Bristol care home was told teenager's murderer 'posed a risk'
"It [was] clear that they were not dealing with a young adolescent with learning difficulties, but someone with clear difficulties with behaviour around sexual boundaries," educational psychologist Sally Kane, told the inquest.A report on Conroy - made after the incident with the teacher - found that he posed a risk due to his sexualised behaviour and he was later moved to Alexandra House.Ms Kane told the inquest she met Yvonne Hin, the then-manager of Alexandra House, ahead of the move."We were really worried about the risk not being managed and that's why the documents were sent [to Alexandra House] more than once," she said."We shared the report with Jason's local authority [Guernsey] and I am sure they shared it with them."Ms Kane says she was told that there were no on-site clinical staff and that residents were able to use external NHS services:"I remember being absolutely aghast as she [Ms Hin] seemed to have no understanding of the risk," she said.
'We blame the people who put him there'
Social Services sent Ms Mathieson to Alexandra House from Windsor when she turned 18, having spent the previous two years in different placements.Earlier, the inquest heard from her father, James, who said he and his wife Karen had not been listened to by social services."All we had ever wanted was to be given the support we needed to become Melissa's primary carers and to try to provide her with a stable environment," he said."I spoke to Melissa on the night before she died. It was a nice conversation. She sounded tired. I told her to go to bed as she needed to sleep."She was killed in her sleep. I have to live with that."Karen and I blame Jason Conroy for our daughter's death."But at the same time, how can we blame him when he had said what he was going to do to professionals and was allowed to carry it out."We blame the people who put him there with Melissa."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Peter Falconio killer Bradley John Murdoch just 'a couple of days' from death - and stubbornly set to take his evil secret to the grave
Peter Falconio's killer is just 48 hours from death, with the evil killer now 'in and out of consciousness, very groggy and incomprehensible'. Bradley John Murdoch has 'only a couple of days to live' but still refuses to reveal where he hid the British backpacker's body, 24 years to the day since he killed him. Prison insiders have revealed the former hulking brute is now just a shrunken shadow of his former self as he sees out his final hours in his hospital deathbed. He 'is acknowledging people are there, but very limited in talking,' said the insider. Murdoch, 67, is dying from metastasised throat cancer and is spending his last hours surrounded by prison guards at Alice Springs Hospital in the Northern Territory. He was moved from his Alice Springs jail cell to the palliative care unit in late June but is still keeping silent about where he put Mr Falconio's body. His deathbed is 200km away from the spot on the Sturt Highway near Barrow Creek where he shot Mr Falconio dead and attempted to kidnap his girlfriend, Joanne Lees. The ruthless drug runner shot Mr Falconio, 28, in the head on the night of July 14, 2001, after tricking the couple as they drove between Alice Springs and Darwin in their VW Kombi campervan After shooting Mr Falconio, Murdoch threatened Ms Lees before he bound her hands behind her back with cable tie restraints and bundled her into the back of his ute. But while Murdoch disposed of Mr Falconio's body, Ms Lees managed to escape, running barefoot through the bush where she hid while Murdoch hunted for her with his dog. Five hours after her boyfriend's murder, Ms Lees eventually flagged down a truck and raised the alarm. No trace of Peter Falconio's body has ever been found. The road trip-turned-outback nightmare has been the subject of multiple books, TV programs and documentaries, as well as wild theories about where Falconio's body lies, and the fruitless searches for it. Murdoch has steadfastly refused to end the mystery of what he did with Mr Falconio's corpse, which remains one of the greatest riddles in Australian crime. The only trace of Mr Falconio was a small blood stain on the tarmac of the highway where the shooting took place. Murdoch always protested his innocence throughout a murder trial which saw him convicted in December 2005, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The former mechanic, who drove road trains and trucks across the Outback lodged two unsuccessful appeals, and was refused special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia in 2007. Mr Falconio's mother broke a long silence about her son's murder in 2022 to beg for information about the location of Peter's body. Joan Falconio and husband Luciano, 80, issued a heartfelt plea backed by a demand for NT Police to put up a $1million reward to fund a renewed hunt for Peter's body. Despite several searches, including a five-day operation in 2019 when police emptied an outback well, Murdoch's hiding place remains a mystery. 'His life stopped on a lonely road ... shot dead by cowardly Murdoch, who will not reveal where or what he did with him,' Mr Falconio's heartbroken mother said. 'Our pain is always with us. We want to bring Peter home where he belongs, near his family.' After Daily Mail Australia exclusively revealed on March 10 that Murdoch was dying of cancer, the Falconios said they had not been informed by authorities of his imminent death.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Family's chilling suspicion realized after dancer found dead in burning car with bleach poured down her throat
The family of an Arizona dancer who was found dead in a burning car with bleach poured down her throat has had their chilling suspicion confirmed as investigators reveal shock details about her alleged-killers. Mercedes Vega, 22, was discovered tortured in the back of a flaming Chevrolet Malibu off a highway roughly 50 miles west of Phoenix in April 2023. Her battered body was found the day she was set to testify against Cudjoe Young, a man accused of robbing her at gunpoint in 2020. She had previously identified him as the culprit. Vega's mother and step-father, Erika and stepfather Tom Pillsbury, have long believed she was killed to stop her spill incriminating evidence about the alleged assailant in court. Now, their unsettling theory may have been proven true. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office believes the two men accused to killing Vega, Jared Gray and Sencere Hayes, are connected to Young. While few details regarding the nature of their relationship have been made clear, they are all linked by location. They all have ties to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Young grew up there, while Gray and Hayes traveled there from Phoenix. Two people interview by detectives claimed Young paid Gray and Hayes to pick up the Chevrolet Malibu Vega was found in after buying it online in March 2023. Gray and Hayes had also flown in from Tennessee together, NBC reported. The person whose credit card was used to buy their tickets allegedly told police he never purchased them. But they claimed the Young had access to their card and may have bought the tickets himself. The revelation that these three men may have been in cahoots has brought some closure for Vega's parents. 