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00:00On the 27th of January 2023, Northumbria police are called to a busy high street where there have
00:11been reports of a stabbing. When they get there, they find 16-year-old teenager Logan McPhail.
00:18He has just stabbed his ex-girlfriend, 15-year-old Holly Newton, 36 times.
00:25He murdered Holly because he was jealous, because he couldn't have her anymore.
00:30Right, you're under arrest on suspicion of an assault.
00:33She knew that he was watching her. She knew he was stalking her. But I don't think she understood
00:39how dangerous he was. What happened in this case should not happen to any child or parent.
00:47When did you realise the severity of her wounds?
00:52One new advanced paramedic at the back of the ambulance, he said, she's really ill and we need
00:59to go now. And the ambulance started moving as we closed the radar.
01:06Over the last few years, the number of teenagers convicted of murder has risen. Drastically.
01:13It's unimaginable that a young person could conceive of such a brutal act. I'm looking into
01:18the case of Britain's killer teens and trying to answer the most difficult question.
01:22Why?
01:23A winter's Friday evening.
01:53in the market town of Hexham. Most just making their way home as the light fades in this
01:59usually peaceful rural community.
02:03Right, you're under arrest on suspicion of an assault. You do not have to say anything
02:07with me, help me the fence. Anything you do say may be given an evidence.
02:10If you can.
02:11Yeah.
02:14In the alleyway. By the way, do you want my bar on the floor right now?
02:17This started as a typical teenage romance, but ended with Logan stabbing Holly to death. How
02:24does a teenager's first love turn to murder?
02:27In just one minute, she suffered 36 injuries. She was stabbed 12 times, suffered 19 slash wounds
02:37and had five further wounds to her hands where she tried to defend herself.
02:44To understand their relationship, I need to speak to the people who knew Holly best.
02:48What's she doing here? She's got like an award in her hand. That was the first time she'd ever danced in a competition.
03:09She was really, really pleased with herself.
03:16She loved dancing.
03:18She loved dancing, yeah.
03:19She's good at it.
03:20Yeah, so much.
03:21Yeah.
03:22Well, she hadn't been actually dancing for that long, but she was so enthusiastic and practiced four times a week.
03:27Like, she loved it. It was her everything.
03:30She went through a stage where she, like, she was really passionate about cadets, didn't she?
03:37Yeah.
03:38And she loved, like, the outdoorsy side to it and the camping out and things like that, so.
03:42She'd spend hours on her uniform.
03:44Really?
03:45Just buying in it, making sure it was all right.
03:47Logan McPhail was 16 years old. He lived in Berkeley, in Gateshead, and he went to a special educational needs school.
04:05He had a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. He had other various learning difficulties, which meant he couldn't read or write particularly well.
04:14He also attended Army Cadets, which is where he met Holly.
04:20Do you remember the first time you met Logan?
04:22The first time I met him and then training him, being cadets.
04:27I was aware that he had autism, had a speech impediment.
04:31He was really quiet, came across as quite shy.
04:35He was always polite, though.
04:37When we made him meals and stuff, it was always please and thank you.
04:40He was just a normal, a normal teenager.
04:47When did they first start going out?
04:49I think it was during the second Covid lockdown.
04:52She told us what to do.
04:54I think it was more of a friendship, wasn't it, at first?
04:56Yeah.
04:57But then, obviously, they started doing, they would pretty much do everything together.
05:00They would go to the shopping centres together and to the town together, that sort of thing.
05:04Yeah.
05:05Like teenagers do.
05:11Tell me about when you got the call.
05:13We were just driving back home, so we were driving towards Hexham.
05:18And Holly was ringing us.
05:23I answered.
05:24And the lady said, oh, I've got your daughter's phone.
05:28She's being stabbed.
05:33As soon as she said that, it was just put to the floor.
05:36I've got to get there as quick as I can.
05:40Pulled up hard.
05:43When I ran down the alleyway and seen the advanced paramedics working on Holly.
05:47So you saw Holly?
05:48Yes.
05:49I've turned around and said, Michele, you don't go down there.
05:54It's not something you want to see.
06:03It sounds like this started off as a normal teenage relationship.
06:06But I want to know more about Logan's childhood, his background before he even met Holly.
06:13Now, there's very little information out there, but I was able to get my hands on the sentencing remarks.
06:17And the judge said Logan had undoubtedly witnessed and experienced domestic violence,
06:22seeing severely distressing things that plainly no child should have to.
