Last month two defendants stood trial for her murder at Manchester Crown Court. Spanning eighteen days, the trial delved deep into the somber narrative surrounding Brianna’s senseless murder – a transgender teenager with a substantial TikTok following.
Brianna wanted to study beauty therapy at college, learn to drive, and have a pink car for her 18th birthday. Her family has expressed how she filled their home with fun, her laughter reverberating around the house. She shared a close and loving bond with her mum, older sister, and stepdad. It’s a house that has become unbearably quiet without her. A silence made all the worse by the devastating knowledge of how her life ended.
As the courtroom proceedings unfolded across January 2024, they painted a chilling picture of premeditation, deception, and violent intent. Factors even more shocking due to the age of the two defendants on trial. At the time of Brianna’s murder, they were just 15 years old.
“Brianna did not lose her life, it was stolen from her.”- Wesley Powell, Brianna’s stepdad
Throughout the trial, their young ages meant they could not be named. They were referred to as Girl X and Boy Y.
Now the trial has been concluded Judge Mrs Justice Yip granted an application by the media to lift the anonymity order protecting their identities. Mrs Yip stated public interest warranted the move and the order would have lapsed in 2025 when they turned 18. It was a decision ITV reported was supported by Brianna’s family.
The trial unearthed the dimensions of the distorted connection between the two adolescents who took Brianna’s life. Across the four years they had been friends, they exchanged messages discussing topics such as serial killers, violent dark web content, and torture.
Their morbid conversations eventually turned towards plotting the demise of people they knew, with Brianna becoming their primary target.
Nestled within the picturesque county of Cheshire, the village of Culcheth is quiet, friendly, and family orientated with generally low crime rates. The serenity however was shattered when the harrowing echoes of a brutal teenage girl’s murder reverberated through the village.
Scarlett Jenkinson moved to Birchwood High School, the school Brianna attended, in October 2022. There had been an incident at her previous school where she had talked a 13-year-old classmate into eating two gummies, without telling her they were spiked with marijuana.
The younger girl ended up hospitalized requiring medical attention as a result. Birchwood High School has said they were not aware of the full details of this incident when Jenkinson joined them.
At Birchwood High, Brianna was attending some of her lessons in the inclusion unit of the school due to severe anxiety. She had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) which made her especially vulnerable.
It was in this unit that Brianna met Jenkinson, who was now attending the unit for supported learning a few hours a week. They became friends, exchanging text and Snapchat messages. Brianna’s family were happy with her connection with Jenkinson. They were pleased she had made a new friend she enjoyed spending time with.
Brianna’s Murder
On Saturday, February 11, 2023, emergency services received a call at 3.13 pm. A couple walking their dogs had found a young girl on the path of Culcheth Linear Park bleeding heavily. As they approached, two figures had run from the scene.
The first police officer to reach the scene reported a female with multiple stab wounds in need of urgent medical assistance. Medics desperately tried to save Brianna’s life, but her injuries were too great. She was pronounced deceased at 4.02 pm.
Cheshire Police were able to identify Brianna from the belongings found around her body. A search of the area retrieved her mobile phone in a drain not far from the murder scene in the same direction the two figures had taken when they ran away.
Later that day, police issued a press release appealing for any information that might help their investigation. The local community were quick to respond horrified at what had taken place and the brutality in which Brianna’s life had been taken. Two persons of interest were quickly identified enabling detectives to begin more detailed inquiries.
The day after Brianna was killed, Scarlett Jenkinson’s mother called the non-emergency police line 101 at 5 pm. She reported her daughter and her friend Eddie Ratcliffe had been with Brianna the afternoon of her murder. Jenkinson could be heard in the background. She said she met with Brianna at the local library in Culcheth around 1.30 pm. She then said Brianna had left to meet a 17-year-old boy Jenkinson believed she was seeing but didn’t know his name.
As the operator passed this information on to the detectives investigating Brianna’s murder, Jenkinson began to send a series of text messages to Ratcliffe. Within an hour of the call, she had told Ratcliffe to tell the police the same sequence of events.
“Brianna was one of the best people I have ever met and such an amazing friend its so f****** sickening what got done to her.”- Scarlett Jenkinson
Half an hour later, Jenkinson posted an update to Snapchat. It was a tribute to Brianna. She included her picture and said how devastated she was about her murder calling Brianna her good friend.
