Three people jailed for life
at the Old Bailey today for the vile
torture and murder
of a disabled woman.
For her to die in such a...
It's just...
Everything about it's horrible.
Her body was found in August last
year, on a disused railway
line in Rugby.
Shouted, "Goodbye and bye, love you.
Love you, Mum," and she was gone.
That's the last time
I saw her alive.
You never expect it to happen
to you, and then when it does,
that's kind of shattered. You can
expect anything to happen to you.
The judge described
the way she met her fate
as a chronicle of heartlessness.
She was so innocent
in her outlook on people.
She really could not judge
a bad person,
if you put them in front of her.
It was so easy for her to be
befriended by the wrong people.
A body has been found on the disused
railway line this morning in Rugby.
The female victim hasn't
been identified yet,
but she was spotted in the grass
by a passing jogger.
I got a call around 5am
on Monday the 9th of August,
2010, to the fact that a female body
had been found on the disused
railway line in Rugby.
And we quickly identified
that it was Gemma.
She was subjected to quite
a prolonged assault in various
locations at the house.
She was beaten with a mop,
locked in the en-suite toilet,
masking tape wrapped
around her face, got some cans
of beer and urinated into
one of them,
and made Gemma drink from the can.
They pretty much tortured
her for several hours.
Her head was bounced off a big
industrial-style radiator,
because all of her blood
was up the radiator and up the wall.
They walked her all the way
through Rugby town,
told her they were walking her home,
and she believed them.
Her nose was actually broken
in the flat, which is why,
in the CCTV footage, when she is
walking towards the camera
you can see her with a tissue
blotting her nose.
Gemma would have been, like,
breathing a sigh of relief,
you know. "Only got to get
around the corner,
"only got to get around the corner."
And then said that they would take
her down the railway bank to cut
across to her house,
which would be correct
if when they got down onto
the railway bank they turned left.
But they got down on the railway
bank, and turned right.
A black bin liner was put
over Gemma's head and then, again,
she got beaten up badly.
She got stabbed once in the back
and somebody stamped on her head.
There were a footprint on her head.
They stripped her naked
and left her lying there,
face down, and took her clothes
and put them in a black plastic bag,
and took it a bit further
down that way,
and tried to set light to it.
The cause of death was she drowned
on blood from her nose.
I don't know... I don't want to...
I don't know what she could
have been thinking.
She was probably thinking,
"What on Earth is going on?
"I've done nothing to these people."
She was probably in a hell
of a lot of pain.
She was already bleeding.
I mean, I don't know...
The whole thing is just so sad.
Her life was just so shit
all along,
so for her to die in such
a... It's just...
Everything about it is horrible.
This is where Gemma died, here.
A horrible place to lose your life
in the middle of the night.
It broke my heart.
All I could think was why,
why would you do something
like that?
She had learning difficulties,
she was very vulnerable.
Even though they did that to her,
I'm quite sure that if she survived
it, she'd have forgiven them.
The first day I went to court,
sat up in the gallery
and they started reeling off what
had happened to her.
One of the worst days of my life.
Horrendous.
Horrendous.
The defendants treated the whole
process, really, as a bit of a joke,
probably just thought, "Well,
give it a few more hours
"and we'll be out and carry
on with our chaotic lifestyles."
They thought everything was fine,
what they did was fine.
It didn't matter, it was only Gemma.
Gemma meant absolutely nothing.
This murder did shock Rugby,
you know, it's a lovely place
to live and this really shocked
people, and especially with Gemma
having learning difficulties,
it was really, you know,
even more impactive to
the community.
That's you when you were born,
so Gemma would have been about,
well, 11. I was 21, yeah,
I was 21...
Looks like she's very small.
She looks really happy
there, doesn't she?
I don't know what she's looking
at you like there for.
She's probably thinking that I
didn't get a cake. Yeah, yeah.
That's exactly what she's thinking.
It's your first birthday.
You couldn't even walk then.
I think I had to stop Gemma
from blowing the candle out.
She really, I think,
in fact I think we had to relight
it so Gemma could do it. You
wouldn't remember her then,
at that age, would you?
I was so tiny that it's hard to kind
of remember Gemma that much,
when I was small. But it's almost
like having the proof.
Yeah, whenever she was in the house
she was around you.
Yeah, exactly. In all the photos I'm
always either on her lap or playing
games with her. We're always in
close proximity.
Um, which is really sweet.
