A teenage girl hanged by a man obsessed with asphyxiating girls was failed by police and social services, a serious case review has ruled.
Jamie Reynolds, who murdered 17-year-old Georgia Williams in Telford in 2013, had previously tried to strangle a girl in 2008 and a serious case review found there were "shortfalls" in the force's investigation of the previous offence.
Georgia's parents, Steve and Lynnette Williams, said the report showed that their daughter's death could have been prevented and that Reynolds was "a murderer in the making". They added: "If people had just done their jobs properly our daughter would still be alive."
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Reynolds lured Williams to his home in Wellington, Shropshire, in 2013, supposedly for a photography session. He then killed her in a carefully planned trap, hanging her from a length of rope attached to the hatch of his loft. He was sentenced in December 2013, at the age of 23, to a whole-life jail term.
It emerged that he had come to the attention of police in 2008 when he trapped another 16-year-old girl at his home and grabbed her around the throat in a "bizarre, potentially serious and unprovoked attack".
Chief Constable David Shaw, of West Mercia Police, admitted: "We could have and should have done better. We let Georgia down."
However, there could be more serious revelations to come, reports Sky News. Georgia's parents are now calling on West Mercia Police to publish another report prepared by Devon and Cornwall Police which they said highlighted mistakes "ten times worse" than those flagged up by the serious case review.
Georgia Williams murderer given rare whole-life tariff
20 December 2013
THE man who murdered 17-year-old Georgia Williams has been given a rare whole-life jail term after psychiatrists said he had potential to become a serial killer.
Jamie Reynolds, 23, of Wellington, Shropshire, was sentenced at Stafford Crown Court after he admitted to murdering the police officer's daughter in May of this year. Reynolds meticulously planned and executed his crime, the court heard. He invited Georgia for a photoshoot at his parents' home in Wellington, where he hanged her using a length of rope attached to the loft hatch.
At yesterday's sentencing hearing, Mr Justice Wilkie said Reynolds had plotted his murder "to give sadistic pleasure", reports the Daily Telegraph. He said: "You watched her die in circumstances where you could have saved her – and doing so was a central part of your pleasure. After the killing you took sexual pleasure in her body, then treated her body with contempt, dumping her in a remote area."
Prosecutor David Crigman said at the time of his arrest, Reynolds had 16,800 images and 72 videos of extreme pornography stored on a hard drive, including digitally doctored images of up to eight other women he knew, in which ropes had been added around their necks.
He had also written 40 graphic short stories involving a fatal and sexual assault on a woman and a "script" in which he described trapping and killing a victim. Reynolds was said to have followed "a good deal of his pre-written script" in the killing of Georgia.
The judge said Reynolds had "been obsessed" with carrying out his sadistic fantasy for at least five years and said because of the seriousness of the offence "no minimum term should apply".
He agreed with a psychiatric report that his "scripted" attack and "long-standing preoccupation with violent and sadistic pornography" made him a "potential serial killer".
The whole-life jail term means Reynolds will be in prison until he dies, a sentence that has been handed to fewer than 65 people in total – including Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Harold Shipman and Milly Dowler's killer Levi Bellfield.
