Carina Saunders

Here.

She was murdered in the States, but it's another Mary-Anne Leneghan-style killing - they killed her in front of another girl as a demonstration of the penalties for disobedience.

Wikipedia - The Memory Hole

Gone - Gavin Hopley, Christopher Yates, Charlene Downes, Mary-Ann Leneghan, Richard Whelan. Was Ross Parker there before ?

Charlene Downes entry was deleted by a chap called Srikeit, an Indian national who discovered Wikipedia in January and became an administrator in July. I have to admire his self-confidence in feeling able to chop an item on an English murder - I'm sure I wouldn't feel myself competent to pronounce on murder cases in India.

How long can Kriss Donald's entry survive ? Or Isiah Young-Sam's ?

I don't think we have to worry yet about Anthony Walker. But don't tell them about the Zebra Killings.




(Hat-tip and stolen logo - the Dumb One)

Mr Clarke - Over Here !

"A man who stabbed a drug dealer to death before cutting his body into 133 pieces and dumping it in a canal, has been jailed for life at the Old Bailey.
Marvin Gentles, of north-west London gave Abdul El-Gharras, 31, some crack to sell, but instead he smoked it.

Mr Gentles, 28, was attacked after tracking El-Gharras down at his flat in Lisson Grove, central London."

"Gharras used a saw to cut up the body, and when he could not clean the blood from his flat he set it on fire, causing an explosion. "

Sounds like a nice chap - just the sort of person our ageing workforce needs.

The BBC report quoted above seems to have missed a couple of pertinent details, picked up by Reuters.

"LONDON (Reuters) - A Moroccan drug dealer was jailed for life on Thursday for killing his boss, chopping the body into 133 pieces and throwing them into a canal before setting his flat on fire in a bid to destroy evidence.

Abdul El-Gharras, 31, was obsessed with decapitation and had downloaded videos of al Qaeda beheadings before murdering Marvin Gentles last June in an argument over crack cocaine, the Old Bailey criminal court heard."

Presumably a foreign national then - and with an unhealthy interest in the more robust manifestations of the Religion of Peace. Can't understand why the BBC should have missed that.

I see no mention of deportation orders by the judge. If Mr El-Gharras isn't booted out when his time is up, something's very wrong. But then we know that already.

In other theyre-good-for-the-economy news, a 13-year old Lithuanian boy is kicked to death in East London - presumably by some other group of doing-the-jobs-we-wont (or the BBC would be telling us all about it). Ah, kids - they don't grow up so soon nowadays.

In other murder news, the barbarians who killed Mary-Ann Leneghan are sentenced.

It emerged after the trial that Thomas, Johnson, Jamaile Morally and Krasniqi, had been serving community sentences at the time of the murder.

In the Guardian, a hilarious and sad piece on the aftermath of the murder.

"Today the six men responsible for her death will learn their fate at a sentencing hearing at Reading crown court. Justice will be served. But what no one in the town seems to want to discuss is how a 16-year-old schoolgirl, who should have been preparing for her GCSEs, fell in with this ruthless and violent drugs gang - and why no one thought to intervene.

Susan Harris, Mary Ann's 54-year-old mother, finds it hard to talk about her daughter or what led her to associate with the likes of Adrian Thomas, the 20-year-old leader of the drug gang. Close family friends have set up a website to appeal for money to support Harris in her grief. Requests for an interview with her are met with the query: "Will there be a fee?"

At Prospect College, the secondary school where Mary Ann was a pupil with an appalling attendance record, senior teachers refuse to discuss the teenager or her recidivist truancy. Louisa John, the school's community relations officer, tells me: "We have moved on."

Meanwhile, Reading borough council, the local education authority, will not comment on whether the education welfare department was alerted to Mary Ann's problems, or even on the drugs problem in the town, citing human rights as the reason for their silence."

Sad, because of the everyday story of underclass folk it reveals, from "eating chips and drinking cherry Lambrini in a friend's car" to "but what can you do ?" (A digression - we saw the bedroom of a friend's 14-year old son - covered in drug posters - dope leaves and E-related. They live in a town with major smack problems - the boy's best mate had an older brother dead of an overdose. "What can you do ? He's fourteen !" said mum.)

Sad, because the responses of the school and council show how caring the caring classes actually are. As long as the Wednesday Guardian is fat with non-job adverts all is well with them. They love mankind - it's people they can't help.

Hilarious, because for the Guardian to ask why society and community seems to have collapsed - well, I think chutzpah is the word, or 'brass neck'.

I imagine the answer will be 'more and earlier sex and drug education'.

