Let's Have A Chat About Murder

Twisted killer Christopher Halliwell targeted young women, brutally murdered them, and then buried their bodies in shallow graves.

His victims, Sian OCallaghan and Rebecca Godden, were in the prime of their lives when Halliwell murdered them.

He was handed a rare whole-life order, meaning he will never be released at Bristol Crown Court in 2016 after being convicted of Miss Godden’s murder.

If it had not been for the dogged actions of one police officer, Becky's remains may never have been found and her killer could have escaped justice for her death.

Police believe that Halliwell is a serial killer. The question is, how many?”

Joanna Yeates went missing from the flat she shared with her partner, in a large house in Bristol, on 17 December 2010 after an evening out with colleagues.

Following a highly publicised appeal for information on her whereabouts and intensive police enquiries, her body was discovered on 25 December 2010 in Failand, North Somerset.

A post-mortem examination determined that she had been strangled.

The murder inquiry was one of the largest police investigations ever undertaken in the Bristol area.

The case dominated news coverage in the United Kingdom around the Christmas period as Yeates's family sought assistance from the public through social networking services and press conferences. Rewards amounting to £60,000 were offered for information leading to those responsible for Yeates's death.

The police initially suspected and arrested Christopher Jefferies, Yeates's landlord, who lived in another flat in the same building. He was subsequently released without charge but was vilified in the press.

Vincent Tabak, a 32-year-old Dutch architectural engineer and the occupant of a third flat in the building, was arrested on 20 January 2011.

Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham murdered Edwards' mother Elizabeth, 49, and her younger sister Katie, 13, at their home in Spalding, Lincolnshire, in April 2016.

Kim Edwards, 15, and her boyfriend Lucas Markham, also 15, murdered Kim’s own mum and sibling in the brutal slayings at their home.

The pair were just 14 when they stabbed their victims ten times in their beds - before eating tea cakes and ice cream, watching the movie 'Twilight' and having sex.

The killers, who were 14 at the time, were both jailed.

A bid to stop their names being made public was rejected in the High Court.

Both killers were handed 20-year minimum terms at Nottingham Crown Court, by Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, who said the pair had a "toxic" relationship and had acted in a "grotesque" way. but judges have reduced the sentences to 17 and a half years.

on a rainy Saturday morning in August 2010, Sally Challen left her house in Claygate, Surrey.

She had bought the house less than a year earlier, her first step away from a 31-year marriage.

That morning, she returned to house just around the corner, her former marital home.

Though she had told few people, Sally, 56, and her husband Richard, 61, were planning to reconcile.

They were about to begin clearing the family house so they could put it on the market.

The Challens’ home was valued at about £1m, and with this they intended to take an extended trip to Australia, a late-life adventure, before deciding where to live next.

But first Richard wanted bacon and eggs for breakfast, so Sally went out to buy some.

When she returned, she felt suspicious, as if Richard had got rid of her for a reason.

A quick check of his phone confirmed he’d just had a call from a number Sally knew belonged to Susan Wilce – a woman Richard had met through the networking site

Now she asked Richard to explain the call.

He replied: “Don’t question me.”

Sally served breakfast and, as Richard ate, she took a hammer and hit him more than 20 times.

In case he was still breathing, she stuffed a tea towel into his mouth, before wrapping him in some old curtains.

She wrote a note that said,

“I love you, Sally”

and placed it on Richard’s body.

Q&A with Christina Moore

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Remember Christie

Below is the link to the petition “Justice for Christie”:

https://www.change.org/p/government-justice-for-christie

On one night in December 2018, a high-achieving, intelligent maths graduate Joe Atkinson, a man with no history of violence, suddenly became a savage, cold-blooded killer.

Leeds Crown Court heard the breakdown of the couple's relationship had led him to behave like a "Jekyll and Hyde character" in the weeks leading up to the attack. Towards the end of November 2018, Atkinson flew into a jealous rage and attacked Miss Devey Waterhouse's new boyfriend after seeing them out together.

The prosecution described how the attack "was a hint of his brewing jealousy." But at other times friends had described how he had seemed to have accepted the break-up.

Then, in the early hours of December 14, 2018, after a night out drinking with colleagues, Atkinson carried out the "inexplicable" and "harrowing" knife attack on his partner of three years.

The court was told how Atkinson returned to the flat and attacked her. Forensic evidence showed Miss Devey Waterhouse tried to fight him off but collapsed in the hallway. She had suffered about 70 knife injuries all over her body.

Afterwards, Atkinson attempted to clean the scene and dispose of his clothes, only contacting the emergency services hours later. Emergency services found Miss Devey Waterhouse's body in a pool of blood in the apartment at Saxton Flats, Richmond Hill.

Described as a "prodigiously gifted mathematician", she had more than 100 injuries, Leeds Crown Court was told. Atkinson, 25, who admitted to the murder, was told he will serve a minimum of 15 years and 310 days.

Sophie Lionnet thought she had found the perfect family to work for when she moved from France as an au pair. The bright and bubbly 20-year-old wanted to improve her English and thought the best way she could do this would be to live and work in London.

Sabrina Kouider and her partner, Ouissem Medouni, seemed like a loving family with a welcoming £900,000 home in the upmarket suburb of Wimbledon. But her dreams of a new life were shattered and became a living nightmare as Sophie was starved, tortured, and forced to sleep in a tiny, dark bedroom.

A heartbreaking note, found after her murder, simply said "Why me? I need help to stop them." Sophie was beaten, whipped with a cable, and left with a broken chest bone and ribs before being drowned in a bath.

Their motive for the murder was bizarre - the pair were driven by an obsession with Kouider’s ex-boyfriend and Boyzone founding member Mark Walton. The mum-of-two Kouider had convinced herself that her former lover, Mark Walton had planted the nanny to spy on her.

Ashley Martin, 32, was devastated after his first-ever girlfriend Jay Edmunds, 27, ended their relationship on December 28, 2018, when he became "smothering".

He came prepared.

Detectives found that Mr Martin had hired a Ford Transit van and bought a murder kit consisting of a Bear Grylls lock knife, a hunting knife, a 20-litre jerry can, binoculars, waterproof matches, strong fishing line, a camping stove and gas, a torch, batteries and waterproof matches on New Year's Eve.

He made the purchases for £253 from an outdoor shop in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. Despite being in a diesel van, he also bought 17 litres of petrol from a Shell garage less than half a mile away.

Van driver Miss Edmunds returned home at around 2:30am on New Year's Day with Mr Hicks, 24, who had previously been in a long relationship with her, and the pair went to her bedroom.

Mr Billy Hicks was stabbed in the heart during a struggle before Mr Martin apparently sparked the blaze with the petrol, causing a fireball explosion which blew out the bedroom windows as the fuel vapour exploded.

The inquest in Boston heard how the fire was so intense that the bedroom collapsed into the living room below where the three severely burned bodies were recovered.

Post-mortems concluded that all three died from smoke inhalation while a contributory factor in the death of Mr Hicks was the life-threatening wound to his heart.

This video also looks at Ellie's law.

Ellie Gould (6 February 2002 – 3 May 2019) was a 17-year-old English sixth form student from Wiltshire, who was stabbed to death on 3 May 2019 by Thomas Griffiths, a fellow student at her school, who was also 17 at the time. Griffiths stabbed Ellie after she ended their relationship of three months.

Griffiths was subsequently charged with Gould's murder and pleaded guilty at Bristol Crown Court, where he was sentenced in November 2019 to life imprisonment with a minimum term of twelve-and-a-half years in custody before becoming eligible for parole.

Because he was under 21 at the time of sentencing the law prevented him from receiving a whole life tariff.