A girl accused of murdering Brianna Ghey wrote a plan for how to kill the transgender teenager – including the exact time, date and location, a court heard.
The handwritten note was found in the bedroom of the 16-year-old defendant, known as X to protect her identity.
The girl, along with her co-defendant, a 16-year-old boy referred to as Y, were “preoccupied with violence, torture and death”, Manchester crown court heard.
They spent months discussing murdering Brianna and four other children – who were boys that either one of them did not like, a jury heard.
Messages were read out at their trial on Tuesday, apparently showing the pair discussing cannibalism and murder in the run-up to the killing on 11 February 2023.
In November 2022 the pair discussed killing a boy called M, who Y said was “a nob” because of his closeness to a girl Y liked. X said she would “happily kill him” using a “a really sharp blade, the same one that Sweeney Todd uses”.
She continued: “If we kill [M] can I keep some things, a couple of teeth and an eye?” Later, Y added, “And if you cut his heels and chop his tongue he can’t run or talk. I don’t know what I would get of him”.
On 18 and 19 January, three weeks before the killing, the girl sent the boy images of scissors along with some bloody flesh, which she had taken from TikTok.
She told him: “I’m gonna eat human flesh”. He told her to “cook it first” because it was safer that way.
After being arrested, Y told police he “just went along with the conversation” and that X was prone to exaggeration. “He said her friends don’t believe 90% of what she says,” the prosecuting barrister, Deanna Heer KC, told the jury.
Police found a handwritten note in X’s bedroom, headed: “Saturday 11 February 2023. Victim: Brianna Ghey.”
The note detailed where she and Y would meet, how they would collect Brianna, who was trans, from the bus stop near Culcheth library and take her to Culcheth Linear Park, where she was found dead that day.
It ended: “I say code word to [Y]. He stabs her in the back as I stab her in the stomach. [Y] drags the body into the area. We both cover up the area with logs etc.”
Another alleged killing plan was found in X’s bedroom, which read: “Give them alcohol with sleeping pills, slit throat, dismember body, place pieces in bin bags, bury bags 7 feet underground,” and then “Get her to go to linear park, go to the hidden spot near the bridge I usually go to, someone jumps out and restrains her (plan B). I kill her.”
A roll of bin bags was found in her room, Heer told the jury.
On 15 December 2022, girl X first told boy Y about Brianna, saying she was “obsessed” with her. They discussed her obsession, with the boy concluding: “Basically because it’s trans you find it interesting because the majority of people aren’t trans, it’s like going to a funeral and one person wears pink. You are going to be fascinated by their difference.”
On the day of the killing, X texted Brianna to tell her to buy a single child ticket to Culcheth library, the court heard. The bus driver later told police that Brianna was quietly spoken and seemed “very timid”, Heer told the jury. After boarding, Brianna sent a message to her mother, Esther Ghey, saying: “I’m on the bus by myself, I’m scared.”
Esther told police that Brianna was “an anxious child, who did not normally go out on her own”.
CCTV showed the defendants meeting Brianna at the appointed time and day. Shortly afterwards, one or both of the defendants stabbed Brianna 28 times with a 13cm hunting knife that Y had bought six weeks earlier, the court heard. Both defendants’ DNA was found on drinks bottles at the scene and Brianna’s blood was present on trainers and clothes found in Y’s bedroom.
CCTV showed the boy and girl making their way home. They then sent a series of messages “feigning ignorance” about the killing as word spread that Brianna had been killed, Heer told the jury.
X posted a tribute to Brianna on Snapchat, saying: “Brianna was one of the best people I have ever met and such an amazing friend its so fucking sickening what got done to her.”
X had an interest in serial killers including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez and Harold Shipman, the jury heard. She told the boy, Y, that she had killed two people before, but there is no evidence to suggest she had committed other murders, the court heard.
When she was arrested by police, the girl “lied” and claimed Brianna had “gone off with a lad from Manchester”, the court heard.
Boy Y told police that he and X had met Brianna in Culcheth and that they walked “to a forest”, Heer told the jury. He said X stabbed Brianna while he was looking the other way, urinating up against a tree.
The jury was told that both defendants had accepted that they were present in Linear Park with Brianna when she was killed, but blame each other for the killing.
“Plainly they cannot both be telling the truth,” Heer told the jury, adding: “A person can be guilty of murder even though they do not administer the fatal blow, if they assist or encourage another person to commit the offence and if they do so intending that the offence be committed.”
The trial continues.
Sophie Anderson, a UK-based writer, is your guide to the latest trends, viral sensations, and internet phenomena. With a finger on the pulse of digital culture, she explores what’s trending across social media and pop culture, keeping readers in the know about the latest online sensations.
