Chilling signs of ‘siblicide' as experts warn of dangerous rise… after teen smothered toddlers to ‘save them from Satan'

The Sun

24-07-2025

BRITISH schoolgirl Amber Gibson was just 16 when she was stripped naked, sexually assaulted, beaten over the head, and strangled in a horrific woodland killing.
The beast behind the murder? Not a depraved stranger or a serial killer, but Amber's big brother, Connor Gibson - the boy who was supposed to love and protect her the most.
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'The last person she saw alive was you, her brother, strangling the life out of her after having beaten her up and tried to rape her,' a judge told Gibson following the 2021 murder.
Amber - who suffered another harrowing fate in death, when the stranger who found her body further violated it - is a victim of siblicide, where one sibling is killed by another.
Though common among animals - particularly birds, in competition for food - this type of homicide is rare in humans, whose longest-lasting relationships are often with their siblings.
When it does happen, it sends shockwaves through families - with the heartbroken mum of one killer who stabbed his four-year-old sister 17 times revealing: 'I lost both of my children.'
And worryingly, experts warn that cases of sororicide (killing one's sister) and fratricide (killing one's brother) could soar amid a mental health crisis among Britain's youngsters.
'Recent siblicide cases appear to indicate that mental ill health is a major factor,' UK criminal defence lawyer Marcus Johnstone, who specialises in sex crime, tells The Sun.
A recent NHS survey reveals one in four young people in England have a common mental health condition - a 47 per cent increase on 2007 figures.
Meanwhile, Marcus says sex crime cases involving siblings are rising - with the 'easy availability of extreme porn sites ' feared to be contributing to such vile attacks.
'My concern is the ever-increasing number of children and young adults who have mental health problems,' adds Marcus, of Cheshire-based PCD Solicitors.
'If we get to the stage where a psychotic disorder is combined with drug and porn addiction, and an underlying sibling rivalry or dispute, this may escalate to siblicide.'
Amber Gibson's evil brother Connor jailed for life for murdering & sexually assaulting his teen sister
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For most siblings their bond forms at an early age. They grow up together - navigating family dynamics, sibling rivalry and hurdles in their own lives while under the same roof.
It is during this shared childhood that criminologists say the roots of siblicide can form.
'Siblings should be our first teachers in sharing, emotional regulation, and conflict resolution,' behavioural criminologist Alex Iszatt tells us.
'But for some, the home becomes a training ground for violence instead.
"Who hasn't shouted, 'I hate you,' at the top of your lungs to a brother or sister? Yet that rage rarely turns deadly.'
In the Gibsons' case the siblings, born into a troubled family, had gone into foster care when Amber was three. At the time, her brother, then five, had declared: 'We are safe.'
But these three words would prove untrue for Amber when Gibson - by then a 19-year-old man - savagely attacked her in Hamilton in South Lanarkshire, Scotland in November 2021.
The fiend battered his little sister, broke her nose, tore off her clothing and sexually assaulted her with the intention of raping her, before strangling her with his hands.
Jailing Gibson for life at the High Co urt in Livingston two years later, Lord Mulholland told the merciless killer that Amber 'would have looked to you, as her big brother, for support'.
'What you did was truly evil,' Lord Mulholland added.
The judge also slammed Stephen Corrigan - a stranger who inappropriately touched Amber's body, then concealed it, after discovering her - for his 'despicable conduct'.
'Any decent human being, on coming across the naked body of a young girl who was unconscious or possibly dead, would immediately call the emergency services,' he said.
'Golden child' jealousy
While Gibson's motive for Amber's murder remains unclear, experts say perpetrators of siblicide might be driven by greed, trauma, psychosis, or decades of 'unresolved' rage.
In some cases, 'small micro-traumas - persistent emotional or physical wounds - build up over time like a simmering pot until they erupt in pure rage,' says Alex.
Other killers act on jealousy; they feel resentful of their parents' perceived favouritism of a 'golden child', or the bond shared between their sibling and other family members.