Yeah, she did love you.
When I was a child it would feel
more like we were much
closer in age. It was almost like
visiting a cousin that was my age
rather than an auntie.
Gemma.
She was such a character
from the minute she was born.
She was very, very loving.
Very.
She was always wanting cuddles.
She used to just do things
that were completely random,
like empty all of the food
in the cupboard across the kitchen
floor or she just, you didn't know
what she was going to do next,
she was a lot of fun.
She was a handful but to have this
little child bouncing around,
just doing crazy stuff, I suppose,
as kids we found it amusing.
I knew from a very early age
that there was something not right.
Gemma was completely,
completely different
to my other two children.
Completely different to any other
child I had ever met.
And that was obvious
from a very early age.
The specialists needed her to go
for chromosome tests.
When we went back for the results,
they were negative.
During her life she had every
test imaginable,
and they all came back negative.
Oh, here's a picture of Gemma
on the beach in Majorca.
Yeah, I couldn't tell
you how old she was there.
In the pool with Taylor,
and Taylor's her niece.
I think that's Gemma
coming down the slide.
Oh, there is Gemma with another
little girl on a Lilo.
Somebody she got talking, obviously,
because she liked little ones.
Love you, Gem.
She went to normal, mainstream,
first school and middle school.
According to the school
she was fine.
She was coping.
I think that was the word,
she was coping.
Now, what that meant, I don't know.
But she was coping.
It's one of the most maddening parts
of my time with Gemma was the fact
that we knew she couldn't do
anything the other kids could do,
and yet nobody took her out of that
school and put her somewhere else.
I don't know how she kept
slipping through the net,
because she was quite
obviously struggling.
Gemma was my friend since
when we were at school.
We listened to CDs, watched films.
CREW MEMBER: What kind of music
did you listen to?
Boyzone, Take That, Spice Girls.
Me and Gemma used to dance to
the music.
Normal teenagers, when children get
to teenage years they get really,
really fussy about their appearance,
can't walk past a mirror
without looking in it, you know,
very, very clean
and everything else.
With Gemma it was a fight
to get her to clean her teeth.
A fight to get her anywhere
near water,
and soap was out of the question.
I do remember her, kind of,
her being advised to, like, shower
and wash and things like that by the
family quite often,
and I think it just wasn't something
that came as naturally
as it did to everyone else.
As a family we've asked for help
ever since Gemma was little.
You know, social services,
or teachers, or the hospital,
or the doctor, or whoever.
For a long time she didn't fit
any criteria, so the answer
was just she's not this
or she might be this,
she might be on this spectrum,
she might be on that spectrum.
But then somebody else would come
a long that would say no,
she doesn't tick that
box, so she can't be.
The amount of fight and effort
and resilience that my nan,
especially, but also my mum had.
They really fought for Gemma
and they wanted her to have the best
care and that, actually,
it just wasn't there.
The council said that they'd like
to assess Gemma because they felt
that she wasn't capable of living
by herself and possibly needed
supported living and we were like,
"Great, this is brilliant,"
and then when the assessment
came back, it said that
in his opinion, this person
that did the assessment,
she was more than capable
of living by herself.
The guy that supposedly done
the assessment at our house
consisted of him being in my house
for 10 or 15 minutes,
and during that time Gemma actually
went outside into the garden
to have a cigarette, so he hadn't
seen Gemma in all that time.
And that was the end.
When Gemma was probably about 24
she was signed out of the system.
Never to be given any support again.
When Gemma was 25 she was put
in council housing, like anybody.
She was put into a flat in Rugby,
in Biart Place,
much to our absolute
distress and disgust.
She never really let
us enter the property.
She would always, like,
get us to meet her outside.
I think, if she'd had assisted
living, obviously, they can't keep
her prisoner, but they would
have possibly escorted her wherever
she wanted to go, and assisted
her in daily life.
And, as a family, we would have
known more
about what she was actually doing,
and who she was spending
her time with.
And I certainly don't think
she would have been out
and about at that time of night.
These are the flats that she lived
before she died.
It was actually the last
time I saw her,
I would have been
parked right there.
I picked her up, well,
me and a friend had picked
up from Warwick, because
she got stuck in Warwick,
she'd missed the last train.
And, unfortunately,
my last words weren't nice
to her, because it had really
annoyed me that she put herself
in that situation,
where she was stuck.
And like, I did have a complete go
at her, and told her to sort herself
out, that it was out of order, and
that was the last time I saw her.
