Two teenagers accused of murdering a 16-year-old girl in a park near Warrington had a list of five children they wanted to kill, a court has heard.
The girl and boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were 15 when one or both of them allegedly stabbed Brianna Ghey 28 times in a “sustained and violent attack” on 11 February 2023. Brianna was transgender and had been living and dressing as a girl before her death, Manchester crown court heard.
Her alleged killers are accused of planning the murder over several weeks, if not months, before luring her to Culcheth Linear Park on the pretence of getting high on cocaine, the jury heard. They had planned to kill Brianna a fortnight earlier but were thwarted when she cancelled at the last minute, the court was told.
Each defendant, now 16, accuses the other of the murder, the jury heard on Monday. Opening the case for the prosecution, Deanna Heer KC said: “The prosecution case is that, whoever delivered the fatal blows, both defendants are equally guilty. Acting together, they planned and executed their plan to kill her.”
The defendants had known each other since they were 11 and were “close friends who were in regular contact with each other and trusted each other”, said Heer. Much of the evidence against them is contained in their text exchanges in the run-up to and aftermath of the murder.
The girl, referred to only as X, met Brianna in November 2022. She told the boy, Y, that she was “obsessed” with Brianna, whom she described as “really different”. She told the boy in December 2022: “I’m obsessed over someone I know but don’t have feelings for them … She’s called Brianna … I don’t know how to explain. Also she has a dick lol.”
In their exchanges, which were read to the jury, Y sometimes referred to Brianna as “it”, asking the girl: “Is it a femboy or a tranny?” The girl told him that Brianna was trans and that she sounded “just like a girl and looked really pretty”, said Heer.
Y wrote: “Tell me what you feel when you interact with it.” X said that “she got nervous and stuff but her heart felt normal”, Heer told the jury. Y responded: “I don’t think you’re necessarily in love but I think you’re more curious and intrigued by its unnatural nature.”
By January 2023, X’s interest in Brianna had “turned darker”, said Heer. It was then that X started to talk about killing Brianna with an overdose of pills, saying people “already know she is depressed and shit so nobody would get sus[picious]”, the court heard.
X claimed to have already given Brianna an overdose of ibuprofen and there was evidence to suggest “she wasn’t making it up”, Heer told the jury. Brianna’s mother, Esther Ghey, later recalled to police that she suspected Brianna had appendicitis and had been “in real pain and thought she was going to die”, said Heer.
The girl had access to the dark web via a special browser on her mobile phone, the jury was told. She told Y: “I love watching torture vids. Real ones on the dark web.”
Brianna was one of five children whom X and Y discussed killing, the court heard. One target was a boy referred to in court as E, who Y called a “nonce”. They planned to kill him by hanging him with a rope in Linear Park, attempting to lure him out via a fake Instagram account created by X, the jury heard.
But the court was told E soon blocked the fake account, and so X said: “If we can’t get E tomorrow we can kill Brianna.” Y agreed, the jury heard, saying: “Yeah, it’ll be easier and I want to see if it will scream like a man or a girl.”
On 28 January, both defendants arranged to meet Brianna in the park – “It seems that X told Brianna that they were going there to get high on cocaine,” Heer told the jury – but had to abandon their plan when Brianna texted X to say she could not come. “I’m fucking pissed Brianna just last minute said she cant come,” X wrote to Y.
Nonetheless, the defendants still met that day and walked to Linear Park. There, X filmed Y underneath a bridge located two to three minutes walk from the site at which Brianna would eventually be killed, Heer told the jury.
Two weeks later, Brianna was murdered. Her body was discovered face down in the mud by a couple walking their dogs. They had disturbed the defendants, who ran away, Heer told the jury. Paramedics tried to revive her but she was pronounced dead at 4.02pm.
She was stabbed 28 times with a 13cm hunting knife that Y had bought six weeks earlier, the court heard.
“Many of the stab wounds had caused damage to her bones, including her chest bone and her ribs, and would have required considerable force to inflict. There can be no doubt that she was the victim of a sustained and violent assault,” said Heer.
The jury was told that Brianna was transgender and had been born male. “By the time of these events, although she had not undergone gender reassignment surgery, she was living, dressing and referring to herself as a female. During the course of this trial, we will refer to her using the female pronoun,” Heer said.
The judge, Mrs Justice Yip, told the jury that Y had been diagnosed with autism since being remanded in custody and had “high levels of anxiety”. His verbal communication was “very limited”, she said. The girl had also been diagnosed with “traits of autism and ADHD” and anxiety, said Yip.
As a result, some days the defendants may not be physically present in court but may be watching via video link, she said. Each defendant had their own intermediary present in the dock to help them “to follow and participate in the trial, and to help me by letting me know if they are in difficulty or they need a break”, she said.
The case continues.
