A 15-year-old girl has been found guilty of murdering a mother and daughter. The girl had denied murder but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
The seven men and five women of the jury took just two and a half hours to reach their verdicts.
The girl’s 15-year-old boyfriend admitted murder at the start of the trial.
The teenage girl, who cannot be named, was 14 when she and her boyfriend plotted to kill Elizabeth Edwards, 49, and her daughter, Katie, 13, as they slept at their home in Spalding, Lincolnshire.
The bodies of Mrs Edwards and her daughter were found in their beds on 15 April.
These two teenagers now have the notoriety of becoming the youngest couple in Britain to have killed. It was a planned double murder born out of an intense relationship. They were two 14-year-olds who in the court appearances following their arrest exchanged smiles and loving looks.
Prosecutor Peter Joyce QC described the murders as “cold, calculated and callous”.
Jurors heard the victims were smothered with pillows and repeatedly stabbed in a “cold, calculated and callous” act.
Nottingham Crown Court heard the love-struck teenagers’ relationship compared to that of US gangsters Bonnie and Clyde.
Jurors had heard how the teenagers meticulously planned the murders before carrying them out “to the letter”.
Mrs Edwards was stabbed by the boy eight times, twice in the throat in a deliberate attempt to ensure her daughter was not woken by screams or cries for help. One blow injured her jugular and the other almost completely severed her windpipe.
Katie Edwards was stabbed twice in the neck with severe force before she was smothered by the boy.
The girl, who did not physically take part in the killings, told police she heard Mrs Edwards “struggling and gurgling” and said she heard Katie Edwards say “I can’t breathe” as she was set upon.
In her police interview the girl told officers she had “felt like murdering for quite a while”.
She told detectives she and her boyfriend formed their plan on 9 April, four days before the killings, and once the mother and daughter were dead she “felt fine”.
The court heard she told police interviewers: “I was OK with it. Just the fact that it happened so quickly gave me peace of mind.”
Following the killings the couple shared a bath, had sex and watched four Twilight movies before they were arrested.
The court heard the teenagers had planned to commit suicide after the killings but decided not to go through with that part of their plan.
Drawn together by suicidal thoughts, they convinced each other over a McDonald’s meal that the solution to the grudge she had against 49-year-old Liz Edwards was to kill. Intense planning followed where the murder of Ms Edwards’ daughter was also approved.
The boyfriend wounded the school dinner lady terribly before smothering her with a pillow. It wasn’t quick – she struggled and fought for her life while the girl watched on.
The girl had reservations about creeping into Katie Edwards’ smaller room with its bunk bed and killing her too. Those concerns weren’t strong enough to stop the boy.
The knife used in the murders – a black-handled kitchen knife with a 20cm blade – was found discarded in Katie’s bedroom.
The judge, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, paid tribute to the detectives involved in investigating what he described as an “exceptional case by any standards”.
He adjourned sentence on both defendants until November and will also rule on whether they should be identified at a later hearing.
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