August 2023

‘Devil’s Daughter’ who killed woman at age 12 won’t be freed as she’s ‘still violent’

 

Britain’s youngest female murderer who stabbed a stranger to death and bragged about it behind bars has had her release from prison blocked.

Sharon Carr – branded the “Devil’s Daughter” – still remains a danger to the public, more than 30 years after she knifed 18-year-old Katie Rackliff more than 30 times in an unprovoked attack.

She was handed life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 14 years imprisonment in 1997

Carr – who was just 12 at the time of her crime – picked her victim out at random as she saw her walking home from a night out in June 1992.

The murder went unsolved until two years later when she attacked a schoolgirl and boasted about Katie’s murder in a young offender’s institute – even writing twisted diary entries.

On 7 June 1992, Carr randomly stabbed 18-year-old apprentice hairdresser Katie Rackliff to death as she walked home in the early hours from Ragamuffins nightclub in Camberley. 

In total, Carr stabbed Rackliff, who was a stranger to her, 32 times with a 6 and a half inch knife through her ribs, in her heart and in her vagina and anus.

Some of her jewellery was then stolen. Following the attack, Rackliff’s body was taken by Carr and some associates and driven to Farnborough, where she was dragged along a road and then dumped by a cemetery wall. The body was found later that morning by a group of boys

With Carr not apprehended, she returned to school, but was excluded twice in early 1994. Two years to the day after Rackliff’s murder, on 7 June 1994, Carr attacked 13-year-old fellow pupil Ann-Marie Clifford with a knife for no apparent reason in the toilets at Collingwood College Comprehensive School, Surrey.

Clifford was stabbed in the back, which punctured her lung, and she nearly died as a result of her injuries. The attack was only stopped when five students entered the toilets and intervened, which probably saved the victim’s life.

Clifford said that Carr was smiling and appeared happy during the attack on her.

Now, more than 30 years after the murder, Carr has had her efforts to walk free thrown out by the Parole Board – for the fourth time.

Documents revealed she had only spent eight years in prison, having spent the majority of her sentence in “secure specialist settings”.

In a summary, parole chiefs said: “Evidence was presented in the dossier to the panel regarding Ms Carr’s progress and custodial conduct during her time in prison. Her behaviour had been variable and there had been instances of violence.

Ms Carr had engaged with education and occupational work and had acted as a mentor to other prisoners. She had participated in an intensive programme and had engaged one-to-one with a prison psychologist.”

Experts also said she still displayed the same risk factors from the time of her offending. The document states: “At the time of her offending, these risk factors had included difficulties in coping with feelings of rejection. She had had to manage aspects of her personality.

Ms Carr had showed a strong tendency to develop intense feelings for certain people and to act disproportionately when she perceived problems in her relationships. That propensity had remained a factor during her sentence.”

Carr was jailed after cops discovered her diary, with one post reading: “I was born to be a murderer. Killing for me is a mass turn-on and it just makes me so high I never want to come down. Every night I see the Devil in my dreams – sometimes even in my mirror, but I realise it was just me.”

Police later discovered Carr had decapitated a neighbour’s dog with a spade, and there was also a “suggestion” from a friend that she had fried live hamsters. At an assessment centre, Carr tried to strangle two nurses and later bragged about killing Katie on the phone to relatives.

In her diary she wrote: “I wish I could kill you again. I promise I’d make you suffer more. Your terrified screams turn me on.”

Carr was sent to Bullwood Hall young offender’s institute in Hinckley, Essex, after attacking a schoolgirl with a knife in Surrey. She had also tried to strangle two nurses at an assessment centre.

Carr, now 43, was convicted of murder in 1997 for Katie’s killing in Camberley, Surrey, and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 14 years. She was considered too unstable to be released from HMP Bronzefield, in south-west London, two years ago after she tried to get her restricted prisoner status downgraded.

She was denied permission to seek a judicial review after a judge heard she fantasised about murdering another inmate. But she made a fresh bid for freedom and will learn within days if she is deemed a danger to the public.

Carr was described as “an extremely dangerous young woman” when she was sentenced. Judge Mr Justice Scott Baker told her: “What is clear is that you had a sexual motive for this killing and it is apparent both from the brutal manner in which you mutilated her body and chilling entries in your diary recordings you had done, that killing, as you put it, turns you on.”

After she was jailed, criminal psychologist Gordon Tressler said the case was difficult to understand because it involved a child killing an adult, rather than another child. “This is an extremely dangerous person because she is clearly prepared to kill without an adequate motive,” he said at the time. “That makes her conduct very unpredictable and very dangerous. She is a great danger to the public.”

Britain’s youngest female killer is Mary Bell, who was convicted of manslaughter after strangling two young boys to death in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1968. She committed her first killing when she was just 10 years old.