Sharon Carr

Last updated

Sharon Carr
Born
Sharon Louise Carr

1979 (age 44–45)
Belize
Other names"The Devil's Daughter"
Motive Sexual gratification
Conviction(s) 25 March 1997 (for murder)
Criminal penalty Life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 14 years imprisonment (1997)
Details
Victims1 murder victim, at least 4 others injured in additional attacks/attempted murders
Span of crimes
June 1992 –August 2019
CountryUnited Kingdom
Date apprehended
c. 7 June 1994
Imprisoned at HM Prison Bronzefield

Sharon Louise Carr (born 1979), also known as "The Devil's Daughter", is a Belizean British woman who, in June 1992, aged 12, murdered 18-year-old Katie Rackliff after picking her out at random as she walked home from a nightclub in Camberley. The murder initially went unsolved until June 1994, when Carr attacked and stabbed another pupil at Collingwood College Comprehensive School for no apparent reason, and then repeatedly boasted about the murder of Rackliff to friends and family and in her diary entries made in prison. She was convicted of the murder in 1997, attracting much media interest due to her young age and the brutality of the killing. She was ordered to serve at least 14 years imprisonment but remains imprisoned long after this minimum tariff expired due to her disruptive behaviour in prison. A Restricted Status prisoner, she has continued to regularly attack and attempt to kill staff members and fellow inmates and has regularly expressed her desire to kill others. In September 2022, it was reported that her case would again go before a parole board.

Contents

The case of a 12-year-old child killing an adult stranger has been described as unique. [1] [2]

Background

Carr was born in Belize in 1979, and was brought up by her mother and stepfather. [2] She was one of four children, and grew up in great poverty. [3] She never knew her biological father. [3] After moving to England in 1986, the family settled in Camberley, Surrey. [2] [3] Her parents' marriage soon ended, following a serious domestic violence incident in which Sharon's mother poured boiling fat over Sharon's stepfather. [1] The incident caused the couple to be hospitalised with burns and Sharon's mother charged with assault. [3]

At school, Sharon was initially described as polite and helpful by teachers. [2] Friends said that she was a sociable girl who preferred the company of older boys, and also said that she occasionally showed flashes of aggression. [3] Later, she became much more badly behaved, becoming disruptive and attention-seeking, and she had problems relating to authority. [2] [3] In 1990, her headteacher at Cordwallis Junior School in Camberley contacted social services over her behaviour. [3] Sharon was briefly put into foster care, but she returned home after only one month away. [2] By the time she started secondary school, her mother had a new partner, who already had two daughters. [3]

Murder of Katie Rackliff

On 7 June 1992, Carr randomly stabbed 18-year-old apprentice hairdresser Katie Rackliff to death as she walked home in the early hours from Ragamuffins nightclub in Camberley. [3] [4] In total, Carr stabbed Rackliff, who was a stranger to her, 32 times with a 6 and a half inch knife through her ribs, in her heart and in her vagina and anus. [3] Some of her jewellery was then stolen. [5] Rackliff's body was taken by Carr and some accomplices and driven to Farnborough, where she was dragged along a road and then dumped by a cemetery wall. [3] The body was found later that morning by a group of boys. [3]

When police investigated the killing, they noted the brutality of the attack. [2] Some of the knife blows that Rackliff had suffered had gone straight through her body. [2] Her sexual organs had been mutilated, and officers found that her clothes had been pulled up, but there was no sign of sexual assault. [2] Due to the nature and severity of the injuries inflicted, and the fact that the attack appeared to be sexually motivated, police believed the attacker to be a fully grown male. [1] [6] [7] In part because of this, the real killer went unidentified and the case went initially unsolved. [6] [8] [7] [5]

