David Fuller, 66, from East Sussex, will appear before Medway magistrates’ court on Saturday
A 66-year-old man has been charged with the murder of two women in Kent more than 30 years ago.
Police said David Fuller, from Heathfield, East Sussex, has been charged with two counts of murder in connection with the deaths of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in 1987.
Continue reading...Appeal judges hear sentencing for Henry Long, 19, and two accomplices unduly lenient
The leader of the group of teenagers who killed PC Andrew Harper should have been given a life sentence rather than the 16 years he received, while his accomplices should also have their jail terms increased from 13 years each, a court has heard.
The attorney general argued that the sentences handed to Henry Long, 19, and the 18-year-olds Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers were all unduly lenient, during a court of appeal hearing on Monday.
Continue reading...Warning comes as man admits using Messenger to coerce children into sending explicit pictures
Police and a children’s charity have warned that a man who admitted 96 counts of child sexual abuse could have escaped justice if technology giants had already toughened their encryption.
David Wilson targeted young boys aged from four to 14, getting them to send compromising pictures and video. Some were so traumatised that they considered ending their lives.
Continue reading...Six people had been injured on Saturday night in Queen Street, in the city centre
Four teenagers were in custody on Sunday while police were granted special dispersal powers after a suspected stabbing attack in Cardiff city centre in which six people were injured.
Three people who suffered stab wounds remained at the University hospital of Wales, while another who suffered serious head injuries was at Llandough hospital in Penarth. Two people who suffered other injuries were discharged.
Continue reading...One woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK – a figure unchanged in a decade. A new census analyses this epidemic of male violence
In 2013, Sasha Marsden, a 16-year-old student, went to a Blackpool hotel for what she thought was an interview for a part-time cleaning job. The man she met, David Minto, 23, had lured her there on false pretences. He then sexually assaulted her and stabbed her 58 times. Sasha could only be identified by DNA taken from her toothbrush. Minto was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but for Sasha’s family, their grief has no time limit.
Gemma Aitchison, Sasha’s sister, set up YES Matters UK in response to the killing. “I wanted to know why this happened to Sasha and what I could do about it,” she explains. Part of what her organisation does is to talk to young people about consent, body image, pornography and media influence. “What I know now is that as long as women are treated as objects and not people, we will continue to be disposable.”
Continue reading...Online retailer is investigating a spate of pre-delivery thefts of newly released £450 console
Amazon has said it is investigating reports that brand new PlayStation 5 consoles have been stolen in transit, as customers have complained of missing deliveries, with bags of rice even delivered instead of the electronics.
Supply shortages have left the new games console even more desirable than its £450 price tag would suggest. But some shoppers waiting at home for the console to be delivered received an unwelcome surprise on Thursday and Friday, opening their parcels to find something other than the item they ordered.
Continue reading...Serial killer was serving 20 life terms for murder of 13 women across north of England in late 1970s
Peter Sutcliffe, the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper, has died in hospital, a Prison Service spokesman said.
Sutcliffe, 74, was serving 20 life terms at Frankland prison in County Durham for murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven more in the late 1970s.
Continue reading...Books worth more than £2.5m found in Romania after Mission Impossible-style theft
Hundreds of internationally important and irreplaceable books worth more than £2.5m that were stolen in a daring heist by abseiling burglars have been returned to their rightful owners.
Metropolitan police announced the successful conclusion on Tuesday of a near four-year police operation investigating the Mission Impossible-style theft of books that included rare works by Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo and the 18th-century Spanish painter Francisco de Goya.
Continue reading...Damning report says church put its reputation above the welfare of abuse victims
The Catholic church “betrayed” its moral purpose by prioritising its reputation over the welfare of children who had been sexually abused by priests, a damning inquiry report has concluded.
In its final review of the church, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) was scathing in its criticism of the leadership of Cardinal Vincent Nichols and says the Vatican’s failure to cooperate with the investigation “passes understanding”.
Continue reading...This docuseries could have asked bigger questions on domestic violence, or the murder of Pistorius’s scarcely mentioned girlfriend. Instead, it is a flawed, fawning hagiography
The BBC provoked an outcry last month when it ran a two-minute trailer for this four-part documentary series (BBC Two and BBC iPlayer) that referred to “an international hero who inspired millions” who had “suddenly found himself at the centre of a murder investigation”, without once mentioning the name of the woman Pistorius killed: Reeva Steenkamp. If you did not know the story, you would probably have thought you were about to watch a re-examination of a murder investigation gone wrong and the righting of a terrible miscarriage of justice. The BBC eventually apologised and replaced the advert with something they said was more representative of the tone of the film.
They should just have left it. It was a meretricious trailer for a meretricious film by a director – Daniel Gordon – who, in one of the press interviews for the series, said he was “still flip-flopping” on the matter of Pistorius’s guilt.
