‘I feel compassion for killers’ families’, says Brianna Ghey’s mum

Brianna Ghey’s mother Esther heard harrowing evidence about her daughter’s final moments and the plot to kill her while an 18-day murder trial took place. Although she still feels compassion for the families of the two 16-year-olds responsible, she says killers Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe have shown no remorse.

“I could see the way that they were both behaving,” Esther tells BBC News. “I could tell that there was no remorse or regret for what they’ve done.”

Esther watched as the pair denied murder and then blamed each other.

She listened as prosecutors read out hundreds of WhatsApp messages between them, in which they discussed in cold-blooded detail how they planned to murder her daughter and other children after devising a “kill list”.

Sixteen-year-old Brianna, who was transgender, was stabbed 28 times after being lured to Culcheth Linear Park in Warrington, Cheshire, by Jenkinson on the afternoon of 11 February 2023.

The trial had heard the two defendants were intelligent and “high-functioning” but harboured a secret “thirst for killing”.

Brianna was lured to Culcheth Linear Park before being murdered

The pair, who were 15 at the time, had planned the murder for weeks.

“Beforehand, I felt like maybe there would be some form of rehabilitation,” says Esther.

“Maybe it was something that had just gone too far – or some mindless killing. But clearly it was calculated.

“I completely lost any sympathy that I had for them.”

Esther says one of the hardest moments was learning that one of the killers was someone Brianna had considered a friend.

Brianna Ghey died after being repeatedly stabbed in Culcheth Linear Park

While Esther had never met Jenkinson, she said Brianna had talked about her, telling her mum the two of them had sometimes hung out after school, going to McDonalds together, like any other teenage friends.

They had started chatting while taking lessons together in the inclusion room at Birchwood High School, a supervised area with computers for study away from other classrooms.

Brianna had her lessons in there because of her mental health – her anxiety meant she did not like to be in a busy classroom.

Jenkinson joined in November 2022 on a managed transfer from nearby Culcheth High School.

Birchwood Community High School head teacher Emma Mills says: “We were approached by her school in the October time, due to the fact that she had brought cannabis edibles into school.

“It was brought to us to look at – would we give her a chance on a managed transfer due to there having been no other issues with her during her time at school?”

Jenkinson was ultimately only at Birchwood for about 10 weeks. The school was looking at ending the transfer because her attendance had started to drop.

During her time there, Ms Mills says there had not been any “red flags” and nothing that indicated her relationship with Brianna was anything out of the ordinary.

“I met her several times, and I’d had meetings with her and her mum before she came here,” she says.

“She was quiet, she was polite. There was nothing that indicated that this was going to happen.”

But a File on 4 investigation found that four months before Brianna’s killing, Jenkinson had given one of the cannabis sweets to a younger pupil without telling her what it was.

The 13-year-old fell ill after eating it.

Warrington Borough Council said a review was under way.

The handwritten murder plan was found in the bedroom of girl X

Jenkinson and Ratcliffe were told they would be detained for at least 22 and 20 years respectively.

The sentencing judge, Mrs Justice Yip, said both “took part in a brutal and planned murder which was sadistic in nature”.

Addressing Jenkinson, the judge said her “primary motivation” was a desire to kill, calling the murder “exceptionally brutal”.

The judge said Jenkinson “enjoyed the killing”, adding that it was “a murder involving sadistic conduct”.

To Ratcliffe, she said: “You know what Scarlett wanted to do” and why.

“I find that you were motivated in part by your distaste at Brianna’s status as transgender”.

Sitting in court during their trial, even seasoned reporters were often taken aback by the level of premeditation, and the cold and dispassionate nature with which they plotted Brianna’s murder.

Alongside the WhatsApp messages where the two talked in graphic detail about murder and torture methods, the jury members were shown a handwritten note recovered by police from Jenkinson’s bedroom.

On it was written the exact plan that she and Ratcliffe eventually put into place to kill Brianna.

Brianna had never seen Ratcliffe before the day she was murdered.

But when he turned up with Jenkinson to meet her at a bus stop, she thought the three of them were going to hang out together in Culcheth Linear Park.

Jenkinson was, in fact, luring her to her death.

“At the time, it felt like it was the worst possible scenario that could have happened,” says Esther.

“It was the worst possible person that could have done it to her, because it was somebody that we trusted – and someone that Brianna trusted.

“As a parent, you would never imagine that another child that your child has met from school would be capable of doing such a thing.”

Candlelit vigils were held in memory of the 16-year-old

Asked how she squared the quiet child she had taught with the evidence she heard about Jenkinson during the trial, Ms Mills described it as “surreal”.

“It’s unbelievable that anybody would do those things,” she says. “It’s even more shocking when you find out it’s a child that has done those things. And a child that you had met.”

Last month, Mrs Justice Yip ruled that the killers’ identities could be revealed upon sentencing.

Child and teenage defendants are normally protected by a court order granting them anonymity until they turn 18 – a court order the judge decided to lift.

Esther thinks this was the right decision and keeping them anonymous would only delay the inevitable attention on them and their families.

Brianna’s killers blamed each other for the killing

Despite the often harrowing details revealed during the trial, her compassion for the families of her daughter’s killers has not wavered.

Speaking through tears, Esther said: “When the verdict came through, I saw how devastated one of their mums was, and it kind of made me feel that that’s how I felt when I found out what happened to Brianna.

“I don’t feel that either Scarlett or Eddie are the type of people that would get on very well in prison, and I suppose that that is now a worry for their parents.

“For me, I feel that Brianna is in a better place. But they’ve got to continue knowing what their children have done.

“It is true that we have all lost our children.”

Esther and Ms Mills have since joined forces in a bid to bring mindfulness into schools, through a campaign called Peace in Mind.

They hope to raise enough money to train one teacher in mindfulness in every school in the country and eventually want to change the national curriculum to include health and wellbeing.

Two documentaries looking at the full story behind the murder of Brianna will be released later on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds.

Additional reporting by Becky Holmes and Lauren Hirst.

A Plan To Kill: The Murder of Brianna Ghey banner

File on 4 tells the story behind the brutal killing of 16-year-old transgender schoolgirl Brianna Ghey.

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