Stabbing of pupil

With Carr not apprehended, she returned to school, but was excluded twice in early 1994. [3] Two years to the day after Rackliff's murder, on 7 June 1994, Carr attacked 13-year-old fellow pupil Ann-Marie Clifford with a knife for no apparent reason in the toilets at Collingwood College Comprehensive School, Surrey. [1] [2] [3] [9] Clifford was stabbed in the back, which punctured her lung, and she nearly died as a result of her injuries. [1] [10] The attack was only stopped when five students entered the toilets and intervened, which probably saved the victim's life. [1] Clifford said that Carr was smiling and appeared happy during the attack on her. [1]

Carr was quickly arrested and told officers that she enjoyed stabbing cats and had beheaded a dog. [3]

Initial imprisonment and further attacks

After arrest, Carr was sent to a medical assessment centre, where she tried to strangle two members of staff. [2] She was charged with two counts of actual bodily harm for this in addition to the charges for her attack on Clifford. [2] She was convicted in December 1994 and sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure. [2] [3] She was initially held in various psychiatric units but continued to regularly seriously assault other females, and so was transferred to an all-boys unit at Aycliffe Secure Centre. [5] In September 1995, she was transferred to Bullwood Hall young offenders' institution, where it was thought her aggressive and sexualised behaviour could be better managed. [5]

Confessions to Rackliff murder

Soon after her transfer to Bullwood Hall, staff discovered that Carr was talking about the killing of Katie Rackliff to friends and family on the telephone and in her diary. [2] She also admitted to attacking a prison officer who she said she had a 'crush' on, and talked about it to a probation officer. [2] Staff alerted police and they seized her writings and drawings. [2] [9] Her diaries were found to contain detail of her sexual excitement at the thought of Rackliff's death, and she also commented that she felt "jealous" of her victim and remarked about the devil and the forces which motivated her. [3] One passage read "'If only I could kill you again. I promise I would make you suffer more this time, you fucking slag. Your terrified screams turned me on." [3] The sexual element of the killing had previously been indicated by the mutilation on Rackliff's body. [5] Carr had also written "I swear I was born to be a murderer", and in a letter to a friend wrote "I'm a killer. Killing is my business. And business is good." [3] [8] She had also drawn pictures of the knife involved. [2] Detectives questioned her on the murder and she confessed to the killing, admitting that she had repeatedly stabbed Rackliff. [2] She graphically described one particular injury and provided details which the police had deliberately withheld, meaning that she had knowledge that only the killer would have. [2] She also knew that a bracelet had been stolen from Rackliff, which police had not revealed. [2] Carr helped police film a reconstruction of the murder in which she acted out the murder, and when questioned about the attack repeatedly laughed about the details. [3]

Police found that Carr had a long history of cruelty to animals, having once decapitated a dog with a spade, and concluded that she probably had a form of psychopathic disorder. [8] [4] Carr continued to write her boasts about the murder even after being questioned by the police, and in January 1996 gave a further series of confessions to prison officers that she had a 'crush' on. [2] [3] On the four-year anniversary of the murder on 7 June 1996, she wrote in her diary: "Respect to Katie Rackliff. Four years ago today." [2]

Murder trial

Carr was charged with the murder of Rackliff in May 1996. [2] Her accomplices did not stand trial. On 25 March 1997, after a month-long trial at Winchester Crown Court, Carr was convicted of murder. [2] [3] The jury had deliberated for five hours before reaching a unanimous guilty verdict, choosing to convict her for murder and not manslaughter. [3] The conviction meant that Carr was officially Britain's youngest ever female murderer, having been only 12 at the time of the killing (Mary Bell was infamously convicted at age 11 of killing two boys in 1968, but she was convicted of manslaughter, not murder). [2] [9] When sentencing Carr, Judge Scott Baker remarked: "What is clear is that you had a sexual motive for this killing and it is apparent both from the brutal manner in which you mutilated her body and chilling entries in your diary, that killing, as you put it, turns you on. You are in my view an extremely dangerous young woman." [3] Carr was smiling as she left the dock after the conviction. [1] She received a minimum tariff of 14 years imprisonment after her trial. [4]

