Kim Edwards - The Twilight Murders E-Book

Katherine Smith

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

In April 2016, the unassuming town of Spalding in Lincolnshire earned an unwelcome place in true crime history when it turned out to be the home of Britain's youngest ever double killers. The victims were a forty-nine year-old mother named Elizabeth Edwards and her thirteen year-old daughter Katie. They were stabbed in the throat and then suffocated with pillows as they lay in their beds at night. These awful murders were unspeakably brutal and harrowing.   The mastermind of the murders was Kim Edwards. Kim was the middle daughter of Elizabeth and the older sister of Katie. She had not acted alone in these evil and gruesome crimes. Her loyal boyfriend Lucas Markham had been more than willing to kill these family members for her. It was shocking enough that someone would plan and carry out the violent premeditated murder of their mother and little sister but most shocking of all was the tender age of these killers. Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham were both just fourteen years-old. They were still kids.   Once they satisfied themselves that Elizabeth and Katie were dead, Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham eventually went downstairs where they ate ice cream and watched four Twilight movies. It was this last strange and shocking detail that would not only give these two teen killers their true crime tag (The TWILIGHT Killers) but also become the most chilling revelation in court. What sort of person stabs a mother and a little girl to death in the throat and then eats ice cream and watches DVDs as if nothing has happened? Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham did though. It was utterly and completely beyond all comprehension.   How do you even begin to understand what happened on that tragic day in 2016?

Leseprobe

Katherine Smith

Kim Edwards - The Twilight Murders

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Copyright

© Copyright 2023 Katherine Smith

All Rights Reserved

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

References

Photo Credit

INTRODUCTION

Spalding is a market town on the River Welland in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire. It has a population of around 34,000 and sits between the cities of Peterborough and Lincoln. Spalding is famous for its agricultural industry and also tulips. The Spalding Tulip Parade was a big deal in the town once upon a time and attracted thousands of visitors. In April 2016, this unassuming town earned an unwelcome place in true crime history when it turned out to be the home of Britain's youngest ever double killers.

The victims were a forty-nine year-old mother named Elizabeth Edwards and her thirteen year-old daughter Katie. They were repeatedly stabbed in the throat and then suffocated with pillows as they lay in their beds at night. These awful murders were unspeakably brutal and harrowing. Even veteran police officers were shaken by this case. The mastermind of the murders was Kim Edwards. Kim was the middle daughter of Elizabeth and the older sister of Katie. She had not acted alone in these evil and gruesome crimes. Her loyal boyfriend Lucas Markham had been more than willing to kill these family members for her. Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham were a terrible and disturbing influence on one another. They now stand in the notorious and dreadful pantheon of killer crime duos.

Kim watched her mother's life slip away and then took refuge in the bathroom while she waited for Markham to murder her little sister Katie. Kim was supposed to kill Katie herself but she became squeamish. Kim Edwards said she didn't like the smell of blood. Despite this, Kim had still given explicit instructions that Markham should stab the voice-boxes in the throats of her mother and sister to avoid any risk of Elizabeth and Katie calling for help. So this is exactly what Lucas Markham did. If Kim Edwards had told him to walk off a cliff then Markham would have done that too. Markham would do literally anything for Kim. All she had to do was ask.

It was shocking enough that someone would plan and carry out the violent premeditated murder of their mother and little sister but most shocking of all was the tender age of these killers. Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham were both just fourteen years-old. They were still kids. Once they satisfied themselves that Elizabeth and Katie were dead (the blood drenched bedrooms were ample evidence alone - never mind checking for a pulse), Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham went downstairs - where they eventually ate ice cream and watched four Twilight movies.

It was this last strange and shocking detail that would not only give these two teen killers their true crime tag (The TWILIGHT Killers) but also become the most chilling revelation in court. What sort of person stabs a mother and a little girl to death in the throat and then eats ice cream and watches DVDs as if nothing has happened? Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham did though. It was utterly and completely beyond all comprehension. How do you even begin to understand what happened on that tragic day in 2016?

In the book that follows we will attempt to make some sense of this strange and tragic case and see how Kim Edwards, in conjunction with Lucas Markham, tipped over into what one can only describe as complete insanity. There are only a handful of killers in British criminal history who were younger than Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham were when they murdered Elizabeth and Katie. Their youth alone made these crimes shocking but the nature of the murders and the behaviour of the two teenagers afterwards was something which bewildered and baffled the police. This case was not quite without precedent but it certainly felt like it.

