Killer 'took photos of girl's body to keep as trophies'

A killer branded a sexual deviant by UK prosecutors lured a teenage girl to his home before hanging her and taking photographs of the body to keep as macabre trophies, a court has heard.

David Crigman QC told Stafford Crown Court that murderer Jamie Reynolds was a manipulative individual and “a sexual deviant” who has had “a morbid fascination in pornography depicting violence towards young women in sexual context since at least 2008”.

In May, the prosecution said, Reynolds invited 17-year-old Georgia Williams for a photo-shoot at his parents’ home in Avondale Road, Wellington, Shropshire, where he trapped and killed the defenceless teenager.

Mr Crigman told the court Reynolds then posed her body, both partly clothed and naked, in different parts of the house, including on his parents’ bed.

Georgia’s father Steven – a serving detective with West Mercia Police – mother Lynnette and sister Scarlett left the courtroom as the prosecution opened its case in graphic and chilling detail, charting what it called Reynolds’s “meticulous” planning of the murder, and the disposal of his victim’s body.

Across the room, Georgia’s boyfriend Matthew Bird gazed at Reynolds as the facts of his crime were laid bare in Mr Crigman’s submissions.

Throughout the hearing, Reynolds, wearing a two-piece suit, purple shirt and tie, sat slumped in his chair in the dock gazing down at his hands.

At a hearing earlier this month he pleaded guilty to murdering Georgia, who had spurned his romantic advances.

Mr Crigman said at the time of his arrest for murder, Reynolds had 16,800 images and 72 videos of extreme pornography stored on an external computer hard drive, including digitally doctored images of up to eight other women he personally knew in which ropes had been added around their necks.

Mr Crigman said the defendant had referred to the girls in a derogatory manner and daubing some with “crude language” of a sexual nature.

Reynolds had also written 40 graphic short stories involving a fatal assault on a woman, “followed by acts of sexual violation”, according to Mr Crigman.

It also emerged in the prosecution case that Reynolds had written a “script” in which he described in detail trapping and killing a victim.

Mr Crigman said in regards to murdering Georgia, Reynolds – who appeared particularly taken with red-haired women – had followed “a good deal of his pre-written script”.

Addressing Reynolds’s reasoning for carrying out the murder, Mr Crigman said it was “a wholly deliberate act of motivation” on the part of the former shop worker who wanted to watch his victim die, partly as “a voyeur” and partly for sexual reasons.

Texts and messages between Reynolds and Georgia were read out in which he shared his romantic feelings for the teenager – an advance she rebuffed, telling him in February: “I don’t see you in that way. Just stop, I don’t want to ruin our friendship. I told you last time, I just wanted to be friends.”

Mr Crigman said Reynolds’s fascination with Georgia appeared undeterred and he had written a gruesome story on his mobile phone entitled “Georgia is The Prize” in which she died, following a sex game depicting the victim as a willing participant.

That element, Mr Crigman said, could not have been further from the truth.

In May, Georgia accepted Reynolds’s invitation to take part in a photo-shoot at his parents’ house while they were holidaying in Italy.

Reynolds had bought items including a rope, learning to tie a noose and attaching it to what Mr Crigman described as a “hanging mechanism” fitted to the loft hatch in the house, above the landing.

He also bought a leather jacket, leather shorts and high heels for Georgia to wear during the “shoot” and in a chilling message beforehand told her he wanted to take a photograph of her “like simulation hanging, but you’d be standing on a box”.

“I’d edit that (the box) out on a computer to make it look like you’re floating, are you ok with that?” he said.

Georgia did not reply, but turned up at the house on the evening of Sunday May 26, telling her parents and sister where she was going and that she would only be a couple of hours.

Mr Crigman said that as she walked the short distance from her parents’ home, there was evidence Reynolds watched extreme pornography.

After her death, police recovered several seemingly innocuous photographs which they say were taken by Reynolds showing Georgia “happy” and “compliant” and fully clothed, wearing make-up.

The final photographs showed her standing on a red recycling box, hands seemingly bound behind her, with the rope hanging above her, Mr Crigman added.

The prosecutor said: “Photo 12 displays the correct time – 8.20pm. Her face still does not depict any sign of alarm and that is in fact the last photo of her alive.”

Reynolds was arrested in Glasgow following a manhunt on May 29 after Georgia’s body was found in secluded woodland near Wrexham.

The proceedings are scheduled to last into tomorrow when presiding judge Mr Justice Wilkie is expected to pass sentence.