Criminal psychologist Gordon Tressler noted the extremely unusual nature of the case, saying: "This is a difficult case to understand. One can find precedents of young children killing other young children, but in this case it was a child killing someone who was almost an adult." [2]

Carr was branded 'The Devil's Daughter' in the press. [11] [8] [12] [13] The media reported extensively on the historical conviction of such a young murderer, highlighting her obsession with death and violence. [2] [3] [9]

Subsequent imprisonment and continued attacks

Following her murder conviction, Carr was held in HM Prison Holloway. [5] She was later transferred to Broadmoor Hospital in 1998. [5] Whilst in Broadmoor, she continued to assault staff and other residents, and admitted wanting to kill a fellow inmate by slitting her throat. [4] On occasions she also claimed to believe that she was a lizard and tried to cut herself to attempt to find out whether she was still human. [4]

In 2004, it was reported that Carr's defence team were challenging her 14-year minimum tariff as well as her conviction, with Carr wanting her murder conviction to be replaced with one of manslaughter on the grounds on diminished responsibility. [4] However, the appeals were dismissed. [4] [5]

In 2007, Carr was moved again to the medium-secure Orchard Unit, but was sent to HM Prison Bronzefield in 2015 as a Restricted Status prisoner as she was presenting a risk to patients and staff. [5] Her warrant stated that she no longer required treatment or that no effective treatment could be given. [5] In December 2018, she was moved to HM Prison Low Newton, but was quickly moved back to Bronzefield after a violent incident with another inmate in August 2019. [5] In the same year, her application for her Restricted Status to be downgraded was denied. [5] She appealed against this decision in 2020, but this was also denied on the grounds that she had yet to provide any significant evidence in a reduction in risk. [5] [7] Category A prison supervisors at Bronzefield reported that Carr was still evidencing incidents of volatile relationships and was continuing to have paranoid thoughts. [5] She had also disclosed the desire to murder another prisoner. [5]

As of September 2022, Carr continues to be imprisoned despite the expiration of her minimum tariff. [11] [5] [1] It was also reported in September 2022 that Carr was to have another parole hearing to determine whether she would be released. [11]

Lasting notoriety

Carr's case has been noted for being particularly unusual. Whilst female murderers are themselves uncommon, females who kill strangers are even more unusual, and the case of a 12-year-old girl killing an adult stranger has been described as unique. [1] [2]

In 2005, there was another stabbing incident at Collingwood College, in which a 14-year-old stabbed a fellow pupil. [10] This led to renewed media interest in the school and the Carr case, with allegations being made that there was a culture of problems at Collingwood. [10] However, local MP Michael Gove defended the school. [10] In 2010, Carr's case was again discussed in the press when another British child, 15-year-old Lorraine Thorpe, became Britain's youngest convicted female double murderer. [14] [15] [16] Her case also returned to the news in 2016, when two female children were convicted of the murder of a vulnerable woman named Angela Wrightson, which led to comparisons with Carr's case. [17]

Carr's case has featured in a number of documentaries:

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Sutcliffe</span> English serial killer (1946–2020)

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."

Michael Stone was convicted of the 1996 murders of Lin and Megan Russell and the attempted murder of Josie Russell. He was sentenced to three life sentences with a tariff of 25 years for the Russell killings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HM Prison Bronzefield</span> Female prison in Surrey, England

HMP Bronzefield is an adult and young offender female prison located on the outskirts of Ashford in Surrey, England. Bronzefield is the only purpose-built private prison solely for women in the UK, and is the largest female prison in Europe. The prison is operated by Sodexo Justice Services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Sharon Beshenivsky</span> Shooting of a British police officer

PC Sharon Beshenivsky was a West Yorkshire Police constable shot and killed by a criminal gang during a robbery in Bradford on 18 November 2005, becoming the seventh female police officer in Great Britain to be killed on duty. Her colleague, PC Teresa Milburn, was seriously injured in the same incident. Milburn had joined the force less than two years earlier; Beshenivsky had served only nine months as a Constable in the force at the time of her death, having been a Community Support Officer before.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Dupas</span> Australian serial killer and rapist

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collingwood College, Surrey</span> Academy in Camberley, Surrey, England

Collingwood College is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form located in Camberley, Surrey, England.

