R -v- Jack Crawley
Carlisle Crown Court
23 October 2024
Between:
R
-v-
Jack Crawley
Sentencing remarks of Mr Justice Goose,
Presiding Judge of the Northern Circuit
Sentencing remarks
Pursuant to s.46 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, no matter relating to the Complainant in respect of Count 3 & 4 of the Indictment shall during their lifetime be included in any publication if it is likely to lead members of the public to identify them as being a witness in the proceedings.
1. Jack Crawley, you are aged 20 and have been convicted of Murder and Attempted Murder. Before your trial you pleaded guilty to offences of Possession of an Offensive Weapon and Burglary. It is now my task to sentence you.
2. This murder was carried out by you with an intention to kill, as the jury found by their verdict, when you used brutal and exceptionally severe violence. It was a murder for gain, because you wanted to steal his car, and afterwards with callous cruelty for the family and friends of the man you murdered, you took the body away and set fire to it before it was hidden. For 7 months the body remained hidden until you finally told the police, before giving a lying account to the jury about how you had killed Paul Taylor.
3. Not content with that murder, you went on to attempt to murder another man. I am satisfied that had that man not been brave and strong enough, you would have murdered him too, as you had before. You are a highly dangerous young man.
4. On the 18th October last year Paul Taylor, a 56 year old man who lived with his family in Annan, drove to Carlisle after you had agreed to meet him for the purposes of consensual sex, in a remote place near Carlisle. You knew Mr Taylor because you had met him for similar purposes many times before. This time however, you took a hammer with you, which you used to strike him with heavy blows to the head and face at least ten times. Once you were sure he was dead, you put his body in the boot of his car and drove to another remote place, Finglandrigg Woods. There you made a fire and burned the body, before dragging the remains into bushes and trees to hide what you had done.
5. It was your evidence in the trial, that your motive for your attack upon Mr Taylor was to steal his car, although you claimed that you did not intend to kill him. That defence was rejected by the Jury, but I am sure that your motive for attacking Mr Taylor was for gain, to steal his car. After killing him, you made efforts thoroughly to clean the car, to remove as much of the blood staining you could, and later you tried to sell it for £2000. Before you could do so, you crashed the car and abandoned it.
6. After you were arrested and interviewed by the police, when you told them nothing, you were released on bail, with conditions of residence and reporting to the police in Carlisle. You quickly left, travelling to Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, before you arrived in York. When you arrived in that city you bought another hammer, and on the 5th January this year you arranged to meet another older man, again for consensual sex. AB picked you up in his car at an agreed meeting place, and then you drove together to a remote place near Acaster Malbis. Whilst alone together and as he was performing a sexual act on you, he was struck to the head, face and arm by you, with a hammer. He fought back and managed to take the hammer away and threatened you. At that point you ran away, later committing a dwelling house burglary offence, when you stole clothing. Whilst AB suffered lesser wounds to the face and head, your intention as the jury have found correctly in my judgement was to kill him.
7. It was not until the 2nd February this year that you were further arrested in the city of Bath, whilst you were in possession a knife and cannabis. Three months later, in May, you asked your solicitors to inform the police where the body of Paul Taylor could be found, some 7 months after his murder. During all of that time Mr Taylor’s family and friends were searching for him around Carlisle and Annan.
8. The murder of Paul Taylor involved culpability at a particularly high level. I am sure, having heard the evidence during the trial, that this was a murder for gain. Not only was your evidence, but after the murder you didn’t simply try and destroy the evidence it contained, but you cleaned the car thoroughly and then advertised its sale for £2000. You made concerted efforts to make money from stealing the car after the murder. It is aggravated in its seriousness because, firstly, it involved a significant degree of planning: arranging to meet Mr Taylor and pretending that you wanted consensual sex, and taking a hammer with you. Secondly, the severity of the violence used, with repeated heavy blows to the head and face, counted by the pathological evidence as a minimum of 10. Thirdly, afterwards you took away the body, to burn and hide it. Fourthly, you cleaned the car to hide evidence of what you had done, and burned some of your clothing worn by you during the murder.
9. In addition, I must take into account when sentencing that you have also been convicted of the Attempted Murder offence and have pleaded guilty to Burglary and Possession of an Offensive Weapon, namely the hammer used to attack AB. I will impose concurrent sentences on those offences but they also, to a different degree, increase the overall sentence I am required to impose.
