The moment transgender teenager Brianna Ghey’s killers turned on each other during never-seen-before police interviews will be shown tonight in a new ITV documentary about the tragic killing.
Brianna was just 16 when she was lured to a park near her home in Warrington on February 11, 2023, by Scarlett Jenkinson, who she thought was her friend, and her accomplice Eddie Ratcliffe, who she had never met before. She was then stabbed 28 times with a hunting knife across her head, neck, back and chest.
Tragically Brianna died at the scene at 4.02pm, around 45 minutes after she was discovered face down and bleeding by a couple out walking their dog. At the time of the killings Jenkinson and Ratcliffe were 15 years old, but a court heard they had been meticulously planning Brianna’s ‘exceptionally brutal’ murder for months.
In December last year, both received life terms for murder, with a minimum of 22 years for Jenkinson and 20 years for Ratcliffe, and had their identities made public by a judge. Manchester Crown Court heard that the pair’s motivation for killing Brianna was Jenkinson’s sadistic obsession with torture and murder. She had watched videos on the dark web from the age of 14. While Ratcliffe was transphobic.
Now, for the first time, their police interviews will be made public in Brianna: A Mother’s Story, which airs on ITV at 9pm tonight. And both gave wildly different accounts of what happened that day.
Jenkinson, who Brianna had met at school and thought was her friend, denied all knowledge of the murder and claimed: “I didn’t even find out about it until after it had happened and I heard it on the news.”
In one clip she is heard asking police officers: “How come I’m a suspect? Is it because I’m the last person to see her alive?” Though she admitted being with Brianna on the day she died, Jenkinson claimed Brianna had left her and Ratcliffe in the park after they’d had an argument. She told police she’d text Brianna asking ‘Why have you ditched me and Eddie?’ but said Brianna never responded.
But Ratcliffe tried to blame everything on Jenkinson once he was arrested and gave chilling details of what happened in the park. Without breaking down or flinching, he told detectives: “We walked to the forest. I turned away to go to the toilet on a tree. And when I turned back around, I saw Scarlett stabbing Brianna. At least three times. Stabbing her over and over.”
Brianna’s mother Esther Ghey, who bravely speaks in the documentary, is now calling for a public inquiry into peer-on-peer violence and wants a meeting with the heads of social media companies to get them to acknowledge the type of content teenagers are viewing online, which can lead to real-life violence.
She said: “I took part in this amazing documentary as a way to ensure that my family’s story was told truthfully, and people could get to know Brianna the way we did. I also wanted to find out more about the benefits of mindfulness, and the impact that harmful content online is having on teenagers and children.
“I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to speak to amazing people who highlight the issues that young people face in society right now. The statistics are shocking. I hope that this documentary contributes to the push for our children’s welfare, online and offline.”
*Brianna Ghey: A Mother’s Story airs tonight at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX
Follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.