Levi Bellfield is an English serial killer, sex offender, rapist, kidnapper, and burglar. He was found guilty on 25 February 2008 of the murders of Marsha McDonnell and Amélie Delagrange and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 23 June 2011, Bellfield was further found guilty of the murder of Milly Dowler. On both occasions, the judge imposed a whole life order, meaning that Bellfield will serve the sentence without the possibility of parole. Bellfield was the first prisoner in history to have received two whole life orders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Cottingham</span> American serial killer (born 1946)

Richard Francis Cottingham is an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least eighteen young women and girls in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980. He was nicknamed by media as the New York Ripper, the Torso Killer and the Times Square Killer, since he was convicted of three murders that occurred there that included mutilation.

Mark Martin is a British serial killer who has been dubbed the 'Sneinton Strangler' in the media. He was issued with a whole-life tariff and thus will never be released from prison. Two accomplices, John Ashley and Dean Carr, helped him in two murders and they received 25-year and 14-year minimum sentences respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Carpenter</span> American serial killer on death row

David Joseph Carpenter, also known as The Trailside Killer, is an American serial killer and serial rapist known for stalking and murdering a variety of individuals on hiking trails in state parks near San Francisco, California. He attacked at least ten individuals and was convicted in seven murders and was confirmed to be the killer in an eighth murder; Carpenter is also suspected in two additional killings. Two victims, Steven Haertle and Lois Rinna, mother of television personality Lisa Rinna, survived. Carpenter used a .38 caliber handgun in all but one of the killings. A .44 caliber handgun was used in the killing of Edda Kane on Mount Tamalpais.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick Mackay</span> British serial killer

David Groves, better known by his birth name Patrick David Mackay, is a British serial killer who is believed to be one of the United Kingdom's most prolific serial murderers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Babes in the Wood murders (Brighton)</span> Murder of two girls near Brighton in 1986

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.

Michael Wayne McGray is a Canadian serial killer convicted of killing seven individuals between 1985 and 1998. He claims to have killed eleven others during the same time period.

The Peterborough ditch murders were a series of murders which took place in Cambridgeshire, England, in March 2013. All three victims were male and died from stab wounds. Their bodies were discovered dumped in ditches outside Peterborough. In Hereford, two other men were stabbed but survived. The perpetrator was Joanna Christine Dennehy, a Cambridgeshire woman, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2014 Colchester murders</span> Serial killings of two people in Colchester, United Kingdom

On 29 March 2014, 33-year-old James Attfield, who had a brain injury, was stabbed to death in Colchester, Essex. Three months later, on 17 June, Nahid Almanea, a 31-year-old Saudi student of the University of Essex, was also stabbed and killed. Teenager James Fairweather was apprehended while planning a third murder in May 2015, and in January 2016 he pleaded responsible for both deaths. In April 2016 he was found guilty of both murders and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 27 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Carol Wilkinson</span> 1977 murder case in England

The murder ofCarol Wilkinson, a young woman from Bradford, West Yorkshire occurred on 10 October 1977. Anthony Steel spent 19 years in prison for the murder under wrongful conviction, and was acquitted in 2003. Steel died shortly after in 2007 at the age of 52.

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 been 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.

Lorraine Thorpe is a British woman who is Britain's youngest female double murderer. Over the space of nine days in August 2009, Thorpe tortured and murdered two people in Ipswich, one her own father. She came to national attention upon her conviction in 2010, when it was noted that she had only been 15 years old at the time of the killings. She was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 14 years' imprisonment, while her accomplice in the murders was issued with a 27-year minimum tariff. She remains imprisoned at HM Prison Foston Hall, having been refused parole in October 2023.