10. Your offending has caused unimaginable grief to the family and friends of Paul Taylor, who have listened during this trial in dignified silence to the cruel manner in which you firstly murdered Mr Taylor and then destroyed and concealed his body. It has been shocking for them to listen to what you did to Mr Taylor. This Court has heard the moving Victim Personal Statements of Maria Taylor, Dominic Taylor and Beth Taylor, that is Mr Taylor’s wife, son and daughter, as well as from his sister, Angela Malloy, on behalf of the wider family. The loss to them all is profound and will last for ever.
11. AB has also provided his Victim Personal Statement, it was obvious from his witness evidence that he has been significantly affected by what happened to him when you attempted to murder him. He has also been suffering flashbacks and anxiety over his personal safety.
12. In mitigation, I take into account that you were only 19 years old when you committed these offences and are still aged 20 as I sentence you. Whilst that means that you are an adult, I take into account that emotional development and maturity do not become complete the moment you reached 19. Your age is a significant mitigating factor. It is also some mitigation that you finally told the police where Paul Taylor’s body was hidden, although that was not until May this year. In addition, you have no previous convictions prior to these proceedings.
13. I have read with care the report of Dr Rajesh Nadkarni, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, dated the 1st September of this year in which he has described your childhood development. He concludes that you were not, at the time of your offending, suffering from any mental health disorder. To the extent that you have some aspects of PTSD due to events preceding these offences, and as a consequence of your offending, they do not require hospital treatment. In your childhood you witnessed your parents’ divorce when you were 12 and some violence in the home by your father against you. You told Dr Nadkarni that you were often bullied in school and by the age of 14 or 15 you became involved in gang related crime and drug dealing.
14. You also told Dr Nadkarni, as you told the Jury, that you were under threat from a drug dealing gang, who required you to commit drugs offences as well as burglary and theft when you committed these offences. You said that they told you to steal a car, which is why you went to meet Paul Taylor, and that they were following you as you escaped to Scotland and then to York. Whether that is true or not, I find that it provides little, if any, mitigation for these serious offences. You were not being asked to use violence, still less to murder one man and attempt to murder another.
15. For the offence of Murder, Count 1, the sentence I must impose must be Custody for Life. I must then fix the minimum term which you must serve in custody. That means the time you must remain in custody, only after which might you apply for release from the Parole Board. It will be for them to decide if you are safe for release and if so, you will remain on licence for the rest of your life, liable to recall if you breach your licence. For the reasons I have explained, this offence was one of particularly high culpability for which the Starting Point under Schedule 21 of the Sentencing Act 2020 is 30 years. The aggravating factors I have identified require that term to be increased, before I reduce the term to reflect your mitigation. After careful reflection, I have concluded that the aggravating and mitigating factors relating to the Murder must balance each other, leading to a term of 30 years.
16. However, I must also take into account the Attempted Murder offence, Count 3, as well as the offences of Possession of an Offensive Weapon and Burglary (Counts 6 and 7 respectively in the original Indictment). The Attempted Murder was of high culpability, because you took a hammer to the offence, and involved category 3 harm in my judgement, under the guideline. That establishes a Starting Point of 20 years, with a range of 15 years to 25 years. The offence was committed on Bail and involved some planning, but your age and lack of previous convictions must reduce the sentence substantially or those offences to 15 years, which will be served concurrently.
17. For the offences of Burglary and Possession of an Offensive Weapons, I impose concurrent sentences of 4 months custody on each, taking into account your guilty pleas.
18. In directing that Counts 3, 6 and 7 will be served concurrently but aggregating your total offending, I must reflect these sentences as part of the minimum term attached to your Custody for Life. They would merit a substantial increase to the minimum term. However, I must also take a step back and reflect on the totality of your sentence at your age. Accordingly, I have concluded that your minimum term in custody must be 37 years.
19. Stand up Jack Crawley:-
i. On Count 1, Murder, I sentence you to Custody for Life with a minimum term of 36 years and 104 days, which is 37 years, less the time you have serve on remand of 261 days.
ii. On Count 3, Attempted Murder, I sentence you to a concurrent term of custody for 15 years.
iii. On Counts 6 and 7, for the offences of Burglary and Possession of an Offensive Weapon, concurrent sentences of 4 months custody each.
iv. Finally, you must also pay the Statutory Charge in the appropriate amount, which will be entered on the Court Record.