'We've felt like we've been drowning in a sea of despair and grief for two and a half years,' Erika told NBC. 'And now we've been thrown a life preserver. The people that are responsible for murdering my little daughter are hopefully going to face justice.' Last month, the sheriff's office recommended that Young should be charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit kidnapping in Vega's death, according to court documents reviewed by NBC. Hayes was the first suspect charged regarding Vega's murder. He was arrested in November 2024 and charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery and theft. He has pleaded not guilty. Gray, who is serving time in Georgia for an unrelated incident, faces the same charges in connection to Vega's death, according to a June 20 court filing reviewed by NBC. Young is currently only facing charges related to allegedly following Vega home from the strip club she worked at, Le Girls. Several other dancers had the club had also been violently robbed around the same time. Young had allegedly followed Vega home one night - sprinting toward her in her building's parking garage and demanding her belongings. 'He shoved her to the ground, told her he'd kill her and held the gun to her face,' Erika told NBC. Young allegedly stole everything she had on her and fled the scene. After Vega identified Young as the man who robbed her, he was arrested and charged. But he posted his $50,000 bond and has been a free man. Vega had moved to a Tempe apartment complex she believed would be safer after she was attacked. Since the incident, Vega was easily startled, her mother said. 'You couldn't walk up behind her without her jumping,' she added. However, the garage of this building was the last place she was seen alive before she was kidnapped and murdered in 2023. Vega vanished after telling friends she was headed to work. 'Uber is $60,' Vega wrote to her friend and co-worker Jelena Gamboa that night, as they were supposed to get together. 'I might just go to work then. I feel like it's a sign I shouldn't go.' Security cameras caught the moment her car, followed by the Chevrolet Malibu she was found in, both exited the garage. Her disappearance sparked a frantic manhunt, but she was found dead a day after she disappeared. The Sheriff's Office said Young was out of custody at the time of Vega's death, but that his ankle monitor did not place him at the scene of the crime. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial regarding the robbery case has been postponed 16 times, according to 12 News. It is officially scheduled to kick off at the end of the month. It is unclear why it has been delayed for so long. 'I just don't understand how the system continues to allow someone to basically play the system to their full advantage. And that's exactly what he's doing,' Vega's step-dad Tom told 12 News in March.
Times
3 hours ago
- Times
Delaying payouts for blood and Post Office victims is scandalous
Tens of thousands of people are thought to have received contaminated blood in the 1970s and 1980s LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES The familiar truism that justice delayed is justice denied has taken on a morbid sense of urgency for the many victims of the Post Office and infected blood scandals. Thanks to the courageous persistence of campaigners, public officials have been forced to face up to the moral enormity of these past wrongs: respectively, the most widespread miscarriage of justice, and gravest case of medical malpractice, in recent memory. Yet, those charged with remedying these injustices are continuing to drag their feet in awarding victims due redress. It has been estimated that at least 100 further victims of the infected blood scandal have died in the protracted interim between the conclusion of Sir Brian Langstaff's inquiry last year and being invited to apply for compensation. Likewise, some 345 former sub-postmasters are thought to have died before securing any financial restitution. Those still pursuing claims now find themselves caught in an interminable, tortuous, legalistic wrangle: one that seems cynically designed to delay and minimise the total amount of compensation that will eventually have to be paid out. • Keir Starmer: infected blood victims deserve justice now A report published last week into the human toll of the prosecutions made on the basis of the Post Office's defective Horizon IT system was unsparing in its grim detail. Its author, Sir Wyn Williams, concluded that the scandal had driven 13 people to suicide. Many other lives were blighted by addiction, divorce and financial ruin. Yet, the government's declared determination to correct these wrongs is belied by the gross deficiencies Sir Wyn identifies in the remuneration of those harmed. The Post Office compensation programme is byzantine in its complexity, with four separate schemes running in parallel. 3,700 former subpostmasters are yet to receive any payout. Many are locked in a legal limbo while their claims are subjected to excessively bureaucratic and adversarial scrutiny. Claimants are disadvantaged if they can't produce decades-old forms, often long lost. One sub-postmistress claims to have received a compensation offer worth just 0.5 per cent of her original claim. Sir Alan Bates, who championed his fellow sub-postmasters' cause, has fallen victim to what he describes as a 'quasi-kangaroo court', receiving a 'take it or leave it' quote amounting to less than half his submitted claim. Similarly shameful treatment has been meted out to those survivors among the 30,000 NHS patients infected with HIV and hepatitis by contaminated blood products. Last week, Sir Brian Langstaff warned that this compensation system too is creating 'obvious injustice'. Only 460 people have received full payouts, the result of a dilatory process forcing victims to be invited to make a claim rather than initiate one themselves. • Infected blood victims 'left suicidal' by compensation delays It is clear that government officials and civil servants tasked with disbursing payouts are subjecting comparatively powerless individuals to a level of rigoristic penny-pinching they would not dream of applying elsewhere. When set alongside the kind of financial waste casually tolerated within government, from the eye-watering sums sunk into HS2 to the near £2 billion in 'bounce back loan' fraud complacently written off by the very same department of business overseeing appeals by victims of the Post Office, the contrast is galling. Victims of the infected blood and Post Office scandals have had their right to restitution established by due process. Obstructionist officials should not be allowed to deny them justice.
