24 of the most notorious criminals jailed in the UK in May

Published date31 May 2021
Date31 May 2021
Other offenders jailed include two men who murdered a mother and her young child when they set her house on fire, and a sexual predator who strangled a woman to death more than 36 years ago.

A woman who was caught with suitcases containing the body of her friend, and a former Met Police officer who used his position to help an organised gang seize money from other criminals, were also put behind bars in May.

These are some of the shocking court cases that were widely reported in the UK last month.

Lawrence Bourke

A lodger stabbed to death and decapitated a pub landlord for “sadistic gratification”.

The mutilated body of Scott Gilhooly, 44, was discovered at the Swiss Bell pub in Braintree, Essex.

His friend and “heavy drinker” Lawrence Bourke, 24, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years after pleading guilty to murder.

Bourke attacked the landlord with a knife and axe, and dismembered his body to “humiliate” him, the court heard.

Shortly after 8am on May 17, Bourke sent a series of Facebook messages to his sister boasting of what he had done to Mr Gilhooly.

One read: “I just stabbed Scott to death ha ha ha ha,” while another said: “I loved killing him. For real.”

Mr Gilhooly suffered 70 stab and chop wounds, including to his heart, lungs and neck, while his ear was discovered in Bourke’s sock.

The court heard that the post-mortem examination recovered a bottle of bleach, one of Mr Gilhooly’s rings, a contact lens and a piece of “plastic fake faeces” from the victim’s body.

The judge told Bourke, of Lister Road, Braintree: “You took sadistic pleasure from what you were doing, and you carried on as Mr Gilhooly was dying and after he was dead”.

He said father-of-one Mr Gilhooly was a “joy to everyone who knew him” and the “life and soul of the party” who was “a constant source of support to his family and to others”.

Dean Edmunds

A paedophile filmed himself sexually abusing young girls before sharing the videos with his wife.

Dean Edmunds, 32, and Leanne Edmunds, 36, dubbed themselves “perverts together forever” as they exchanged messages about the attacks, a court heard.

Edmunds, who worked in the construction industry after training to become a Royal Marine, made a total of 147 pictures and videos of four victims, all girls aged under 13, and shared at least six of them with his wife, who he also filmed having sex with a dog.

The court heard that after being sent one video of her husband raping a young girl, Mrs Edmunds replied: “Lol you naughty boy,” while in another message agreed she and her husband were “perverts together forever”.

Officers trawled through 1.5 million potentially indecent pictures and videos when Edmunds was arrested at his home in south-east London in July last year.

They found around 6,700 indecent images of children, including 1158 of the worst kind, on Edmunds’ devices as well as extreme pornography.

Hundreds of so-called “up-skirt” pictures of girls and women on public transport and in changing rooms were also discovered.

Edmunds was jailed for a total of 18 years at Croydon Crown Court after pleading guilty to a total of 28 offences.

The charges included three counts of raping a girl under 13, assaulting a child under 13 by penetration, nine counts sexual assault of a child under 13 and two counts of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

His wife, who has spent eight months in prison on remand, was spared jail and handed a three-year community order after admitting three counts of making indecent photographs of children, intercourse with an animal, possession of extreme pornography and possession of prohibited images of children.

Jennifer Johnson

The ex-girlfriend of the 'Babes in the Wood' killer was jailed for telling “wicked lies” at his murder trial.

Russell Bishop was put on trial for the murders of schoolgirls Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows in 1987 but was acquitted after Jennifer Johnson lied about key evidence -a blue sweatshirt found near the scene.

A judge sentenced Johnson, 55, to six years in jail.

The original not guilty verdicts had devastating consequences, when three years later Bishop kidnapped and sexually assaulted another young girl, leaving her for dead.

It took more than 30 years and a change in the law, fought for by the girls’ families, before Bishop was convicted for the murder of the two girls at a retrial in 2018.

Nine-year-olds Karen and Nicola were found sexually assaulted and strangled in a woodland den in Brighton in October 1986.

Johnson, who told her trial she “had no choice” but to lie, was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice by majority verdicts.

Becki West-Davidson, Sebastian Smith and Sean Palmer

Three people were jailed for the murder of a vulnerable man who was thrown in a river.

Joe Pooley, who needed the help of adult social care, slept with Becki...

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