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Hi, angie, thank you for joining me today on One in Three.
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How are you doing?
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Yeah, okay, thank you, okay.
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So we are actually planning on recording two episodes with you, and the first one you're gracious enough to talk about why you're here, what circumstances led you to where you are.
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So, if you don't mind, go ahead and introduce yourself and give a little bit of background.
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Yeah, I'm Angie Smith.
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I'm from Derbyshire, south Yorkshire in the UK.
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I'm just an average mom, an average nan, an average everyday person.
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Really, really, yeah, but unfortunately.
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Yeah, I've got a tragic tale to tell.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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And these tragic tales they happen to average everyday moms and nans which is a grandma here?
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But do you want to go ahead and tell a bit of that tragic tale that brought you to where you are today?
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Well, it was my daughter.
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She had a long-term relationship, 14 years.
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She had a son, john.
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A couple of years later Lacey came along, her daughter and you know.
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They was quite an happy, loving family.
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Her kids meant the world to her.
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And then her and her long-term partner, they broke up and we was about to go into national lockdown in the UK.
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Um, and that was pretty hard for her.
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Um, you know where she'd had this long-term relationship and she came out of it and then she were there on her own.
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So she started.
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She joined a dating website and she matched with a man called Damien Bendel.
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Things progressed really quickly too quickly for my liking and I wasn't allowed to see her because we were in national lockdown.
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So everything was done on FaceTime, telephone, which was really hard because we'd see quite a lot of one another.
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She told me over FaceTime that she'd met this guy and he was coming up for the weekend, which then I questioned, because we were all in national lockdown and he lived quite about two hours away from where we actually live in Derbyshire.
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The children were staying with their dad up that weekend and he came down.
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I told her to keep in touch with me.
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I wanted to know how it was progressing because you know, we never really knew this guy.
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She did.
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After the weekend he went home.
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He then came back the following weekend.
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Then we were starting to come out of a little bit of a lockdown so we could see I think it was five other people from our households.
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Then we were starting to come out of a little bit of a lockdown, so we could see I think it was five other people from our households.
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I went to meet him at her house, I'd say the first couple of hours he seemed quite charming and I was thinking, oh, maybe she really has got something here.
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Um, and then after that it just went really downhill the conversation.
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Um, he'd mentioned that he I was talking about my family dog that I had to have put to sleep because he was quite ill and how much the vet's bills were.
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And he told me his friend had a dog and he couldn't afford the vet's bills.
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So he hit it over the head with an aspirin.
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That was my wall wall.
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No, no, no.
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I'd had the conversation with Terry and said I I'm not sure about him and she said it was all like front provado.
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He likes to play the big man, the and I wasn't.
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Then I was really on my guard with him.
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Um, and then again it was the national lockdown again.
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We kept going in and out of lockdowns and you know how it went all over the world, um, and then, next thing, I know, every time I rang he were always there.
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You could hear him in the background.
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She was less where we'd facetime.
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A couple of times a day I would chat over the phone.
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That all stopped, um, and then we was out again for a little while.
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When I went back round and I was going out and asked her if she wanted to come with me and he had a dressing gown on and he wrapped her in the dressing gown, tied the belt around her and said no, she's not coming out with you, she's staying with me.
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All these shocking little things.
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And I'd said to her why is he always here?
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You know, why has he not gone home?
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And she was like he's just not gone home anymore.
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Mum and I said well, this is a bit too soon for my liking, um, and then, as I said, contact became less and less.
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Until then I was really quite concerned for her.
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Um, I saw a program which was about Claire's Law, which is a disclosure scheme in the UK, and I downloaded the form to fill that in to see if I could find out his criminal background.
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It was very difficult to do and it wouldn't have gone to me.
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It would very difficult to do and it wouldn't have gone to me.
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It would have gone to her and knowing he was always there, I didn't think that was the right thing to do, so I stopped it.
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So therefore I didn't find out which criminal background were.
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Time went on and on and there was a few little things were coming out about him and I said to her I don't like what I'm hearing.
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He's been in prison before.
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He had a drug habit and she'd said, yeah, but he's changed now.
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Mum, you know he loves me, he loves the children.
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He's never had anybody to change for and so he's changed for me.
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She started to ask me to borrow money all the time and that was another big concern because she wasn't like that.
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It was sort of every other day and it was a certain amount of money late into the night and I just said, just said, no, I'm not doing this, because this money's not for you, it's for him.
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Um, he were quiet.
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He'd come down to me and said you've got me all wrong.
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And so therefore, it was like I don't know, I'm gonna have to try to get on with this guy because otherwise, if I don't, I'm going to lose her.
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And so I tried my best to get on with him.
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And then on the morning of Sunday, the 19th of September 2021, I was quite busy throughout the day and hadn't heard from her or the children, and so we'd seen on a local Facebook page of our community, our little village, that something really bad had happened in Killamarsh.
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It's a little village we live in and there was a lot of police presence.
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And it got to about 3 o'clock and I just thought I haven't heard from her today.
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So I rang, it went into voicemail.
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I rang again, it went into voicemail.
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I tried texting her Nothing.
