The mother of Eddie Ratcliffe, one of Brianna Ghey’s killers, described him in the aftermath of the murder as “a good child, with good morals and a loving, caring family behind him” who was on track to apply for Oxford.
Brianna, aged 16, was stabbed to death in a “sadistic” and “exceptionally brutal” murder in a Warrington park on 11 February 2023 by Ratcliffe and Scarlett Jenkinson, who were both 15 at the time.
Jenkinson was sentenced to 22 years in prison and Ratcliffe to 20 years in February this year for stabbing Brianna with a hunting knife 28 times in her head, neck, chest and back.
At the inquest into the teenager’s death, which began on Wednesday and is expected to last three days, Cheshire senior coroner Jacqueline Devonish read a statement from Alice Hemmings written shortly after the murder.
She described how her son had “seemed normal” that day. “I asked him if he had a good time and he said yes. He had been chasing Pokémon [on the mobile game Pokémon Go] and had a ham and cheese baguette,” she said.
Describing her son as “very academic” and “well behaved at school”, she said: “Eddie clearly knows right and wrong, good and bad and is not a risk taker.”
The inquest also heard from Brianna’s mother, Esther Ghey, who described her as a “mischievous, funny and outgoing” child who became “immersed in darkness” in her teenage years after spending all her time on social media.
In a written statement, Ghey said her daughter had been following self-harm and anorexia groups on X (formerly Twitter), and developed an eating disorder that left her hospitalised.
“At one point, it felt like if there was anything negative in the world she’d latch on to it,” Ghey said.
She also recalled the day she found out Brianna had been killed in Linear Park in Culcheth, a village near Warrington, Cheshire.
Ghey said: “When police came to the house I just knew something like this was going to happen as it was such a dark time for everyone.
“I can’t believe what a change Brianna went through – when she was little, Brianna was an energetic ball of joy, but in her later years she was immersed in darkness. It feels like I’m grieving two different people.”
Ghey has previously spoken out about how tech companies had a “moral responsibility” to restrict harmful content online, believing that Brianna would be alive if her killers had not been able to access violent videos.
The coroner also referred to comments by the judge who sentenced Jenkinson and Ratcliffe and who said transphobia had been a partial motive.
Brianna transitioned at 15, the inquest heard, being prescribed puberty blockers and oestrogen from a private clinic because the NHS waiting list was four years.
Brianna’s father, Peter Spooner, noted she became considerably more outgoing after her transition, going from being “very quiet, very shy” to sending him dance videos and makeup tutorials she had made. “She just seemed, to me, happy,” he said.
He had not initially supported Brianna in her transition, telling the court: “We fell out. She was upset at me. I obviously thought she was gay and she didn’t like how I said that to her. She got annoyed at me and said, ‘I’m not gay, I’m transgender’, and when she said that, I didn’t know how to deal with that at the time.”
Spooner reconciled with his daughter in the months before she died and accepted her transition, he said, adding: “I told her I was sorry about how I dealt with it.”