Once in custody, Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham spoke of the murders in bland, unemotional, almost bored fashion. They didn't even seem to think that they had done anything wrong. Worst of all was the fact that Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham didn't seem to care. They displayed no remorse or regret at all. Can these infamous callous kids ever be rehabilitated? Can they change? This is a question we will examine in the book as we go through this harrowing and sad story. This book is, I hope, a respectful and sensitive account of this case though - unavoidably - some of the details will be disturbing. A list of salient references used in the research of this book can be found at the conclusion of the final chapter.

CHAPTER ONE

Elizabeth Edwards was born Elizabeth Joyce and originally from Edinburgh but she moved south in the end. Her friends (of whom there were many) always called her Liz. She married a welder named Pete Edwards who, by all accounts, turned out to have a drug problem and could be violent and abusive. Pete Edwards resurfaced in the wake of this case and although he came across as a rather strange character his grief at the loss of Katie was genuine and heartfelt. Kim and Katie were a result of this marriage but Elizabeth already had an older daughter named Mary - who was the half-sister to Kim and Katie.

Mary Cottingham lived in Derby with her husband and children when the tragic 2016 murders took place and was twenty-six at the time. Mary was a decent and intelligent person who always suspected her half-sister Kim of being - to quote Mary - 'unhinged'. She turned out to be sadly accurate in this bleak assessment. Unhinged is a word that could have been invented strictly for Kim Edwards. Mary also had no time at all for Kim's unpopular boyfriend Lucas Markham. She sensed he was bad news from day one. As with her sister Kim, Mary's sixth sense was depressingly on the nose once again when it came to Markham.

"I knew straight away that there was something I did not like about him," said Mary. "I knew he was trouble, I just didn’t realise he would be this extent of trouble." It's safe to say that never in a billion years could anyone have guessed the full extent of the 'trouble' that Markham would wreak on this poor family. Kim Edwards hooking up with Lucas Markham turned out to be a truly tragic and horrific development.

Pete Edwards had left (it was something of a mutual parting of the ways) the family home when Kim was two years-old. Elizabeth would not speak kindly of Pete Edwards in the years which followed and did not want her daughters to have any contact with him. She thought that Pete Edwards was a bad influence on her children. Pete Edwards is therefore what you could describe as a background character in this sad family drama. Elizabeth Edwards sometimes had to shuttle herself and her children around women's refuges to find sanctuary from her lingering and allegedly violent estranged husband. It was certainly not an easy time for Elizabeth what with young children to look after and little money.

Kim Rose Edwards was born in 2001. Despite the fact that everyone (including Mary) said that Pete Edwards was an awful person, Kim developed a fantasy version of her dad in her head. She felt as if her mother had denied her the chance to know this loving father who would have doted on her. Kim always believed that her younger sister Katie was favoured over her by Elizabeth. Kim therefore had this fantasy where her father was a great person and would favour her over Katie - just to even things up. None of this was true. It was all simply a figment of Kim's troubled and paranoid imagination.

Elizabeth loved both Kim and Katie equally. And life with Kim's father in the family home had clearly been the complete opposite of a bed of roses. Kim's reality was built on a series of delusions and she patently had a deeply selfish narcissistic personality. Kim was the sort of person who would happily pull the plug on the entire world if she thought it might buy her twenty minutes of modest contentment. She never considered the welfare and feelings of others. It was always all about her. The fact that Kim grew-up without her father made it easier to think of him through a rose-coloured mindset. Had he lived with them all the time then this most likely wouldn't have been the case.

Lucas Markham had an equally troubled start in life when it came to his family. He was also born in 2001. His real name was Stan Lucas Markham but he clearly didn't care much for the name Stan. Markham's mother died from cancer at the age of 29 when he was about five. This was obviously a dreadful, painful, and confusing experience for a young child. There was domestic abuse in the family and his father (who came from the travelling community) was known to drink. Lucas Markham therefore experienced a lot of turmoil and instability in his early years. Markham had some foster care placements before living with his aunt and brothers in Spalding.

