murder in the United Kingdom. The victim was a 12-year-old girl, Tia Sharp, who was reported missing from and later found dead in the home of her grandmother in New Addington, London, in August 2012. After her body was discovered, police arrested her grandmother, Christine Bicknell, and Bicknell's then-boyfriend, Stuart Hazell, on suspicion of murder. Hazell was charged with Tia Sharp's murder on 12 August.
April Sue-Lyn Jones was a Welsh child from Machynlleth, Powys, who disappeared on 1 October 2012, after being sighted getting into a vehicle near her home. The disappearance of April Jones, aged five, generated a large amount of national and international press coverage. A 46-year-old English man, Mark Bridger, was subsequently arrested and convicted.
This is a list of sex workers who were murdered in the United Kingdom.
On 23 October 2019, the bodies of 39 Vietnamese people — 31 men and 8 women — were found in the trailer of an articulated refrigerator lorry in Grays, Essex, United Kingdom. The trailer had been shipped from the port of Zeebrugge, Belgium, to Purfleet, Essex, UK, and the lorry cab and its driver are believed to have originated from Northern Ireland. Investigations are being led by Essex Police, and involve the national authorities of the UK, Belgium, Ireland and Vietnam.
Star Hobson was a one-year-old child who was murdered by her mother's girlfriend on 22 September 2020 in Keighley, West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom.
David Smith is an English repeat murderer, rapist and suspected serial killer who came to national prominence in 1999 when he was convicted of murdering a sex worker six years after having being acquitted of an "almost identical" murder. Cleared of the murder of 33-year-old west London sex worker Sarah Crump in 1993, Smith was found guilty in 1999 of the killing of 21-year-old Paddington sex worker Amanda Walker. Smith has since been linked to a number of other murders of sex workers across Britain.
Louise Porton is a British double murderer who came to public attention in 2019 when she was convicted of murdering her two children as they "got in the way" of her sex life. Between 2 January and 1 February 2018, she repeatedly attacked and then killed her two daughters, who were aged three and 17 months respectively. Suspicion soon fell on her when she was noted to show little concern at the unexplained deaths of her two children only 18 days apart, and a police investigation found that she had made a number of incriminating internet searches at the time attempting to find out how to successfully murder her children and cover up her crimes. At trial, she was convicted by unanimous jury decision and sentenced to a minimum of 32 years imprisonment. She is imprisoned at HM Prison Foston Hall.