TWO schoolgirls who posed for Snapchat photos as they tortured a woman to
death were caged for 15 years yesterday.
One sucked her thumb then wailed as she was led away.
She was revealed to have made four suicide attempts since being arrested. At
the time of the murder she was 14 and her friend 13. Both treated the
killing as a joke.
They left frail Angela Wrightson, 39, dying at her terraced house after
battering her for six hours with anything they could lay hands on.
Yesterday their victim’s mother Maureen sobbed as a judge sentenced the
killers to life, with a minimum of 15 years. They could be free by the age
of 30.
The torment of their victim’s mother was summed up by Mr Justice Henry Globe
QC as he told the pair: “Angie’s mother describes the horror of seeing her
battered body in the mortuary.
“She cannot understand how you could have been as violent as you were. She is
not alone in that view.
“She has been disgusted by the laughing and the giggling and sharing of
photographs during the time of and immediately after the attack.”
He added: “She needs specialist medical help in order to cope.”
The judge refused to let the press identify the killers, now 15, citing the
suicide attempts by the older one, known only as Child A.
Two bids to kill herself were at court. The first was almost successful but
the judge said an usher saved her.
The other girl, Child B, had also tried to commit suicide and self-harmed.
They were brought into the dock for sentence after a jury at Leeds crown
court convicted them on Tuesday of Angela’s murder.
Their victim, just 5ft 4in and 6½st, had befriended the girls, who were both
in care. They stripped her from the waist down at her home in Hartlepool,
then punched, kicked and stamped on her.
Among 14 improvised weapons the pair battered her with were a TV, printer and
shovel.
The laughing killers took pictures of themselves and their victim, who was
left with 71 injuries to her head and 31 on her body.
They later uploaded the images to photo-sharing site Snapchat, along with one
taken in the back of a police van following the killing.
The anonymity order means if anyone names them online, they may have to be
given new identities, at a cost of up to £1million.
Jon Venables and Robert Thomson, the killers of James Bulger in Liverpool,
were similarly protected.
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