Brianna Ghey’s teen killers named as pair sentenced for trans girl’s murder
Brianna Ghey’s two teenage killers have been named as the pair are sentenced for murdering the trans schoolgirl.
Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, both 16, were named by Mrs Justice Yip after the anonymity order that prevented the media from revealing their identities was lifted given the serious nature of their crimes.
On Friday afternoon, Justice Yip sentenced Jenkinson to life with a minimum of 22 years and Ratcliffe to life with a minimum of 20 years, noting that they both took part in a “brutal, planned murder” that was “sadistic in nature” and motivated by “hostility towards Brianna because of her transgender identity.”
The pair have been known as Girl X and Boy Y throughout their trial, with the jury hearing that they shared a harrowing fascination with violence, torture and serial killers, planning out their “dark fantasies” together.
At the time of Brianna’s murder on 11 February last year, they were both 15 and had created a “kill list” with four other teenagers named.
As he read his victim impact statement at Manchester Crown Court, Brianna’s father Peter Spooner described Jenkinson and Ratcliffe as “pure evil.”
“Now my world has been torn apart. Justice may have been done but no amount of time in prison will be enough for these monsters,” he said.
“I cannot call them children because that makes them sound naive or vulnerable, which they are not – they are pure evil. Brianna was the vulnerable one.”
Jenkinson prepared a handwritten note detailing how, when and where she and Ratcliffe would murder Brianna. They used the code word “gay” to refer to the beginning of the attack, which took place in Culcheth Linear Park in Warrington and saw Brianna stabbed 28 times.
It was Jenkinson who first befriended Brianna after she became “obsessed” with her. Ratcliffe met her for the first time on the day that the pair murdered her, and persistently used anti-trans language in subsequent text correspondence with Jenkinson, using “it” to describe Brianna and not “she.”
He also wrote that he “just wanted to see what size dick it has,” but denied in court that he was transphobic.
On the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Friday morning, Brianna was misgendered by a reporter in a move that has been labelled “cruel and callous.”
“This is totally unacceptable,” broadcaster and journalist India Willoughby wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Why is your reporter misgendering Brianna Ghey? BBC Radio 4 is well-known to the trans community as the most transphobic part of the BBC – and this just confirms it. So disrespectful.”
“Not using the pronouns that Brianna Ghey used and that her mother and family use is extraordinarily, unnecessarily cruel and callous,” added AIDS Map’s Executive Director Matthew Hodson.
“This was a choice. Why did you do this @BBCNews?”
