10/12/2020
Two mothers, whose daughters were murdered by ex-boyfriends, have joined forces to try to change the law over prison sentences.
Poppy Devey Waterhouse, 24, and Ellie Gould, 17, were both stabbed to death and their mothers want jail terms to be extended for killers who use weapons that are already at the crime scene.
Ellie was murdered at her home in Calne, Wiltshire, in May last year, after she ended her relationship with Thomas Griffiths, who was 17 at the time. He was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years after he admitted murder, after stabbing her 13 times in the neck. The Attorney General later ruled that his sentence was not unduly lenient.
Poppy, originally from Frome, Somerset, was murdered by her former boyfriend, Joe Atkinson, 25, at a flat in Leeds in December 2018. She had suffered about 70 knife injuries all over her body. Atkinson was sentanced to a minimum of 15 years and 310 days.
Both murders involved kitchen knives which were already at their homes. Guidelines state that if a weapon is taken to the murder scene, the starting point for a sentence is 25 years, but for other offences it is 15 years.
Poppy's mother, Julie Devey, from Frome, said it was "absolutely disgusting. If you're killed in the home you're not worth the same as people that are murdered outside the home, even though they are usually very violent murders. How is her murderer less violent or less dangerous, than somebody who is stabbed in the park by someone they don't know?"
Ellie's mother, Carole Gould, said: "These cases are happening all the time, and yet the government is simply not interested in changing sentencing so the punishment fits the crime."
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said: "All murder rightly carries a life sentence and it is for judges to decide the minimum prison term. Factors, such as the degree of planning and pre-meditation that went into a murder, must be taken into account, and these apply no-matter where the murder was committed."