At 7.30 pm that evening, police officers arrived at the family homes of both Jenkinson and Ratcliffe. To the horror of their parents, both teens were arrested on suspicion of Brianna Ghey’s murder. Jenkinson, shocked and tearful asked officers why she was a suspect. While across town, Ratcliffe immediately told them “I can explain.”
Dark Fantasies
On November 27, 2023, Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe went on trial for the murder of Brianna Ghey. Friends from the age of 11, it’s hard to comprehend how an innocent childhood friendship could take such a macabre turn.
Scarlett Jenkinson had an interest in death that went further than books and basic internet research. She wrote notes on different serial killers; their kills, methods, and locations. She downloaded the dark web browser Tor to access the underbelly of the internet hidden from sight where anonymity means torture videos and live-streamed real-life violence are easily found.
The dark web is a way of being online that is virtually untraceable. This anonymity feeds into both content creators uploading criminal and illegal content showing live streams of violence and those who wish to watch it.
While Eddie Ratcliffe didn’t appear to seek out this kind of information and viewing himself, he readily engaged in messages with Jenkinson as her fantasies progressed. She told Radcliffe she was obsessed with a girl called Brianna and found her fascinating.
When officers searched her bedroom, they found notebooks and hand-written plans noting in detail what she had planned with Ratcliffe to do to Brianna. It was an extensive amount of pre-planning and preparation.
‘Meet [Eddie] at wooden posts 1 pm. Walk down to library, bus stop. Wait until Brianna gets off bus, then the three of us walk to Linear Park. Go to the pipe/tunnel area. I say code word to [Eddie]. He stabs her in the back as I stab her in stomach. [Eddie] drags the body into the area. We both cover up the area with logs etc.’
Jenkinson sent an image of this note to Ratcliffe at 10.30 am on the day Brianna was murdered.
This evidence at trial confirmed this was not an impulse attack. Brianna was lured to the park on that day for this reason only. To be pounced on in an agreed plan between two teenagers masquerading as her friends.
A carefully worked out plan, primarily led by Jenkinson but fully supported by Ratcliffe. After reviewing her plan he suggested the use of code words to signal to each other the time to launch their attack.
A ‘kill list’ was also found in Jenkinson’s bedroom with four other teenagers’ names written on it. Jenkinson claimed she had no intention of harming any of them, it was all just fantasy that she knew Ratcliffe would go along with.
At trial during evidence he gave from an adjoining room, Ratcliffe typed out his answers into a computer after becoming mute in the months after Brianna’s murder. Diagnosed as ‘selective mute’ his only verbal communication was with his mother.
He told the jury he didn’t believe Jenkinson was being serious in her plans. He said she was a fantasist and told stories all the time. He didn’t believe they were planning a murder, he treated it as a joke.
The reality was, however, that Jenkinson’s fantasy world was progressing from serial killers and dark web content viewing to her own real life. The trial revealed she began telling people she had killed twice already. Nobody believed her stories and seemingly most felt she was a fantasist who enjoyed attention.
Underneath the surface, Jenkinson’s desire to take someone’s life and see them suffer was growing and it was a desire she wanted to act on. It was Jenkinson who introduced the idea to Ratcliffe. She was the lead however it was Ratcliffe who did not retreat in horror but instead supported and encouraged her. It quickly turned into both teenagers actively and wilfully beginning to plan a murder.
The weeks leading up to Brianna’s murder were especially marked by ominous signs. The defendants discussed various methods of killing, including poisoning.
Three weeks before she was killed, Brianna became ill with what her mother thought was a tummy bug. On January 23, around this same time, the prosecution showed the jury text messages Jenkinson sent to Radcliffe highlighting that Jenkinson intentionally poisoned Brianna in an attempt to kill her.
“The girl I mentioned, Brianna, I’m still trying to kill her. The easiest way is pill overdose plus people know she’s depressed. Nobody would get suss, but for some reason, she has a high tolerance. I gave her enough to kill her.”
Ratcliffe was not involved in poisoning Brianna but his response to discovering Jenkinson’s cruel acts was to suggest more ways she could be poisoned. Ratcliffe’s communications with Scarlett fed into her fantasies and helped to expand them.
Jenkinson asked Ratcliffe to bring his hunting knife with him to the park on that day. On the stand, Ratcliffe said he thought she was joking, and he didn’t take his knife. The weapon was found in a box in his bedroom after the murder and forensic testing found traces of Brianna’s blood indicating it could have been the knife used in the attack.
Ratcliffe’s jacket and shoes had Brianna’s blood on them with blood patterns suggesting he was very close to Brianna when she was stabbed.