I didn't come here very often,
because I didn't like the idea
of knocking on the door
and perhaps going,
"Well, you're not coming in,"
and I really didn't want to
know what state the flat was in.
She just didn't keep that tidy.
Clean or tidy.
It started smelling,
it was horrendous. Really bad.
When she first moved in I cleaned
it from top to bottom, and my mum
gave her a three-piece suite,
and she had a beautiful old pine
wardrobe that was given to her.
She had everything,
she had a television and stereo,
all her CDs, her DVDs,
and everything, full DVD
player and that.
And when she died, and I saw
it. She'd got hardly anything.
Probably got taken or somebody said,
"Oh, I like that,"
and she just gave it to them.
Even though she'd never
admit it I don't think
she could have been very happy here.
The only thing she was glad
about was the fact she got
her independence, and she could do
what she wanted to do,
when she wanted to do it.
I know I wouldn't have wanted
to live here,
under any circumstances.
Rumour has it, that particular
block, where Gemma lived,
the council put drug dealers
in there and ex-prisoners in there.
It was so easy for her to be
befriended by the wrong people.
You'd got the undesirables
who had been placed in the flats.
And they soon join up and create
problems with other tenants.
I got told that she'd got caught
up with a group of people
and they were using
her flat to store drugs.
And when I asked her about it
and she kept saying, "No.
"They're presents,
I'm looking after them."
And it was heavy drugs. It was
heroin, it was crack cocaine.
And I said to her, "Why have you got
involved with this, then?"
"Because they're my
friends, they like me."
But to her, they were presents,
and that's what they told her.
They were presents for people
and they wanted to keep them
as a surprise, and she
believed them.
I think Gemma could have been so
desperately looking for friendship
and community, I think
she was quite vulnerable.
I remember her being
quite impulsive.
She'd want to just do, you know,
whatever she was feeling
and actually just
having that guidance,
I think, would be
imperative, actually.
Chantelle was her friend.
I met her once.
She wasn't somebody that I would
probably choose to be my sister
or daughter's friend, if you'd like,
but the fact that she wanted
to spend time with Gemma,
being Gemma, I thought that she must
be a really nice girl.
I didn't quite understand
the relationship, because Chantelle
was perfectly articulate,
whereas Gemma wasn't,
so it stuck out a bit.
Jess, I remember from school.
It was just a certain group
of girls, I didn't really know them,
that you just didn't want to get
in trouble with on the playground.
Or you could see them maybe getting
a little bit of a telling
off from a teacher
that you just think,
"Oh, they're the ones to watch out
for.
And I remember meeting
Joe, who seemed fine.
Was a fun guy, just kind of cool,
just chatting like anyone else.
I actually remember sharing some
chocolate buttons with him,
and my friend who I was with,
and some other people.
They were like two couples.
There was Chantelle and Daniel.
In the middle, Duncan. And then
Joe Boyer and Jessica.
People like that are not friends
with people like Gemma
and if they are, it's often for some
sort of personal gain.
The day before she got murdered,
I went over to the garage to get
a paper and Gemma was
outside the garage,
and I said to her, "What are you
doing around here again?"
"I'm going to Coventry
with Daniel and Chantelle."
I said, "Who are they?" And they
were standing at the bus stop.
So I said to Gemma, "Come with me
into the shop,
"while I get my paper."
I said, "Why are
you going to Coventry?"
"Well, they tell me what they want,
and I get it for them."
I said, "Oh." So I said,
"You're stealing for them?"
"Mmm."
"Why?" "Because they're my friends."
And she couldn't seem to comprehend
that stealing was wrong,
because she was doing
it for her friends.
She came into the shop regularly
to collect whatever benefits
she was receiving.
Generally she pulled out
all the money in one go,
and there was generally somebody
hanging about waiting for Gemma.
Did you recognise
any of the killers?
Yes, I recognised all of them.
They'd all been into the shop.
They hung around when
Gemma was in the shop.
They came with her while she got
her money,
so that she would spend it on things
they wanted,
and she would buy them things
because she wanted a friend.
She didn't see that as being used.
She was naive, like a child.
You know, "I'll give you something,
you'll be my friend."
If she had a social worker
or somebody like that who'd been in,
in that case, we can pass on
worries, but we never had that with
Gemma.
So, this is some CCTV footage
of the previous night.
