A 16-year-old girl accused of killing transgender teenager Brianna Ghey in a park in Warrington denied having anti-transgender views, and said she found Brianna attractive, a court has heard.
But the girl, known as X to protect her identity, told a jury that her “very good friend” and co-defendant, a 16-year-old boy known as Y, “didn’t exactly agree with people who were trans or people that were gay”.
She claimed that was why the boy frequently referred to Brianna as “it” rather than “she” when they discussed her in WhatsApp messages in the run-up to the killing at Culcheth Linear Park on Saturday 11 February this year.
Giving evidence behind a screen at Manchester crown court on Friday, the girl said she had questioned her own gender identity, and used to communicate with people online pretending to be a boy called Nathan.
The prosecution claim she used the Nathan alter ego to tell Brianna that he was a dealer who was going to sell them cocaine on the day of the murder.
The girl, who is now 16, denies murder and blames Y for stabbing Brianna 28 times.
She told the jury she would fantasise about death and torture, and pretended she wanted to kill Brianna as well as other children as part of various “fantasies”, but never had “any intention” of hurting anyone.
Questioned by her barrister, Richard Pratt, KC, the girl said she enjoyed watching videos of death and torture on the dark web.
She said she developed an interest in what Pratt called “dark materials” aged 14, particularly murder and torture and serial killers.
“I just found it interesting, just the different personalities of serial killers and the different ways they would carry things out,” she said.
She admitted telling Y that she had killed two people, including a boy called “Laydon”, but said it was just “fantasy”.
Asked why she told Y that she had killed “Laydon”, Girl X said: “I wanted him to think that I was some kind of serial killer. Just to add more to the whole fantasy thing.”
She insisted Laydon was a real person who hung out with boys she didn’t like, and admitted calling the police in May 2022 claiming that he was stalking her. The jury has heard that the police were not able to identify anyone matching her description.
Girl X said she met Brianna in October and that they became friends. She said the two of them would hang out together “because neither of us liked to socialise much”. Asked if she found Brianna attractive, she said: “Yes I did.”
The jury has previously heard that she told Y she was “obsessed” with Brianna. Giving evidence alongside an intermediary, she said: “I’m not too sure why I said that. Maybe I couldn’t find the right words. I found her very interesting.”
Asked why Y called Brianna “it”, she said: “He didn’t exactly agree with people who were trans or people that were gay so he would refer to Brianna as ‘it’ rather than she.”
Pratt asked her: “At that stage did you have, or at any stage, anti-transgender views?” She replied: “No.”
She added: “I found her fascinating … we just got on well.”
The court had previously heard that X claimed to have attempted to poison Brianna with ibuprofen a few weeks before she was killed. Her mother, Esther Ghey, told police Brianna was so ill at that time that she thought she had appendicitis.
But giving evidence, X denied giving Brianna ibuprofen. She said she and Brianna went to Asda and “bought random pills” to “see which would make us high”, but that she never secretly tried to poison her. She said that she had Googled whether you could overdose on ibuprofen because she had “suicidal thoughts”.
X also told the jury that she self-harmed with knives as a “coping mechanism” when she was suffering with anxiety, and that she had sought help from child and adolescent mental mealth services.
She admitted discussing killing a boy called E, who Boy Y referred to as a “nonce”. She told the jury that E had been messaging an 11-year-old girl, and that she made up a fake Instagram account which she intended to use “to ask him what was going to happen with the Year 6 girl”.
But she insisted she never intended to kill E.
The trial will resume on Monday.
