A man has been jailed for life and told he will serve at least 15 years for the “sadistic” and “monstrous” murder of his partner, who died 21 years after he doused her with petrol and set her on fire.
In what is believed to be a legal first, Steven Craig, 58, was convicted of murdering Jacqueline Kirk more than two decades after the attack, having already served almost 19 years in prison for it.
Craig was inspired by a torture scene in the film Reservoir Dogs, in which a police officer is set on fire, when he carried out the assault on Kirk – known to her family as Jackie – in a car park in the Somerset seaside town of Weston-super-Mare in 1998.
He was convicted of grievous bodily harm with intent in 2000 and served almost 19 years in prison but was arrested again in June 2021 after Kirk’s death in 2019 at the age of 61.
Sentencing him at Bristol crown court, Mrs Justice Stacey said she would have set the minimum term at 34 years but had to take the time already served into consideration.
The judge said the attack was “sadistic, planned and premeditated” and he must have known his “monstrous” act was likely to cause Kirk agony and permanent disfigurement.
Stacey said that Kirk had taken Craig, a drug addict and alcoholic, into her home when he was homeless, but when they began a relationship he became coercive, exploitative and misogynistic. He used to beat her and had previously doused her with petrol in their bedroom.
On the way to Weston, Craig stopped at a petrol station and filled a soft drink bottle with petrol. Later he made Kirk bend over and poured the petrol over her head. Kirk saw his cigarette lighter going across her face before the petrol ignited. The judge said Craig was a coward not to try to help her and had the audacity to lie that she had accidentally set fire to herself.
Kirk spend nine months in hospital after the attack and required 14 operations, including a tracheotomy and skin grafts.
The judge said Kirk was in constant pain and forever reminded of the attack. She told Craig every time Kirk “looked in the mirror or saw the response of others to her face she was reminded of what you had done”. Stacey said Kirk bravely soldiered on, calling her “remarkable and impressive” but this did not mask the “demi-life” she was forced into.
In a statement after the attack, which was read out in court, Kirk described suffering nightmares and flashbacks to the “feel and smell of the petrol running over my face” but said the thought of her two children kept her going.
Her daughter Sonna, who was 13 at the time of the attack, told the court that when she first saw Kirk in hospital she looked nothing like her mother. “I did my best to hide my shock and gave her a cuddle, but this person just didn’t look like my mum … she looked like an alien.”
Kirk’s son, Shane, said people would shout “freak” at his mother when she went out and she used to think there were bugs crawling under her skin – but she fought to build a new life.
In August 2019 Kirk was taken to the Royal United hospital in Bath seriously unwell and died the next day. Scarring to her chest and abdomen meant their ability to expand was reduced when she suffered intestinal swelling.
During his trial the prosecution argued that the injuries caused by Craig made a “more than minimal contribution” to her death.
Permission had to be sought from the attorney general, then Suella Braverman, to charge Craig, from York, with murder. The CPS has said it was not aware of any case in England where a prosecution has taken place for murder or a homicide offence so many years after the unlawful act.