“The distribution of blood is what I would expect if there had been blows into Brianna Ghey’s wet blood.” – Jane Roughley, Forensic Scientist and Blood Pattern Expert
There was also a 6-inch kitchen knife found in Jenkinson’s wardrobe. Testing did not find any traces of Brianna’s blood on the knife but there were some traces of Jenkinson’s blood.
None of Jenkinson’s clothing had traces of Brianna’s blood although the forensic examiner couldn’t be sure the jacket she was examining was the jacket Jenkinson was wearing that day.
On the morning Brianna was murdered, Jenkinson invited her to meet at Culcheth Library. Plans to meet two weeks earlier on January 28 had fallen through after Brianna canceled to be with her family.
Brianna had walked to Birchwood train station and boarded the number 28 bus. Dressed in a fluffy white hoodie, skirt, and white over-the-knee socks, her red hair was left loose and straightened. She asked for a child single to Culcheth Library, just as Jenkinson had told her to.
At 1.53 pm Brianna got off her bus on Warrington Road and was met by Jenkinson and Ratcliffe. CCTV footage shows the trio walking in the direction of Culcheth Linear Park.
That bus journey was the first Brianna had ever taken on her own. It was an activity she felt anxious and nervous about. On that day she conquered her fear and summoned the courage to take that journey to go and meet friends.
Brianna didn’t know Ratcliffe. They had never met before. She had no reason to fear them and no idea they would want to harm her. Behind her back, however, Ratcliffe and Jenkinson conspired meticulously, devising a chilling plot to end her life.
During initial police interviews, both Jenkinson and Ratcliffe maintained they had met with Brianna that afternoon and visited the park with her, but she then left to meet with an older boy. Detectives also uncovered a text message on Brianna’s phone from Scarlett Jenkinson, timestamped in the early evening on the day of her murder which supported their account.
“Girl, is everything okay? Some teenage girl got killed in Linear Park it’s on the news everywhere. And why did you ditch us for some random man from Manchester. Like wtf. That is so f***** up.” – Scarlett Jenkinson, text to Brianna Ghey
In further interviews over the following days, however, Ratcliffe quickly changed his statement of what happened that afternoon.
He said while at the park chatting on a park bench, he walked a few yards away to urinate against a tree. With his back to the girls, he heard noises. A thud and muttered voices. As he turned around, he claimed he witnessed Jenkinson stabbing Brianna in the back about three times while she was lying on the floor. He said he checked Brianna to see if she was still breathing, but ran away with Jenkinson in a panic unsure of what to do.
“I turned around and girl X was stabbing her in the back. Brianna was on the floor. I went over to Brianna to see if she was alive. I put my hands on her to see if she was breathing but I got blood on my hands. I panicked and ran.” – Eddie Ratcliffe
When this version was put to Jenkinson, she too changed her story. She said she had created a fake Snapchat account under the name ‘Nathan’ telling Brianna he was a drug dealer to try and persuade Brianna to come to the park with them that day.
At the park bench, she said she walked away to pretend to text Nathan about getting drugs from him. Brianna however grew suspicious.
A text message she sent a friend at 2.30 pm on that day revealed she didn’t believe Jenkinson was telling her the truth. “Scarlett is so weird girl. I think she’s pretending to have a deeler (sic),” she wrote.
Jenkinson claimed while her back was turned she heard Brianna scream. When she turned around, she saw Ratcliffe stabbing Brianna at least five times. She said she was frightened she too would be stabbed if she tried to intervene. When Ratcliffe began to run she ran too out of panic.
Both defendants blamed each other for the fatal stabbing of Brianna. As investigations continued, they maintained they were merely frightened bystanders and not the person who wielded the knife against Brianna and took her life.
On the witness stand, Jenkinson gave evidence for almost ten hours in total. She maintained she did not stab Brianna and that she had lied because she was scared of Ratcliffe. She said the messages she had sent about Brianna were all fantasy and she had no intent to hurt her.
“I started getting really paranoid I realised how bad it looked because of the text messages between me and Boy Y. I began messaging Brianna to cover myself… thinking if I sent the messages, it wouldn’t look as bad. The messages with me and Boy Y, I knew they looked really bad. I was going to attempt to delete them and then message Brianna’s phone so it didn’t look as bad.” – Scarlett Jenkinson
She admitted having fantasies about violence and hurting other people. She said she found the idea of murder interesting and enjoyed watching videos of violence and torture. She denied any of this material made her want to murder people.