Mary Ann - the backside-covering commences

I have little time for the Probation "Service", an organisation staffed mainly by frustrated ex-hippies with shaved heads, piercings and a bag of skunk in the back pocket. Guardian readers to a man - or these days, to a woman.

But for once they don't take the lion's share of blame for the fact that the four psychotic killers (one an illegal immigrant) who butchered Mary Ann Leneghan were on the streets. Step forward Britain's judges and magistrates.

Thomas, the gang leader, was on an 18-month community rehabilitation order imposed in November 2004 for possessing a Class C drug and possessing a bladed article. In April 2004 he had been given a community sentence for possessing heroin, cocaine and cannabis and a year earlier a referral order for possessing cannabis. Johnson, the most violent member of the gang, had a criminal career stretching back to when he was 13.

In 2001 he was convicted at the Old Bailey for abducting a 13-year-old boy with learning difficulties, hanging him upside down from a tree and beating him. He was sentenced to 3½ years’ detention.

In May 2002 he was given a conditional discharge for assaulting a fellow care home resident, and in July 2003 an 18-month detention and training order for assaulting two minicab drivers, affray and possessing a broken bottle.

A week before the murder he was given a community punishment order for possessing a Class C drug and assaulting a police officer.

If I remember correctly, the 13 year old boy didn't have any learning difficulties - until Johnson and an older boy nearly killed him. I think we're talking about this story - and I think Johnson, who stabbed Mary Ann to death, is the 13 year old. Mary Ann wasn't the first person he tortured, but good old Mr Justice Grigson ruled that he shouldn't be named.

Thirteen-year-old Michael Servante was returning from school by train when two youths, 13 and 14 at the time, took him to a building site in south London where they tortured him.

Michael's mother, Leisha Servante, said that she believed the courts should name juveniles who hurt other children.

"I think society has a right to know who we are living next to. They have been protected. We have not."

Mr Justice Grigson said: "To name them would be a very real risk to the progress that they have made and that would be detrimental to the long-term public interest that two young men should be rehabilitated."

Great progress, judge - a year later he was assaulting people. And a year after that. Chalk one to Justice Grigson.

"They were not on early release" says Judy McKnight, taking time out from the really important issues like taxpayer-funded pensions (better than anything in the private sector), or gender equality duty, to deal with those tiresome people who pay the wages.

Not this time. Johnson was given 3½ years in 2001. How come he was free to collect another 18 months in 2003 ?

But the Mary Ann Leneghan Memorial prize has to go to the unknown magistrate who sat in judgement on Thomas just a week before the murder. With two sentences already under his belt, he was charged with possessing drugs and asaulting a police officer.

Which genius magistrate thought community service was a good idea ?




UPDATE - for a realist view of community sentencing and the Probation Service, I recommend the briefing papers at the Crime and Society Research Association. Start with this one.

Reading - Torture Capital of Britain ?

We had the trial of Daniel Higgins' torturers and murderers at Reading Crown Court recently - although the deed took place in Burnham.

Home Office pathologist Dr Ashley Fegan Earl told the jury that Mr Higgins' killers used a machete to cut into his head. They also stabbed him all over his body and hit him with a blunt weapon.

We have the continuing horror story of Mary-Ann Leneghan's final hours - a case for the return of the death penalty if ever I heard one (probably one of the few things Jamal and I would agree on) .

When Mary-Ann’s friend lifted up her pillowcase she saw Johnson stabbing Mary-Ann all over her body as she curled into a ball, the court heard.

“They said they wanted her to die slowly, she became unable to move and just lay there crying. When she cried or made any sound she was stabbed again,” said Mr Latham, referring to accounts from the surviving victim.

Now, via Nosemonkey and the Philosopher, this.

Police have urgently stepped up their hunt for three vicious mini-thugs - two black, one white - believed to be as young as 13-14, who carried out an horrific robbery attack on an innocent 44-year-old man near Reading town centre in the early hours of New Year's Day. The mind-numbing ferocity of the incident is said to involve the man having his eyelids and one ear cut off.

The victim was walking alongside Kennet Side, Reading, when he was attacked as he came out from under the King’s Road bridge. He was punched to the ground by the first offender and then kicked in the head and body by all three members of the group.

The young thugs then demanded money and temporarily stopped the attack while the victim handed over his wallet and £1.50. The offenders said that this was not enough and began to attack him again.

The attack happened between 3am and 4.15am on New Year’s Day. The victim was treated at the Royal Berkshire Hospital where he remained for four days. He received more than 100 stitches to repair damage to an eye and ear and also required surgery to repair some nerve damage.

It sounds like the people who carried out this attack - on a mother and her daughters - five days previously.