'Psychologists call this 'sibling displacement rage', where anger aimed at parents, trauma, or even personal failure is redirected onto a brother or sister,' adds Alex.
'The 'chosen one' becomes the lightning rod - not because they caused the pain, but because they represent everything the angry sibling feels deprived of.
'Over the years, this resentment festers and can turn violently lethal.'
'Cold and calculated'
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In 2016, Kim Edwards and her boyfriend Lucas Markham, both 14, became the UK's youngest double murderers when they slaughtered Edwards's mum and 13-year-old sister.
Prosecutors said 'cold and calculated' Edwards had held a grudge against her mother, Liz Edwards, 49, before the double stabbing at the family's home in Spalding, Lincolnshire.
She'd also felt resentful of her mum's close bond with her younger sister, Katie.
'I was not killing my sister out of anger, and I miss her, but I was excited about killing my mother and I was looking forward to it,' Edwards later chillingly told a psychiatrist.
After murdering the pair as they slept, Edwards - who also confessed to being 'jealous' of Katie - had sex with Markham, feasted on ice cream, and watched the Twilight films.
Nearly 5,000 miles away, in Texas, another teen - psychopath Paris Bennett - beat and murdered his four-year-old sister in a sick bid to hurt his mum 'in the worst possible way'.
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Bennett, then 13, crept into little Ella's bedroom after convincing their babysitter to go home.
He punched and tried to strangle the defenceless youngster, before knifing her 17 times.
He also sexually attacked Ella, having browsed graphic porn like 'S&M', 'bondage' and 'sadism', and even searched for snuff films in the hours leading up to her murder.
'I had always known, as a child, that the most devastating thing to my mother would be the loss of one of her children,' Bennett, now rotting in jail, later told TV host Piers Morgan.
'And I found a way to take away both her children in one fell swoop.'
The siblings' mum, Charity Lee, fainted when police told her that Ella had been killed.
When she came to, she asked if her son was okay - only to find out that he was the murderer.
Incredibly, despite Bennett's heinous actions, Charity managed to forgive her son.
'Only once I understood what Paris is - a predator - was I able to forgive him,' the grieving mum, who founded the ELLA foundation to help others impacted by violence, mental illness and the criminal justice system, wrote in an article for Good Housekeeping.
She added: 'If I was swimming in a beautiful ocean, enjoying myself, and a shark came up and bit my leg off, hopefully I would not spend the rest of my life hating that shark.
'Hopefully, I would understand that sharks are what they are. And, for better or worse, Paris is a shark.'
Infamy hungry
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While some siblings kill out of jealousy or revenge, others crave notoriety.
In March this year, a sadistic teen who dreamed of becoming Britain's worst mass killer was caged for life after shooting dead his brother, sister and mother at their Luton home.
Nicholas Prosper - who had plotted a school shooting to make him 'globally notorious' - slaughtered Kyle, 16, and Giselle Prosper, 13, and Juliana Falcon, 48, last September.
Then aged 18, a court heard he had sought to 'emulate and outdo' Sandy Hook shooting monster Adam Lanza - with his family becoming 'collateral damage' in his failed plot.
'[Prosper] showed zero empathy,' says Alex. "His sister hid under a table, begging for her life before he shot her.'
She adds that Prosper - who was 'deeply fascinated' by both high-profile murderers and rapists - displayed narcissistic psychopathy, a chilling detachment from human emotion.
'Hitman inquiry'
While most cases of siblicide in the news involve teenagers, an American criminologist reveals that many perpetrators are actually adults who are acting 'in the moment'.
'The perpetrators are often adults, and the act is due to a heated argument influenced by drugs or alcohol, and is done in their own home due to easy access to weapons,' says Dr Angelo Brown, an assistant professor of criminology at Arkansas State University.
He adds: 'Siblicides done by youth are rarer but often are more likely to make the news.'