Because he was loaned out to various relatives when he was younger, Lucas Markham always felt somewhat unwanted (though his long suffering aunt clearly cared about him by all accounts - despite all the trouble and aggravation he caused). A former neighbour of Lucas Markham's family said that even as a little kid he was something of a vandal and swore like a trooper. Markham at eleven years-old would be seen riding his bike around outside at midnight when kids his age were supposed to be in bed. Lucas Markham eventually lived at the far opposite end of Kim Edwards’ street and went to the same school.

It was a very cruel twist of fate to place these two young people in such close proximity. If they had never met then the awful events of 2016 would never have happened. It is hard to believe that Kim Edwards would ever have found anyone else willing to get their hands bloody for her in the grim and unflinching fashion that Markham did. Given that it was the teenage love affair between Kim Edwards and Markham which acted as the catalyst for the murders then it seems safe to say that Elizabeth and Katie would not have died if Kim and Markham had never met in the first place.

Kim Edwards had a difficult and sometimes fractious relationship with her mother - even before Lucas Markham arrived on the scene. The tension between Kim and Elizabeth had a long history. Elizabeth shopped herself to social services in 2008 when she hit Kim during a row at home. This was not just a tap either. She is said to have punched Kim in the jaw - which was obviously out of order and not something anyone should ever do to a child. Elizabeth just completely snapped and lashed out. Kim was six at the time and the row was over a broken television. Kim was temporarily (for four months) taken into foster care as a consequence.

This experience had a profound effect on the psyche of Kim Edwards. Kim would sometimes even yearn for the foster mother she briefly knew during this time. Kim would act as if she was treated like some ostracised interloper or stranger in her own family but this wasn't the case at all. As with nearly everything, it was all in Kim's mind. Elizabeth Edwards believed that she was never quite able to repair her relationship with Kim after this regrettable 2008 incident. That punch was something that Kim never forget. It left deep mental scars. Friends of Elizabeth though would later say they never detected any friction or hostility (though there was clearly friction behind the scenes at times) between her and Kim and they always seemed like a normal mother and daughter.

In photographs taken of the family together when Kim was younger they all seem content and happy. Kim doesn't look like someone who is dangerously estranged from her family. The only real giveaway is that Kim doesn't have the ability to smile in a genuine way like her younger sister. A smile was always hard work for Kim Edwards. Kim desperately tried to cast her mother as the grand villain in her story and while Elizabeth had not always been perfect she was a loving and dedicated single parent who volunteered in a charity shop and sang in the church choir. In reality, Elizabeth was assuredly not the villain and wicked mother portrayed by the troubled imagination of Kim Edwards. Apart from Kim, no one ever had a bad word to say about Elizabeth Edwards.

Elizabeth took Kim and Katie to pantomimes when they were little kids. She did her best to make their childhood fun and normal after a difficult start. She also tried to instil a sense of community and decency in her daughters. As a consequence, Kim and Katie were both involved in the church and even volunteers in a Safer Neighbourhoods scheme designed to combat anti-social behaviour. The thought of little Kim Edwards doing her bit to combat crime and anti-social behaviour is darkly ironic to say the least in retrospect. Kim would eventually become one of the most notorious teenage criminals in British true crime history. She would be compared to monsters like Myra Hindley.

After an unavoidably transient interlude, Elizabeth Edwards settled in Spalding with her daughters. Spalding had one of the lowest crime rates in the country and was surrounded by tranquil countryside and waterways. It had good public services and excellent flood defences. All in all, it seemed as good a place as any for Elizabeth to finally set down some roots. By the time of the Twilight murders, Elizabeth had been living in Spalding for about ten years.

Elizabeth worked as a dinner lady at the local St Paul's primary school. The kids at the school all liked Elizabeth Edwards and she became a familiar figure in their lives. The staff at the school said that Elizabeth was a bubbly and enthusiastic sort of person who was always pleasant to be around. Elizabeth Edwards was a positive person. She was an optimist. Elizabeth always did her utmost in life to make the best of the modest cards that had been dealt to her. Because she was a mother of three, Elizabeth was excellent with children at the school. She loved working in an environment full of children and would look out for them as if they were her own flesh and blood.