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I tried texting her nothing.
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So then my husband had said oh, it's just come up over the Facebook page that whatever has happened today has gone off on your Terry Street.
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And I said right, I've got this really bad feeling.
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We need to go down.
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And I went down and what met me was a sea of police.
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The road was cordoned off.
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I jumped out the car, I ran to the policeman and said what's happened?
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That is my daughter's house, please, I need to get down there.
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And he said no, no, no, no, you can't, you can't, you need to get back in the car.
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We'll take your name and address and we'll send officers out to you, which, within 10 minutes of me arriving home, they came out.
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I don't remember much really about that day.
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They proceeded to go on and said they'd found a body and we think that this may be your daughter.
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And I remember saying no, no, no, you've got this wrong.
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This can't be no.
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And then they went on to say and then there was another body, and then another.
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And then they reckoned that there was someone staying over for a sleepover, which I knew was my granddaughter's little friend because she's always sleeping over, and I called out her name and said oh no, not her as well.
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And I just said he did this, didn't he?
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I just knew, I knew it was him.
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I was waiting to find out who our parents were, because Damien Bendel had smashed her phone and they couldn't find anything.
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Obviously, they couldn't get into her phone to find out any phone numbers.
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So that was, yeah, it just went absolutely crazy.
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As soon as they'd contacted us.
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Then they released it on every TV programme.
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Who she were.
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I mean sitting there on that Sunday night watching the news and watching my daughter, my grandchildren, all come up on the news.
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It was just unreal.
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It didn't seem to.
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It was like I was asleep and I was in some kind of nightmare and I've got to wake up from this.
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Our village it was a big part of it.
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There were so many tributes left flowers, teddy bears, candles.
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People are utterly shocked and yeah it, it was hard.
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Um, I don't know how I mean people say to me how do you keep going?
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I keep going now because of what I do.
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Um, the first couple of weeks I just didn't.
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I think it was just a case of getting up in the morning and trying to focus what I had to do.
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Um, because about four days after we had to go and identify her, which was I can't even describe what that was like.
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It was behind her face, she was beyond recognition and also she had the defence wounds on her hands, so she'd fought for her life.
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A few days after that, we actually went to see my granddaughter and my grandson.
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They were in the same room.
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Same applies to what he did to them.
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I can remember standing in the middle of them both and I could hear this screaming, and I didn't know who this screaming was, and then I realised it was me and I fell to my knees.
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My husband picked me up and said we need to go.
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This is not good for you.
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Yeah, so that was you know, I'm a man, and I mean.
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They fought for their lives as well.
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Children he was quite'm a man and I mean they fought for their lives as well.
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Children he was quite a big man.
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Used to do cage fighting, so they never stood a chance and then it went.
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And I just think every week there was something different.
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And they said that obviously she was eight weeks pregnant with his baby and decided to tell the police it wasn't his baby.
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So then we had the task of having to have the baby taken out of her to have a DNA test, and then we had the task of saying whether we had the baby put back in Terry or whether we'd give that baby a funeral.
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And first of all I'd said no, I don't want any of think of ease near my daughter.
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And then my husband had a word with me and said you know how much she loved children.
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Um, you know she should have the baby back with her.
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So that's what I decided.
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Um, and then it was you know, and I'm I can't say, I'm not comfortable, but it doesn't sit well with me, or I don't try to think about it.
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But then we found out that he'd also why, lazy as I die, and he then raped her at least twice.
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What kind of man does that?
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How can you call him a man?
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I tried to not refer to him by name.
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If I speak about him now, I call him the monster.
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I'm just thinking.
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What they went through that night.
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They just don't bear thinking about it.
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It came out afterwards because we weren't told exactly how they died for a few weeks, and it came out that he'd killed them and he'd hit them at least nine times around the head with a claw hammer.
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So, yeah, can you even?
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You just cannot comprehend that.
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It was just absolutely yeah, you just open every day that you'd wake up.
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Yeah, you just open every day that you'd wake up.
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The court, you know he decided, you know I killed them, but I didn't really kill them.
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You know I was.
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You know I don't remember.
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You know the last thing I remember was sitting on the stairs, came to, went upstairs, seen my daughter and my missus dead no, I don't think that you did, because you went on to cover your own tracks.
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You smashed up a phone.
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You knew exactly what you were doing.
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He sat in court with us there.
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First couple of times he actually stared me out, actually turned around and looked at me and stared me out, which was really hard to keep a lid on things.
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And then he went along the route that he said he was asked to give a plea.
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He went along the route.
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You know he's got a mass in his brain, so he wasn't that really guilty of killing him.
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It was this mass in his brain.
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And I'd said all along, I'd said to the police, our barrister, I'd said he's lying.
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So they'd done extensive brain tests on him which lasted near enough a year.
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So his back was always to call all this time, listening to how he was suffering, which sometimes you don't even want to know.
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And then he stood up at one time and said you know, he's not guilty of murder, but he's guilty of manslaughter.
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And I wanted to jump home and shout out are you kidding us?
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You know, really.
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And so then it went.
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It just kept going on and on and on.
