A jury convicted the girl last month of the double murder<\/a>, after she had initially pleaded not guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The boy admitted both murders on the first day of the trial.<\/p>\nThe teenagers, who cannot be named for legal reasons, stabbed and smothered Elizabeth Edwards, 49, and her daughter Katie, 13, to death at their home in Spalding, Lincolnshire, on 13 April this year. They then shared a bath, had sex and watched the Twilight vampire movies. Both were 14 at the time of the killings. They are believed to be the UK\u2019s youngest ever double-murderers.<\/p>\n
Sentencing both to life, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave told a packed courtroom at Nottingham crown court that the killings were \u201ca terrible crime with few parallels in modern criminal history\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Justice Haddon-Cave said the murders had been \u201cbrutal … almost in the form of an execution.\u201d<\/p>\n
He told the pair: \u201cBoth of you are perfectly intelligent and knew exactly what you were doing \u2013 either of you could have backed out at any time but you were selfishly determined to do it together.\u201d They had \u201crevelled\u201d in their actions, the judge added.<\/p>\n
The judge said that people would \u201cstruggle to comprehend\u201d how the pair could have committed the crimes. The answer he said lay in their \u201ctoxic\u201d relationship, \u201ca hermetically sealed, pathetic world of your own of deep, deep selfishness and immaturity\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThis has been, on any view, an exceptional, and exceptionally distressing case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Justice Haddon-Cave said \u201cThe sentencing starting point for a murder committed by a child was 12 years\u2019 detention.\u201d He pointed out that their case was \u201csubstantially aggravated\u201d by the fact that it was a double murder, that their victims were asleep and must have \u201csuffered terribly\u201d in the moments before their deaths.<\/p>\n
Had they been adults, he said, \u201cyou may have been facing the whole of your lives in prison\u201d. He added: \u201cI sentence you as children, which you are. I sentence you in hope for you and society, rather than expectation of failure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Summing up the case before he delivered his verdict, the judge said the teenagers had met at school and started a relationship 12 months earlier. They had quickly become obsessed with each other, he said, and the relationship became sexual. Both had troubled upbringings, which the judge said he had considered in mitigation.<\/p>\n
They had hatched a \u201chalf-hearted plan\u201d to kill themselves by taking an overdose after the murders, he said, \u201cbut [the girl] decided she didn\u2019t feel like it\u201d. Instead, they opted to watch another Twilight film.<\/p>\n
Karen Thompson, deputy chief crown prosecutor at CPS East Midlands, called the murders \u201cone of the most distressing and disturbing cases that I have ever encountered\u201d. Speaking outside the court after the sentencing, she said: \u201cOur deepest sympathies are now with the extended family and friends of Elizabeth and Katie Edwards as they attempt to come to terms with this horrific crime.\u201d<\/p>\n
DCI Martin Holvey, of the East Midlands major crime unit, said: \u201cThis has been a rare and unprecedented case and everybody who has listened to the details as they have emerged throughout the trial will, I am sure, have felt the same sense of shock and disbelief.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe planning that went into the brutal murders of Elizabeth and Katie as they slept in their beds was cold, ruthless and chilling, as was the lack of remorse shown by the two juveniles afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A girl and boy aged 15 have been sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in detention for murdering a mother and daughter as they slept in their beds. A jury convicted the girl last
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