Continue reading...London force accepts watchdog advice over flawed tactics undermining community confidence
The Metropolitan police force has been getting its use of stop and search wrong with multiple errors that have undermined its legitimacy, the police watchdog has found.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct said police in one case stopped and searched two black men who were innocently fist bumping, because officers wrongly thought they were drug dealing.
Continue reading...Campaigners say sale of drugs should be nationalised to undermine organised crime
Cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines should be “nationalised” and sold legally in government-run pharmacies to undermine global drug-related crime, a UK drugs reform charity has recommended.
In a book – with a foreword written by the former prime minister of New Zealand Helen Clark – the drugs liberalisation campaign group Transform has sought to set out practical ways to sell the drugs in state-run special pharmacies as an alternative to what it calls the “unwinnable war against drugs”.
Continue reading...Public asked to leave anonymous tips about emergency loan and grant scheme fraud
The UK government has launched a Covid fraud hotline, after being criticised for failing to act on warnings about risks linked to emergency business loans.
The hotline, run by Crimestoppers, allows the public to leave anonymous tips about suspected fraud linked to the government’s emergency Covid-19 loan and grant schemes for UK businesses. That could include identity theft to obtain loans, false grant claims and the use of so-called mule bank accounts to cover the tracks of money launderers.
Continue reading...Benjamin Thomas pleaded guilty to 40 offences over 30 years, mainly against teenage boys
A former pastor and BBC television presenter has been jailed for 10 years and four months after he admitted abusing boys and men over almost three decades.
Ben Thomas, 44, carried out many of his attacks while his victims were sleeping at Christian camps and conferences, Mold crown court in north Wales heard.
Continue reading...Met chief pays tribute to Matiu Ratana as suspected culprit remains in hospital in critical condition
The suspect in the fatal shooting of a custody sergeant at Croydon police station on Friday is 23-year-old Louis de Zoysa, sources have told the Guardian. He remains in hospital in a critical condition, the Metropolitan police said on Sunday, after the force’s chief commissioner, Cressida Dick, paid tribute to the fallen officer.
A second man has been arrested on suspicion of supplying the revolver used in the fatal incident, and is being held in a south London police station, the force added.
Continue reading...Scrutiny of procedures urged following fatal shooting of officer in Croydon police station
Police officers believe there needs to be an urgent review of the stop and search protocols used when arresting suspects, following the fatal shooting of Sgt Matiu Ratana.
As the Metropolitan police and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) launch investigations into the death of the popular 54-year-old custody sergeant, questions remain as to how it happened.
Continue reading...In 2006, the 20-year-old was killed on the orders of family members. Ahead of an ITV drama on the case, her sister reflects on the police response
As a television drama of the real-life investigation into the murder of a young woman by her family airs this month, her sister told the Guardian little had changed since Banaz Mahmod was killed in 2006.
“Lessons have not been learned. Banaz is not the first ‘honour’ killing and she won’t be the last,” says Payzee Mahmod, a British Kurd, who was a teenager when her sister disappeared from her south London home. Banaz had gone to the police five times for help.
Continue reading...Britain’s cyclists take matters into their own hands as criminals cash in on post-lockdown popularity of cycling
It’s the buzz he gets from reuniting the cyclists of Cambridge with their stolen bikes that has turned Omar Terywall into a self-proclaimed “vigilante”. He said: “You get really hooked on it when you start seeing major progress – and, well, it’s just nice helping people really, isn’t it?”
Like others across the country, from Portsmouth to Glasgow, Terywall runs a local Facebook group where Cambridge cyclists share details of their stolen bikes in the hope they will be spotted. Well-regarded by local police, Terywall happily spends hours each day hunting down stolen bikes via online advertisements and local tip-offs.
Continue reading...Lawyer seeks pardon for 2,500 Scots who were tortured and killed in ‘satanic panic’ begun by James VI
It spanned more than a century and a half, and resulted in about 2,500 people – the vast majority of them women – being burned at the stake, usually after prolonged torture. Remarkably, one of the driving forces behind Scotland’s “satanic panic” was no less than the king, James VI, whose treatise, Daemonologie, may have inspired the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Now, almost 300 years after the Witchcraft Act was repealed, a campaign has been launched for a pardon for those convicted, an apology to all those accused and a national memorial to be created.
Continue reading...Inquiry into Ariana Grande concert attack to hear force did not declare major incident for three hours
Experts will tell an inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing that “significant flaws” by police led to a series of devastating delays in tending to victims.
The public inquiry into the terrorist attack was told on Tuesday the force did not declare a major incident until three hours after Salman Abedi’s attack at the Ariana Grande concert that killed 22 people and injured 260.
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