The prosecution alleged that a text message sent from Brianna’s mobile phone to Jenkinson at 3.06 pm on the day she was murdered, was in fact sent by Jenkinson trying to cover her tracks after killing Brianna.
“Girl where are you” – Message from Brianna’s phone to Jenkinson
Seconds after this message was sent, Jenkinson deleted the chats. Brianna’s body was found and 999 called at 3.13 pm.
Under questioning from the prosecution, Jenkinson said she didn’t know why her fascination with Brianna turned into a fantasy of killing her, but that this transition in her thoughts had happened before with other people she knew.
She denied that Brianna being transgender played any role in her fantasies about killing her or that she had told Ratcliffe about her fantasy to kill Brianna because she knew he didn’t like transgender people.
Ratcliffe had referred to Brianna in extremely derogatory and transphobic terms. In previous messages he had called Brianna an ‘it’ and stated he wanted to see if ‘it screamed like a man or a girl.’
“Neither one of them took the lead, neither played along, by the time they met in Culcheth on Feb 11th, both knew what they were going to do, not in fantasy but in real life. That’s why Boy Y took his hunting knife. That’s why Girl X lied to Brianna to persuade her to come out. That’s why they took her to that place and lied to her to keep her there until there was no one else around. Then they killed her in just the way they said they would. Brianna was stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. She stood no chance. She was outnumbered. Two on one, and facing a hunting knife thrust into her again and again with considerable force.” – Prosecutor Deanna Heer KC, Closing Statement
On December 20, 2023, the jury found both Jenkinson and Ratcliffe guilty of murder. On February 2, 2024, Judge Mrs Justice Yip provided her sentencing remarks before sentencing.
She concluded that Scarlett Jenkinson wanted to kill Brianna to act out her fantasies and watch the fear and pain she caused while doing it. She felt the evidence showed murder excited Jenkinson and she had a deep desire to kill. The murder for Jenkinson, Judge Yip said, had sadistic motivations.
For Eddie Ratcliffe, the judge did not believe his motives were sadistic but stated it was clear he was fully aware that was Jenkinson’s motivations and he continued to actively participate. For Ratcliffe she had concluded, Brianna being transgender was a factor in his motivation to kill her.
A Life Stolen
Brianna was a 16-year-old transgender girl who was murdered in an incredibly violent manner by two teenagers of her own age, one whom Brianna thought was her friend.
This wasn’t an impulse attack, or the tragic result of an accident or argument gone wrong. This was pre-planned carefully orchestrated and fully intentional actions carried out to brutally take her life.
The two people responsible were 15 years old at the time they killed Brianna. The evidence against them is overwhelming, including their own messages to each other, written evidence in their possessions, and admissions made in their police and assessment interviews.
The eighteen-day trial at Manchester Crown Court revealed the harrowing extent of their dark fantasies and twisted desires that they brought to life on February 11, 2023. Brianna was lured to her death having no idea her life was in danger.
They were sentenced to 22 years and 20 years with the possibility of parole only if they met the stringent requirements of the parole board convincing them they were safe to be released.
For Scarlett Jenkinson, the chances of release in the future were deemed to be low. She had already confessed to a psychiatrist in between conviction and sentencing that she enjoyed killing Brianna, that it excited her, and she wanted to do it again.
The stories she has told to her parents, the police, and the court have changed frequently including trying to lay the sole responsibility of this appalling crime onto her accomplice.
While Ratcliffe’s motives may not have matched Jenkinson’s in terms of sadism, it is clear he wanted the plans against Brianna to be carried out and to be part of them just as much as she did.
Now convicted of murder they will start their journeys through the criminal justice system and be held in custody for at least the next 20 years of their lives.
Their paths will now no doubt differ. A lack of remorse and desire to repeat such violence seems to be the forthright concern of one, whereas the other has withdrawn into himself, and has shown signs of remorse and the possibility of a path to rehabilitation. Regardless of what now lies ahead of these two teenagers, they have more than they allowed for Brianna.
At 16 years old, she was a fighter who stood out from the crowd as she came to terms with her own identity and battled anxiety, ADHD, and ASD. She was building plans and dreams for her future which she never got the chance to live. Her future was cruelly snatched away from her.
Beneath the surface of what seemed to be a genuine friendship lay hidden agendas, betrayal, and dishonesty. Brianna’s family are now left trying to piece together their lives with such a vital part missing.