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, one aged three years and the other aged 17 months. 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.

Colin Frederick Campbell is a British double murderer who in the early 1980s abducted two separate and unrelated women in west London and killed them in sexually motivated attacks. In 2013, 32 years after the event, Campbell was convicted of the high-profile unsolved murder of 17-year-old Claire Woolterton after a DNA match was found to him. He was already in prison for the 1984 killing of Deirdre Sainsbury, but had had his murder conviction in this case downgraded to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility in 1999 after he claimed that he had only killed her due to having an epileptic fit. In an open prison and about to be released in the early 2010s, Campbell was finally apprehended for Woolterton's murder, which had led to one of the UK's biggest manhunts at the time and a large amount of press coverage due to it being a murder of a minor. The epilepsy experts who had helped Campbell win his appeal in the Sainsbury case accepted that epilepsy could not explain two violent and sexually motivated murders, and in sentencing the judge said that it had been wrong to downgrade his conviction to manslaughter in 1999. Detectives said that had he not been caught, Campbell would have potentially become a serial killer, a term usually used to describe a repeat killer who has killed at least three victims. Campbell is imprisoned at HM Prison Woodhill.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Crime & Investigation (European TV channel) (22 October 2017). Jo Frost on Britain's Killer Kids: Sharon Carr (Television documentary). Series 1, episode 3.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Sengupta, Kim (26 March 1997). "I was born to be a killer. Every night I see the Devil in my dreams". The Independent. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Daniels, Alison (26 March 1997). "Youngest female murderer jailed: Prison confessions trapped attacker. The victim was 18 . . . the girl 'turned on' by stabbing her was 12". The Guardian.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Katie killer set to fight murder conviction". SurreyLive. 21 October 2003. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 "Carr, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Justice [2020]" (Legal application for Judicial Review). casemine. England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court). 11 March 2020. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  6. 1 2 Washington-Dyer, Karen. "Criminals: Are They Born or Made?". Wrexham Glyndwr University. Lecturer of criminology. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  7. 1 2 3 "BRITAIN'S YOUNGEST KILLERS". Crime+ Investigation. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  8. 1 2 3 4 "The baby-faced children who became UK's youngest killers". HullLive. 13 June 2021. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Sengupta, Kim (26 March 1997). "The girl who killed aged 12". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 October 2022.
  10. 1 2 3 4 "Girl stabbed in eye at school". The Guardian. 12 November 2005. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  11. 1 2 3 "Britain's youngest female murderer who stabbed stranger and bragged about it 'makes bid for release'". The Independent. 27 September 2022. Retrieved 16 June 2023.
  12. ↑ "PASSION KILLERS; Cons cancel wedding after hearing of each other's evil". Daily Record. 21 August 2001. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  13. ↑ Davies, Huw (2013). Another Weird Year: Bizarre news stories from around the world. Random House. p. 51. ISBN   9781446458105.
  14. ↑ "Double murderer aged 15: Girl given life sentence". Evening Standard. 7 September 2010. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  15. ↑ "Britain's youngest female double murderer jailed". The Telegraph. 7 September 2010. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  16. ↑ "Britain's youngest female double murderer jailed". Irish Examiner. 7 September 2010. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  17. ↑ "Two murderous girlfriends: savage, naive and careless". The Times. 6 April 2016. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  18. ↑ Deadly Women, Investigation Discovery (8 August 2014). Never Too Young (Television documentary). Season 8, episode 3.
  19. ↑ "Teens Who Kill: Season 1". Radio Times. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  20. ↑ "Jo Frost on Britain's Killer Kids". Prime Video. Amazon. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  21. ↑ "Murder link probe". Reading Evening Post. 26 April 1993. p. 3.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.