The Edwards family lived in a little two up/two down semi-detached house on Dawson Avenue. Kim and Katie shared a bedroom. Their house was number 5. The lightish brown bricked house had a tiny patch of neatly mowed grass at the front and not much of a back garden. A row of terraced houses sat beyond in the background and Dawson Avenue was lined with semi-detached houses identical to the one the Edwards family lived in. It was a nondescript place to live and not the sort of place you'd find anyone with wealth. The community spirit was good though and Elizabeth became friends with many of her neighbours. No one could ever have predicted what would happen at 5 Dawson Avenue in the end.

Because she had spent some time in a foster home, Kim Edwards was assigned a caseworker by the social services to whom she could share her private thoughts. To this caseworker, Kim basically portrayed her mother to be like the awful Murdstones (surely among the most despicable human villains to grace any novel) from David Copperfield. Kim ladled on the angst and self-pity and said she was treated like 's***' at home. Kim even told social workers that her mother had tried to strangle her but this claim was found to have no credibility. Kim's litany of mostly fictional abuse was a long way from the actual truth. Millions of children had far worse lives, upbringings, and mothers than Kim Edwards.

Kim was referred to adolescent mental health services at one point when she revealed to a teacher that she had suicidal thoughts.

Kim's mother, despite the paranoia of her middle daughter, was no monster. Elizabeth was a kind and decent single parent who was doing her best to look after her daughters and make their lives as normal and happy as possible. At the trial a prosecution barrister would put it the best when he said that Elizabeth Edwards had not always been the best mother in the world but she was a long, long way from being the worst mother in the world. Elizabeth, like everyone, was doing her best. There was sometimes tension between Kim and her mother and Elizabeth (like all people) occasionally lost her temper but she was certainly not the person depicted by Kim's diaries and private correspondence. Kim's lengthy character assassination on her mother was not fair. The real situation was much more nuanced than Kim would admit. Kim Edwards was simply not a reliable narrator.

Kim's simmering and undeserved resentment at her mother had by now coalesced around a big theme. That theme was Kim's younger sister Katie. Kim's diaries and private outpourings to her caseworker were now increasingly full of references to how Katie was the 'golden girl' of the family (Kim naturally cast herself as the black sheep) and could do no wrong. Kim had become convinced that Elizabeth much preferred Katie over her. While this was all simply more paranoia on Kim's part, it was something which took a dangerous and damaging hold in her mind. It was the beginning of a process where Kim was ultimately able to emotionally disconnect herself from her mother and younger sister to a terrifying and astonishing degree that can only be described as psychopathic.

Kim Edwards had shoulder length straight fair hair and blank dark uneven eyes which were set far apart. There was a weird detachment to many of her photographs - as if she wasn't actually there in spirit. It is impossible to look at old photographs of Kim Edwards now and not see something of the night in her. The only time she ever seemed to genuinely smile in photographs was when she was posing with Lucas Markham. Kim's younger sister Katie, by contrast, had a happy and ready smile most of the time.

Katie (who looked uncannily like a young version of the Foyle's War actress Honeysuckle Weeks) appeared in church musical productions and was an outgoing happy-go-lucky sort of girl. The friends of Elizabeth Edwards all said Katie was a beautiful cheerful child who would brighten any day with her smile. Kim had clearly struggled to cope with having a popular younger sibling. She seemed to resent not being the centre of attention anymore when Katie was born. The moody Kim always seemed to be jealous of her likeable and friendly little sister.

Kim Edwards eventually attended the Sir John Gleed School in Spalding. The school was formed out of a merger between Gleed Boys' School and Gleed Girls' Technology College. The school was named after Sir John Wilson Gleed (1865–1946). Gleed was chairman of the Holland Education Committee and of Holland County Council. The school was placed in "special measures" by Ofsted in 2013 because of numerous failings. It wasn't exactly then the sort of school that rich parents sent their kids to. Sir John Gleed School was basically a comprehensive. In 2016 it came under new sponsorship and had its named changed to Spalding Academy.

It was at the John Gleed School that Kim Edwards would clap eyes on Lucas Markham for the first time. This was September 2013. How different things might have been if these two combustible teens had never met. Meeting Markham was a tragic 'sliding doors' moment for both. Most of of all it was a tragic sliding doors moment for Elizabeth and Katie and all the people that loved them. The first time that Kim Edwards noticed Markham was when he angrily threw a chair in the classroom during English. This act of school rebellion clearly made an impression on her.