06:27Now, reading this, it's clear Logan had been through some really terrible trauma in his childhood.
06:33How did that affect him?
06:34And could that be a reason why he acted so violently towards Holly?
06:39I'm on my way to speak to Cathy Press, a psychotherapist who's worked in the arena of sexual and domestic violence for over 20 years.
06:52What do we know about Logan's background?
06:55He was a child who grew up in a household where there was domestic violence, and that would have been difficult for him.
07:02And that might also have impacted in terms of developmental delays as he was growing up.
07:07So he wouldn't really understand what a healthy relationship necessarily looked like.
07:12Maybe he wouldn't understand necessarily.
07:15However, domestic violence will impact every child in a family differently.
07:20Holly definitely meant the world to Logan, but it became a point where it was actually obsession more than anything.
07:34I started bickering quite a lot.
07:37There was a lot of, you know, arguments between them.
07:40He wanted them to just spend all their time together.
07:43That's when we really knew his behaviour wasn't normal because he was literally in tears, wasn't he?
07:48And it was, it was just too, it was just...
07:49It was too much, yeah.
07:50Yeah.
07:51It's, as you said, obsession.
07:52Just because she wanted to go out with her friends, he was in tears.
07:55Logan McPhail, on a number of occasions, he sort of kept hassling her, ringing her repeatedly.
08:11And there was definitely a controlling element, not wanting to see her friends, not wanting her to do her own thing.
08:19It really was quite a toxic relationship.
08:25I think we knew it was fizzling out.
08:27Holly matured.
08:28Yeah.
08:29A lot quicker than Logan did.
08:30I think we just got a bit sick, hadn't we?
08:33And we just said, why, why, why don't you just break up with him?
08:36Why?
08:37And she'd said, well, because every time I try to break up with him, he threatens to kill himself.
08:42Well, we didn't know that.
08:44I think that was the reason she'd kept getting back with him, because she was frightened of what he would do to himself.
08:49It's just so shocking to hear that Logan threatened to kill himself if Holly ever broke up with him.
09:00Just think of the emotional burden that would have been for her.
09:03I wonder how it felt to be trapped in a situation like that.
09:07To know you want to leave, but scared what would happen if you did.
09:13When he started to threaten to take his own life or to hurt himself or maybe to hurt others, she would have done anything she could to prevent that from happening.
09:23Because she had that sense of responsibility that had been almost insidiously given to her.
09:30Holly's quite private with her social media.
09:37She came down in tears and told Lee that she couldn't get onto any of her social media because he'd changed all the passwords.
09:45And I just said, don't worry about it. I'll sort it.
09:48And picked me phone up.
09:49Yeah, I just sent him a message on Messenger on Facebook and said, look, passwords now.
09:55Or I'm going to come through and see you and your mum.
09:58And within, what, five minutes, she was back on.
10:01And then I was on there changing every single one of her passwords.
10:05And told her, do not give this to anybody.
10:11So the idea that your partner would know what your passwords were,
10:14that they could identify where you were at any point using different apps to see where your location is.
10:20All of those things are completely normal in young relationships.
10:24Give me the passwords because you trust me, you know.
10:27Yeah, exactly. If you don't give me these things, then you don't love me.
10:31Do you think he used that to his advantage then because he knew he had that, he had that grip on her?
10:36Yes, in order to get the control and have the power that he wanted.
10:40It's a coercive control.
10:41Holly knew something wasn't right, but do you think she knew she was a victim of coercive control?
10:54No, not at all. Because obviously it was her first relationship and she never experienced a relationship.
11:00She didn't really know what was right and what was wrong.
11:03Had they broken up at that point?
11:05No.
11:06No.
11:07Maybe it's two days later, I think that's when she'd had a conversation with her friends and they said,
11:12Look, this isn't normal. You need to get out. This is really toxic for both of you.
11:18That coercive control that Logan displayed, it's really worrying, especially now that Holly's broken up with him.
11:27Can he control his feelings towards her? And will his behaviour cross the line?
11:3215-year-old Holly Newton has just ended her 18-month relationship with 16-year-old Logan McPhail.
11:53Logan had spent months trying to control Holly and when she finally broke it off, he refused to accept it.
11:59What lengths was Logan willing to go to to get Holly back? And when did this obsession turn into violence?
12:13McPhail travelled 40 miles by bus to get to the area where the family home was.