Typically, perpetrators of siblicide are male, with killer sisters 'much less common'.
But just last month a woman appeared in court accused of knifing her sister to death before she was arrested allegedly with the victim's missing diamond Rolex.
Nancy Pexton, 69, is accused of murdering film director Jennifer Abbott Dauward, known as Sarah Steinberg, at her flat in Camden, North London.
In 2016, a 26-year-old woman - Sabah Khan, also from Luton - knifed her own sister 68 times in a ferocious hallway attack because she wanted to steal her husband.
Khan - whose internet history included "hiring a hitman for £200" - had become consumed by jealousy after starting an ill-fated affair with sister Saima's husband, Hafeez Rehman.
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Desiring Hafeez for herself, she delved into gruesome methods for murdering 34-year-old Saima - including paying a 'black magic priest' in Pakistan £5,000 to 'remotely' kill her.
Eventually, she settled on butchering the mother-of-four with a knife bought from Tesco, as her victim's eldest daughter called down the stairs, "Auntie, are you killing a mouse?'
Khan was later locked up for life, with a minimum of 22 years, after pleading guilty to murder.
According to Alex, affairs are not the only type of family 'betrayal' that can spark siblicide.
'Financial betrayal is another trigger,' she tells us.
'Siblings who grow up competing for resources — whether love, attention, or inheritance — can reach a point where murder seems like the only way out.'
Siblings who grow up competing for resources — whether love, attention, or inheritance — can reach a point where murder seems like the only way out
Alex Iszatt
Sometimes, a supposedly 'betrayed' sibling wishes to 'completely erase' the other.
'This can develop into a psychological obsession,' explains Alex.
'There have been cases where perpetrators don't just want what their sibling has - they want to be them.'
Such killers might mirror their sibling's behaviour, or copy their appearance.
'The violence is more than physical; it's psychological annihilation,' says Alex.
'By killing their sibling, the perpetrator attempts to claim their identity.'
The warning signs of siblicide
Siblicide involves the killing of one sibling by another.
It might present as sororicide (killing one's sister) or fratricide (killing one's brother).
Experts tell The Sun that 'red flags' for siblicide include obsessive grudges, violent fantasies, sudden emotional detachment, and extreme bullying beyond typical sibling rivalry.
'Spotting warning signs early can save lives,' says behavioural criminologist Alex Iszatt (pictured left).
'Therapy and intervention help, but only if they come before homicidal planning starts.'
Criminal defence lawyer Marcus Johnstone (pictured right), who specialises in sex crime, adds: 'Such killings are extremely rare in the UK but, where it does arise, they are often linked to family arguments, jealousy or financial problems spanning many years, for example, the inheritance of a property.
'Siblicide which also involves a sexual assault is often linked to severe mental illness and drug abuse.'
Some experts believe that 'full siblings' are less likely to be involved in siblicide.
'Research has indicated that there are differences between full-blood siblings, half-siblings, [and] step-siblings, as full siblings seem less likely to kill each other,' says Dr Brown.
'This is explained by evolutionary theories that we are more likely to protect those with whom we share DNA.'
In 2022, a teen from Indiana, US, was jailed after smothering his 23-month-old half-sister, Desiree McCartney, and 11-month-old stepbrother, Nathaniel Ritz, to death.
Nickalas Kedrowitz, who was just 13 at the time of the 2017 killings, reportedly wanted to free the toddler and baby 'from Satan and hell'.
He was caged for 100 years.
Whatever the motives, genetics and 'betrayals' behind siblicide, there is no doubt that the violent crime destroys the lives of more than the two siblings involved.
"We now have one daughter buried in Larkhall Cemetery and another child in prison,' said Amber's devastated foster parents after her brother was convicted of her murder.
"We really miss Amber - life will never be the same."
And Bennett's mother Charity admitted: 'While I've learned to forgive Paris, you don't ever fully heal from something like that. You learn to live with it.'
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