On May 3, 2019, 17-year-old Ellie Gould was studying for her A-levels at home when there was a knock at the door. It was Thomas Griffiths, her ex-boyfriend, with whom she had broken up with the night before.
When Ellie’s mother, Carole, returned home later that day, her daughter was dead. She had been strangled and stabbed 13 times in the face and neck. Griffiths, also 17 and a pupil at the same school, had arranged the scene to make it look like Ellie had inflicted the fatal wounds herself, placing the knife in her hand and reinserting it into her neck, but he would later be convicted of her murder and sent to prison.
Two women a week are killed by a current or former partner, according to domestic violence charity Refuge. In Ellie’s case, it was her first boyfriend and she had been dating just three months. Griffiths had no criminal record and came from a seemingly normal middle-class background, but when Carole looks back, there were warning signs, she said, that she and Ellie missed.
“I wish I had known then what I know now,” said Carole, 53, at a restaurant in Paddington, having taken the train from her Wiltshire home to relive the missed red flags of his coercive and controlling behaviour that she hoped other young girls and parents might learn from. “Ellie was a vivacious and self-assured girl who had lots of friends, but he was much less outgoing and confident,” she began.
“Just days into the relationship, Ellie told me that Tom had boasted that his family had two holiday homes, one in Majorca and another in Lyme Regis. He had showed her pictures of this villa in Spain with a pool, but Ellie doubted the story and it was all lies. A few days later, with her birthday approaching, Tom, who had a part-time job at Iceland, said he was going to spend ‘loads’ on her present, which made her feel uneasy, not least because she couldn’t afford to do the same for him.”
This desperation to impress with extravagant gifts is known as love-bombing, a tactic used to manipulate and associated with narcissism that can lead to abuse, experts warn.
“That was the first red flag we missed,” said Carole. The second warning sign, she said, was when he started talking to her about marriage and children after going out for a few weeks. “Ellie and her friends were focused on getting into good universities, whereas he had no such ambition, so this was not only way too fast too soon, but on a different page.”
His behaviour became more worrying, said Carol. “One day Ellie was meeting some girl friends from the other sixth form and he called after her, shouting, ‘Where are you going?’ She told him and he shouted back, ‘no you’re not, you’re supposed to be coming to my house, my mum is buying food especially for you’. He was gaslighting her but she stood up to him. When she told me, I asked, ‘are you sure you didn’t forget?’ and she said no because she knew her own mind.”
As his jealousy became worse, Ellie started to lose interest in the relationship. “About 10 weeks in, Ellie told him she wanted to stay at home with me on a Saturday and the whole night he bombarded her with messages on Snapchat to go over to his house. The next day I could see she was upset and then he turned up unannounced as we were about to go for a walk and asked if he could do work experience at my business, a kitchen and bathroom company.
“His vibe was odd. I said we didn’t have enough work to occupy him, so maybe just for a day. After he left, Ellie couldn’t believe he’d done that after she’d explicitly asked him not to.”
Carole added: “Ellie told him she wanted to focus on her exams and that they wouldn’t see each other after school. He was quite put out. On the Thursday, she was in the common room larking about with friends who were throwing up sweets and catching them in their mouths and he tried to yank her back from joining in.
“She shouted ‘get off’ and told him, ‘either join in or leave me alone’. That evening I told Ellie it seemed Tom had become obsessed with her and added, ‘you do not want to go out with somebody like that’. She said, “I know mum, I’m going to fix it”.”
Did she seem frightened? “Not at all,” said Carole. “None of us had any idea of the danger she was in.”
That night, Ellie sent Tom a message on Snapchat asking for a break. She then face-timed a girlfriend and seemed happy, recalled Carole.
The next day, Friday, as Ellie settled down to study, there was a rap at the door. “We later learned that Tom’s mother had dropped him at school, that he emailed his teachers to say he was not feeling well, took the bus home, changed into all black clothing and came to our house.” Carole took a deep breath. “The police investigation showed he strangled our daughter first. She was unconscious and he could have stopped there, but he took a knife from our knife block and stabbed her 13 times. The whole thing was pre-meditated and yet, because of this crazy law which says you get a lesser sentence for using a knife at the scene of the crime rather than carrying one there, he only has to serve 12 years and six months instead of 25 years before being eligible for parole. For us it’s a life sentence. It’s horrendous.”
Carole has crusaded to change this law, fruitlessly so far, though she has been successful in campaigning for older teenagers to get tougher sentences more akin to adults in what is now known as Ellie’s law. She also discovered, through people who later came forward, that Griffiths had been unable to accept rejection from a previous girlfriend and had stalked her with unwanted gifts.
What was the message she wanted to pass on to other girls? “If your boyfriend is coercive and controlling, be very careful and don’t stay in that relationship,” she said. “I now know that the most dangerous time in a girl’s life is not walking home alone at night, but when she ends that relationship, especially if her ex has coercive controlling tendencies. So make sure to have people with you when you leave that relationship.”
She added: “Your campaign to get youth workers into schools is excellent. Healthy relationships training will help teenagers identify red flags. The Government should back it.”