12:20It was absolutely freezing the night that he was there.
12:24And he'd said to Holly that he wanted to get his PlayStation back.
12:29When he couldn't get hold of Holly, he started sending voice notes to her brother.
12:34Open up your back window. She doesn't have to see me.
12:38It did worry me.
12:41I was looking on the door camera and stuff. I thought, yeah, this is really strange that he's, you know, stood behind the house.
12:49And not knowing how long he'd actually been there.
12:51How concerned are you at this point?
12:52I was a lot more concerned, knowing that he was outside the house.
13:02It's not normal behaviour to be around someone's house at that age.
13:07We don't know for sure whether he had the knife that night, but we do know that he took that knife from his family kitchen home a couple of weeks before.
13:16Come on, open up your window and I'll climb in right now.
13:21Just hold your key down and I'll sneak in.
13:25He seemed very intent on seeing Holly that night.
13:28We would never often attribute this kind of behaviour to a teenager and this, therefore, kind of shows the desperation in many ways that MacPhail had.
13:42At this point, he's no longer in this relationship with Holly and he's trying his best to get Holly's attention to then take him back.
13:51He sat for hours outside of Holly's house in the freezing cold and eventually the police came to take him home in the early hours of the next morning.
14:04But that was because his mother had reported him missing to the police.
14:10So you talked to the police?
14:12I had rang the police in the morning because obviously I knew that his behaviour wasn't normal.
14:17They were going to come out at four o'clock in the afternoon.
14:20We thought they would come out, obviously speak to us.
14:23They would go and speak to him, tell him his behaviour was unacceptable and hopefully that would deter him from doing it again.
14:34Given the fact that MacPhail was under 18, the police would have then pursued their investigation within an informal capacity.
14:41they would make an honest assessment to understand the level of threat, to better understand the situation at hand.
14:54Going to the family home to get close to Holly didn't work.
14:58And now the police are involved.
15:00For a teenager, that would really shake them up.
15:02But is this enough to make Logan back off?
15:05Or is his obsession just out of control?
15:07Holly had gone to school as normal, just a normal Friday morning.
15:16I'd said, you're going to have to come straight home.
15:20Police are coming out at four o'clock and she'd be like, oh, he's ruined everything for me.
15:24Like, it's Friday, like, I just want to go and have pizza with my friends and walk around Hexham.
15:29Basically, our begging is to go out with our friends. So, in the end, obviously, I'd said, right, okay.
15:38And obviously, now I do wish I'd come and picked her up.
15:41Logan went to school on Friday as usual. He'd been home quite late the night before having been picked up by the police.
16:03He said he was tired and so he was allowed to go home from school.
16:09He left school and instead of going home, he got the bus from Gateshead over to Hexham.
16:15We have some CCTV footage here, which shows Logan just as he's getting off the bus.
16:28This is about 12 minutes past three.
16:29Yeah, he's now about to cover his face with a snood of some sort.
16:36Clearly, he doesn't want to be recognised, is aware that there's CCTV footage.
16:42And wants to be as anonymous as possible.
16:48And if you're going to stalk somebody, you don't want to be recognisable immediately.
16:51He also makes the choice not to approach her initially, because he could have come up straight away to talk to her, but he wants to watch her first.
16:58Why did he want to watch her before he approached her?
17:01I suspect he was trying to find a moment when he could get to her on her own or to lure her away from somebody else or from her friends.
17:13Logan followed Holly for about 40 minutes.
17:17He said in court that when he was at the army cadets, he'd learnt how to stalk people.
17:23You could see him crouching down behind cars in Tesco car park and running from one place to the other.
17:31There was more footage of him, you know, dressed in black with his face covered, following her through the Wentworth car park and up the stairs, which lead you into the centre of Hexham itself.
17:41McPhail was a resentful stalker and also a rejected stalker.
17:48An individual who was no longer in that relationship and therefore feels rejected.
17:53And subsequently they become resentful and they feel the need to regain that control or something that they had once upon a time over the victim.
18:02Within that group of friends, there was a new boy.
18:04Naturally, this would have made McPhail feel jealous and also quite emotional.
18:15We know that Logan is feeling rejected at this point and Holly is clearly moving on with her life.
18:21She's met someone else. She has a new friend.
18:22And now I've got this CCTV in that moment where Logan approaches Holly.
18:28He's been following her for about 45 minutes at this point. He knows exactly where she is.