Markham was unremarkable in school. No one - save for Kim Edwards - really noticed him too much despite his obstreperous tendencies. Those who knew Markham at school said he could be very quiet but then suddenly snap and become volatile and angry (as the infamous chair throwing incident would testify). Markham was soft-spoken but not in a gentle and intelligent way. He was soft-spoken in a self-assured and somewhat creepy way. Neighbours of Elizabeth Edwards would later say that Lucas Markham came across as smug and unfriendly.

Markham was said to be quite bright but there was never too much evidence for this. His Facebook posts were riddled with primary school level spelling mistakes and in police custody interviews Markham would say things like 'holded' when he meant to say 'held'. In terms of IQ he wasn't especially bright or gifted. Markham was more complex than your average fourteen year-old but definitely not in a good way. Despite his blotchy round baby-face and tuft of mousey brown hair, Lucas Markham looked like a complete psychopath. His narrow beady eyes made him seem sinister and angry. Even in photographs where Markham is smiling he looks like he's about to kill someone.

Markham was quite tall for his age. By the time of the murders he was already 5'10 at fourteen. Kim Edwards was quite tall too (for such a young female teenager) and was 5'5 and growing by the time of the murders. There are conflicting accounts of Markham's life at school in regards to bullying. Some reports state that he suffered from bullying himself while others say that he WAS the bully. Perhaps it was a bit of both. It is hard to imagine that a beefy and volatile 5'10 young teenager would have any problem with bullying from other kids. Maybe he was bullied in the past when he was younger and smaller. Markham did most of his fighting at home with his rough and ready energetic brothers.

It was only early in 2015 that Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham actually got to know other and talk for the first time at school. They struck up a conversation while they were outside a classroom waiting for a computer class to begin. This was the genesis of one of the most tragic, disturbing, and bizarre cases in British true crime history. Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham quickly developed an intense and frightening bond after they met and talked for the first time. They both had suicidal thoughts and clearly found a kindred spirit in one another. Both felt like outcasts in the world until they found one another. From that point on it was them against the world. Or, to be more precise, them against Kim's mother.

Markham and Kim Edwards had known each other for a few months when he asked her out on Facebook. She was more than happy to say yes. Female school friends of Kim Edwards were rather baffled by her choice of first boyfriend. Lucas Markham was not exactly much of a catch in the looks department. He was also considered to be an oddball with obvious anger issues. Before she met Markham, Kim Edwards had been, despite her private angst and misplaced jealous feelings towards Katie, a fairly normal girl. Kim was still quite outgoing at this point in her life. She went to the shopping centre with her friends at weekends to look at makeup. She liked the pop group TLC. She liked Oreo cookies. She goofed around. She liked art and wanted to be a cartoonist. The friends and the neighbours of Elizabeth Edwards noticed nothing weird or dangerous about Kim at all.

Sadly, this would not last for very much longer. Kim's personality began to noticeably change through exposure to Lucas Markham. She became more withdrawn and aloof. This soon to be infamous couple fell further and further into their own dark fantasy world. You could say then that these two troubled teens truly brought out the worst in one another. Kim and Lucas Markham quickly became inseparable. In no time at all Kim didn't seem to care about anything else besides this scruffy and grumpy looking boy who always looked like he could do with a good wash.

Kim's friends found the intense bond between Kim and Markham creepy. They didn't really understand what she saw in him. The bonds between Kim and her friends began to loosen because she now spent all of her time with Markham. She was slowly beginning to slip away from reality. Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham seemed to find in one another exactly what they had been looking for. Not only were they on the same wavelength but they were also willing to give the other their 100% undivided attention. Both had abandonment issues and so the thought that they now had someone they could always rely on to be there for them was appealing.

Of course, Kim already HAD someone she could rely on to be there for her in Elizabeth. Kim chose to ignore this though. She refused to acknowledge any of the decent and admirable qualities of Elizabeth. In her private diaries and caseworker interviews, Kim continued to unfairly depict her mother in a most unflattering light. A first boyfriend was also a lot more exciting to Kim to hang around with than her church going mother. So she now wanted to spend all of her time with Markham. These two kids were soon joined at the hip. They only wanted to be with one another and got annoyed when they had to do something else.