On the night of February 23rd 2021, 11-year-old Taylor heard her parents arguing and went downstairs to the kitchen to see her father brutally stamping on her mother’s ribs. She’d heard him hitting her, and seen her mother’s bruises, multiple times before. Fearing that he would kill her mother, Taylor jabbed a paring knife into his leg, accidentally hitting his femoral artery. Juliet rushed Taylor back upstairs and ran her a bath, and by the time she returned to the kitchen, Gerry had bled to death (it can take as little as two minutes for somebody to die in this way).
To protect her daughter, in the early hours of February 24th, 2021, Juliet executed a clever cover-up and re-framed Gerry’s death as a disappearance. She cleaned up the scene, dismembered the body and wrapped the parts, used gaffer tape to make her car number plate untraceable on ANPR and drove the body parts to London marshland where she disposed of them.
To throw the police off the scent the next day, she drove Gerry’s phone to Ilford, where she knew disgruntled ex-employee Marty Baines lived, in an attempt to frame Marty for Gerry’s murder should his body ever be discovered. From Ilford, she used Gerry’s phone to cancel the brewery appointment he had that afternoon by playing an old voicemail that Gerry had left her (hence his use of overfamiliar language) down the phone. Then, that evening, she parked Gerry’s car by the Thames and reported Gerry as missing. DCI Ram Sidhu unwittingly helped her cover-up by ruling Gerry’s disappearance a suicide. Until now, Taylor had suspected that her mother was her father’s killer, but never that she’d done it herself accidentally.
Why Did Jess Stop Sunny From Cautioning Taylor?
Sunny and Jess knew that Gerry Cooper’s most likely cause of death was a stab wound to the femoral artery in his leg. When Taylor told them that she’d stuck a small knife in his leg, Sunny realised that she was the killer and thought this was a confession, so he began to caution her to advise her of her legal rights and remind her of the consequences of giving false information to the police. Jess though, realised that Taylor didn’t know she’d killed her father and so stopped Sunny before he could finish the caution, keeping Taylor protected from the truth until they could decide what to do next.
Why Wasn’t Taylor Charged for her Dad’s Murder?
Knowing the truth, Jess and Sunny chose not to tell Taylor that three years ago, she’d accidentally killed her father, but to leave the decision up to her mother. If Juliet wanted, they would go along with her taking the blame for Taylor’s unwitting act and present evidence to the CPS that Juliet was Gerry’s killer. Juliet would then likely be sentenced to four years in prison for murder in self-defence, and be released in two years.
Juliet’s other option was to trust in the CPS and tell them and Taylor the truth in the hope that, under the ‘reasonable force’ argument that showed Taylor hadn’t acted unduly when defending her mother from her father, the CPS wouldn’t judge it in the public interest to pursue murder charges against Taylor or her (other than possibly for the unlawful disposal of human remains and perverting the course of justice).
