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1 week ago
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A father who claimed his 14-year-old daughter died in a freak accident after innocent horseplay has been found guilty of murdering her by stabbing her in the heart with a kitchen knife.
Simon Vickers, 50, claimed he did not know precisely how his daughter, Scarlett Vickers, came to be killed in the family kitchen on a Friday night in July last year.
But prosecutors said Vickers was lying and that, “irritated”, he picked up a knife and stabbed Scarlett in the chest.
After a 10-day trial, a jury at Teesside crown court in Middlesbrough found Vickers guilty of murder. They rejected his emotional testimony that he would never knowingly harm his only child.
The court heard Vickers had smoked a cannabis joint and drunk four glasses of wine at the family home in Darlington on 5 July.
He was in the kitchen with Scarlett and her mother, his partner of 27 years, Sarah Hall, when they all started “mucking about”. It began with throwing grapes, became tickling and then nipping with kitchen tongs.
In the course of this Scarlett was stabbed, suffering an 11cm wound to her chest. She bled to death at the scene.
A forensic pathologist said the nature of the wound meant the knife must have been held.
Vickers initially told police that he must have accidentally thrown the knife at her, thinking he had something else in his hand.
Giving evidence, he said that was not what had happened and that he may have accidentally swiped the knife along a work surface and it somehow went into her chest.
The prosecutor Mark McKone KC said Vickers was lying. “The prosecution submit that Mr Vickers did not and could not have stabbed his daughter through the heart accidentally,” he said.
Alcohol, coupled with the throwing of grapes, with some ending on the floor where their dog could eat them, could have led him to become irritated, McKone said.
It took the jury 13 hours and 21 minutes to convict him of murder by a majority of 10-2, rather than the less serious alternative of manslaughter.
Hall and other family members in the public gallery looked stunned when the verdict was returned. Vickers did not visibly react.
Afterwards the Crown Prosecution Service said Vickers’ account of Scarlett’s death was “wholly inconsistent” with the evidence.
Durham police said the exact circumstances of Scarlett’s death may never be known but “at about 10.45pm Vickers stabbed Scarlett with a kitchen knife”.
Giving evidence Vickers accepted he must have been responsible for the death of Scarlett. But he said he had “no clue” how it had happened. “Why would I harm my own daughter?” he asked. “If someone put a gun to my head and told me to stab her … I would be shot.”
He said Scarlett meant everything to him and Hall, who has stood by Vickers and gave evidence in his defence.
Vickers told jurors that when he had held Scarlett as a baby after a difficult birth, it was the “best feeling I’ve ever had”.
They did everything together as a family, he said, whether that was jumping in a ball pit or going swimming. They went to Blackpool twice a year and went on annual holidays abroad.
“The three of us were inseparable,” Vickers said. “From the moment Scarlett was born there was just the three of us. We used to call ourselves the Three Ss – Simon, Sarah and Scarlett.”
On the night she died, Scarlett was in good spirits, looking forward to the summer break and a family holiday to Gran Canaria, the court heard. She had agreed to get up early the next day to accompany her parents for breakfast at a cafe with relatives.
Vickers was watching football before the “mucking about” in the kitchen took place.
Hall was making her and Vickers’ evening meal – spaghetti bolognese and garlic bread – when Scarlett came down, bored, and “we turned our tea off so we could have a bit of craic and knock about a bit”, Vickers said. He struggled to keep himself together as he described events, which he said were intended to be nothing more than harmless fun.
The larking about continued until he heard his daughter was shouting: “Ow, ow, ow.” Vickers said: “She had a pink fluffy pyjama top on. All of a sudden blood just started coming out of it. Loads of it.”
Emergency services were called. “Scarlett was just laying there, staring, she wasn’t saying anything,” Vickers said. “Then she started gasping for breath. That’s when I started shouting: ‘Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett.’ Then she stopped breathing, just stopped, nothing. Her eyes just went like dolls’ eyes, everything just stopped.”
Vickers was asked a number of times if he had intended to hurt Scarlett. “No, never. Never in this world. I’d have given my life.”
The only other person in the room that night was Hall, who told jurors: “He never harmed her. He would never harm her.” She wept as she recalled the night and the blood she saw on her daughter. “I just panicked, the last thing she would have seen was us panicking.”
A Home Office forensic pathologist Dr Jennifer Bolton said Scarlett had died from a single 11cm wound to the left of her chest that went through her lung and into her heart, causing fatal blood loss.
Bolton said it was her opinion that the knife was being “held tightly” at the time so that when it came into contact with Scarlett, it went into her. “That typically means a firm grip and that arm is braced in a certain way.”
After the verdict Det Supt Craig Rudd, who led the investigation, said: “Scarlett Vickers would have celebrated her 16th birthday this year. She had her whole life ahead of her.
“Yet it was cruelly cut short by her own father – a man who was meant to protect her. We may never know why or what caused Simon Vickers to do what he did that night.
“Sadly, today’s verdict will not bring Scarlett back, but he will now face the consequences of his actions.”
The trial judge, Mr Justice Cotter, said he would sentence Vickers on 10 February.
