Star comment: Inquiry on killer case is welcome
During the trial of Jamie Reynolds it emerged that professional opinion was that he had the potential to become a serial killer.
Reynolds took the life of 17-year-old Georgia Williams. But Georgia was not the first young woman to be a victim of Reynolds, a man of dark and disturbing evil and subject to grotesque fantasies fuelled by the internet.
It is only through good fortune that he had not killed before. But his attempt to strangle another girl that he had imprisoned and terrorised was not treated as a serious offence by police.
He was given a caution – in effect a slap on the wrist and a warning not to do it again.
The consequences of this have been disastrous for Georgia and her loving family. It is not just a matter of how to assess the danger posed by young offenders, and of sentencing, but of community awareness.
Reynolds was already on the police radar when he killed Georgia. A custodial sentence for those earlier incidents when he was 17 would not have been a complete protection for Georgia and other potential victims because, except in the unlikely event that he would have been given a life sentence, he would inevitably have been released.
However, it would have elevated his crimes from a little secret between him and the police to something that could not have been hidden. Word would have spread among Reynolds' circle of friends and acquaintances about what he had done and how dangerous he clearly was to young women.
Georgia was within the wider circle of those who knew him and was clearly unaware that she was placing her life in the hands of a monster. The price of her not knowing the truth about him was her own life.
The handling by West Mercia Police of the Reynolds case is now the subject of an inquiry by an outside force, Devon and Cornwall Police.
This is an entirely welcome development. The killing of Georgia casts a shadow over those early decisions in the Reynolds case.
The crucial issue is whether, considering the facts of the case and the information available at the time, the resolution was a reasonable one or – as it appears in hindsight – extraordinarily lenient.
These are difficult issues which tax those in the judicial system day in, day out.
Georgia and her family deserve to know whether in her case it could have, should have, done better.