So this is Saturday the 7th of
August, 2010,
and this is where the group of five
were out with Gemma
in Rugby town centre,
and you got some footage there of
Chantelle sort of pushing her away
from the group, and being quite
violent towards Gemma,
and obviously, the others are just
standing there laughing and joking.
Apparently at some pub door
they asked Chantelle for identity
and Gemma, like Gemma would,
because she did have a sense of
humour turned around and said,
"Oh, she's only 16."
Chantelle went for her, and shoved
her down the road,
and everything else.
I was told that Jessica Lynas
had hit her in the face that night.
On the Sunday, Gemma must
have got in touch and said,
"I want to collect my bag,"
and Chantelle must have told
her that Jessica was at her house,
because they were there for dinner.
And Gemma didn't want to go
round there and Chantelle talked
round into going to pick
up her bag from there.
And then it all kicked off.
In relation to the investigation,
Chantelle Booth had come
to our notice as being someone
who was a friend of Gemma's,
and we noticed there had been 200,
250 contacts between
Chantelle Booth's phone
and Gemma's phone,
so she was somebody
we would want to speak to.
I had a gut feeling that she was one
of them, but we didn't have it
confirmed until they were
actually charged.
Daniel Newstead and Chantelle Booth
were arrested quite quickly
on Tuesday, which led to further
arrests of the other three,
Joseph Boyer, Jessica Lynas
and Duncan Edwards.
There were five
perpetrators involved.
They were all young people.
Chantelle and the other young
women who were involved,
they had both been through the care
system, and they both had children
that had been removed from them
by children social services.
The young men were all,
I think pretty well,
had been known
to the probation service.
When Gemma died and I realised
that people I had known
or had been aware of,
would be capable of something
like that and that it
had really happened to my family
and to Gemma, I just
got this overwhelming,
almost like a fear,
thinking you can't trust anyone.
I think they picked on Gemma
because of her disability.
Think they probably,
think they asked, like pretend
to be Gemma's friends,
and they weren't.
When I heard, it made me scared.
What did it make you scared about?
Hope it doesn't happen to anyone
else with disabilities.
Mate crime is where people
are abused, or bullied, or harassed,
by people who they consider
to be their friends.
And it's not unusual in cases
like Gemma's,
where people are living in the
community, may be quite isolated
and not necessarily
receiving services,
who become involved in relationships
with people
who don't have their
best interests at heart.
Gemma would put up with any level
of abuse as long as the person
acknowledged that she was a friend.
"I can't wait to get sentenced now
and go to a proper jail for lifers.
"This sounds sick, bro.
"Key to my door, bare shit to do,
PlayStation and DVD,
"I get to go to town
with a screw in normal clothes.
"I get to go to McDonald's, and
cinema, and Nando's,
"or whatever I want."
The judge made an example
when she sentenced those five,
because hate crime,
the courts are allowed to get
bigger, longer sentences
and I think that was a surprise
to a lot of people. And the ones
that got done for murder,
the three of them, they are on
licence for the rest of their life.
The review identified
there had been 23 missed
opportunities between 2001
and the time of Gemma's death,
and nine opportunities
in the year before she died.
We are sorry and, you know,
the whole authority is sorry
for what happened.
Could we have prevented it?
I don't think so, but what we are
far more certain now
is that the arrangements
we have in place will help prevent
such a thing happening again.
I miss seeing Gemma around in town.
I miss our company,
like going out, shopping.
Meeting up for a chat.
If you could say anything to Gemma
now, what would it be?
That I'm sorry.
I didn't stop it, I wasn't there.
I couldn't save her this time.
I'd say sorry.
I think I'd just say, "Do you want
to come around for dinner?"
And just, just...
Just have her around for dinner
and that's it, really.
OK, this is a letter
signed by Gemma Hayter.
"This is what I need
and want in my life..."
"To have my own flat and for people
to stop telling me what I need,
"it is my life. I am an adult of
25 years old."
"For someone to help me
with personal hygiene,
"cleaning and laundry, when I
need help."
"I would like a job.
I need my independence."
"I'd like someone to help
me when I ask for it."
"I would like a flat
with a warden control."
"I do have some friends
and I am losing my hearing."
"And I have problems with my pelvis
which can affect my walking,
"and sleeping, etc."
That's all we wanted.
We wanted her to be independent,
but we wanted somebody there,
to help her with everything
that's she saying here.
If she had got it at 25,
she wouldn't have died.
Didn't help.