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And then, in December 2022, we got a phone call from the police that said well, I've got another court date.
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Phone call from the police that said, well, I've got another court date.
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It was the 21st of December 2022.
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We went back into court and he pleaded guilty to all charges and then the judge had said he said he was sorry, you know he realised that he'd have to get a full life term, which is he will die in prison.
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The judge gave him four life terms one for 15 years for ages of murders and a full life term for what he did to Lacey alone and a full life term for what he did to Lacey alone, he'd said, because Lacey were killed in the living room, my daughter were killed in her bedroom, my grandson was killed in the bathroom and my daughter's little friend was killed in my granddaughter's room.
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He'd said he'd carried Lacey, which is my granddaughter, upstairs to be with her mum, when all he did was carry her upstairs to do what he did to her.
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Yeah, so he was sentenced to a full life order, which is very rare in this country.
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There's only about I think there's about 27 people in this country that's got a full life order.
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So he will die in prison and that's.
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You know, that's all we could have wished for.
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You know he'd never come out to be able to hurt anybody else again, and it's just he's still carrying on in prison.
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I mean, you know, last year we got a telephone call from the National Preparation Service that said he's attacked an inmate in prison with a chlorammer.
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Unbelievable, why would you let someone like him in a workshop with a chlorammer?
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So now he's in the news again because he's up for attempted murder, though he cannot get anything else on his sentence.
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So, yeah, everything just keeps coming and coming, even though now you know we're nearly four years on and you think that you're never going to hear about this person again, but he's still controlling everything.
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You know he's got the life sentence, but so have we got life sentence?
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He's never going away.
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I'm kind of speechless.
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I mean, I'm familiar with the story, but to hear it from you is just so much more emotional, in a full range of emotions, and I absolutely would refer to him as the monster as well, because there's truly no other word.
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You could call him um.
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Had he, was he still there, or how did they arrest him?
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Um?
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what happened was yeah, that's a statistic from war over.
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Yeah, he'd, he'd stayed with them.
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Um, he did what he did to them.
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He stayed with them all night in the property, apart from one time he called a taxi.
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I don't know what you do call a taxi.
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Yeah, he called a taxi and he went and sold my grandson's xbox in the middle of the night to a drug dealer to get drugs.
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Yeah, that's someone that didn't know what he was doing and he told the taxi driver.
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The taxi driver made a conversation with him and he said how's your weekend been?
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And he went.
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Yeah, bit of a mad one.
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I've been chilling with my family.
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He watched TV during the night while they were all laying there yeah, so that is.
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And the next morning he went out.
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He was caught on CCTV, I think about 10 past 7 in the morning, buying cigarettes.
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He had blood all on his hands.
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And then he went back to the property and phoned his mum to say that he had stabbed himself with a bread knife.
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She had then called the police for a concern for him.
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She didn't know anything about what happened.
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While she went phoning the police, he was on the phone to the police at the same time and then, basically, the telephone call goes to I need police and I need an ambulance because I've killed four people.
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And then the officers came out.
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He decided to tell them you know, I've cut myself so many centimetres in with a bread knife and the policeman says, all right, right, let me have a look.
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Um.
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And then he says and the policeman says, oh well, nothing's going to happen to you now.
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And he went yeah, I'm going back to prison.
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So the policeman says um why, have you done anything to anyone else?
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And and he says, yeah, I've killed four of my family.
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I don't think the police actually believed him at that point.
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And why really would you?
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I don't think you would.
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The police went in.
00:24:07.087 --> 00:24:11.538
I mean, the whole of the general public didn't see the footage.
00:24:11.538 --> 00:24:17.856
We saw the footage of when the policeman went in and he was quite utterly shocked.
00:24:17.856 --> 00:24:20.382
There was a female officer there.
00:24:20.382 --> 00:24:22.446
She was quite upset.
00:24:22.446 --> 00:24:25.153
He told her to leave because she was getting that upset.
00:24:25.153 --> 00:24:32.594
Yes, and the way he told the policeman I've just killed, it was like nothing.
00:24:32.594 --> 00:24:33.476
Oh, I've just killed, it was like nothing.
00:24:33.476 --> 00:24:35.301
You know, I've just killed four people.
00:24:35.301 --> 00:24:37.391
I'm going back to prison.
00:24:37.391 --> 00:24:44.557
So they had to take him to the emergency department because he had.
00:24:44.557 --> 00:24:47.314
They were just like nothing.
00:24:47.314 --> 00:24:49.913
He just nicked himself.
00:24:49.913 --> 00:24:54.737
You know, he obviously didn't have the will with all to kill himself.
00:24:54.737 --> 00:25:00.892
So that's how he handed himself in.
00:25:00.892 --> 00:25:01.073
Yeah.
00:25:06.108 --> 00:25:07.554
It's just a disgusting story.
00:25:07.554 --> 00:25:17.317
I mean, like you said, when you think it can't get any worse, then there's this other part of the story where he just proves that he is a monster.
00:25:17.317 --> 00:25:26.440
You mentioned Claire's Law, and I actually did do an episode in the past on Claire and I've explained what that was.