18:33He's got a mask over his face. As he gets closer, he does a double take, even though he knows very well she's there.
18:42She's uncomfortable. She doesn't look scared. But I do wonder how she felt in that moment.
18:48You can see from her body language that she's quite annoyed that he's there.
18:55And I think, you know, for a teenage girl, she's also quite annoyed because she's with another boy.
19:01You can see on the CCTV that he tries to encourage her to go down the alleyway and at first she's like, no, I don't want her.
19:10He waits for the boy that she's with to go back in the pizza shop. So she's on her own again.
19:17It was about five past five when Logan finally persuaded Holly to go into the alleyway.
19:30What she didn't know was that he'd been carrying a knife the whole time.
19:36That's the last time that we see her alive.
19:3915 year old Holly Newton has left school to hang out with her friends on Hexham High Street.
20:00What she didn't know is that her ex-boyfriend, 16 year old Logan McPhail is also in Hexham.
20:09We saw on CCTV that Logan had put on a hat and scarf to hide his face and at this stage been following Holly around for about 45 minutes before approaching her at the bus stop.
20:21He's been trying to get close to Holly for days now. So how is he going to react when he finally gets to speak to her in person?
20:28Does he want to win her back? And at what point does this obsession turn into violent rage?
20:40Logan had said in court that he struggled with lots of noise and busy places and that he'd gone into the alleyway to try to get away from the noise.
20:47And he also said that he wanted to have a private conversation with Holly.
20:55Cathy, why do you think Holly went into the alleyway with them?
20:58I think that Holly was intent on trying to calm the situation down.
21:03She's felt for a while, a long while through their relationship that she is responsible for his wellbeing.
21:09And I think she just thinks I can manage this, I can sort it, I'll just have a quick chat with him privately and he'll leave us alone.
21:17She had no sense of the way in which things were going to escalate.
21:27Do you think Holly was scared when she went down the alleyway or did she have any idea what he was capable of?
21:32Absolutely not. I can imagine Holly being, you know, quite, quite stroppy, like just not really wanting to have a conversation with him.
21:40When Holly went into the alleyway, she had absolutely no idea that Logan had been carrying a knife or that he had any intention of hurting her.
21:53We know that she's turned to walk back out of the alley and he's stabbed her in the back of the head.
22:01Had he ever been violent towards her?
22:05Never. Never.
22:07And we just never thought for one second that it was going to come to that.
22:12It was a very vicious, a very sustained attack. She suffered 36 stab and slash wounds in that time, in just one minute.
22:22The boy that Holly was with came out of the pizza shop and he'd obviously heard her shouting for help.
22:36He ran into the alleyway and tried to get Logan to stop the attack by pulling him away.
22:45But Logan then turned on the boy who suffered four different stab wounds himself.
22:53After stabbing the boy who tried to save Holly, Logan continues to attack her.
22:58Two passers-by, two adults ran into the alleyway, grabbed Logan, pulled him from Holly.
23:08They said that he didn't really sort of try to fight back at this point.
23:12But by then he'd inflicted so many wounds on Holly, it was almost too late.
23:16So I'm looking at the details of the attack and Logan killed Holly with a three-inch kitchen knife.
23:25One that you just might find in a drawer at home.
23:29And the attack was so brutal, it actually broke the knife in two.
23:36Holly had 36 knife injuries, 12 serious stab wounds and 24 slashing injuries across her arms and hands,
23:44where she'd obviously put her hands up to try and stop Logan.
23:48But why did he do it?
23:55He wanted revenge.
23:57He was certainly intent on causing her serious harm with the repeated stabbings.
24:04If things were going to end, they ended on his terms and not on hers.
24:07Logan had been detained in the bus stop by a passer-by.
24:11Again, he seemed quite calm at that time.
24:12He didn't attempt to sort of run away or anything like that.
24:15When the police arrived, they were able to arrest him.
24:19Right, you're under arrest on suspicion of an assault.
24:23You do not have to say anything with me, how we defend you.
24:25Where?
24:26In the alleyway.
24:28Bro.
24:29Have you got anything in your pockets?
24:30My phone.
24:32What's your name?
24:33Logan McPhil.
24:34Logan?
24:35Logan Shane McPhil.
24:36Who's the last?
24:38Do you know her name?
24:40Holly McPhil.
24:41Who?
24:42Holly McPhil.
24:43Who?
24:44Holly McPhil.
24:45Mutant.
24:46You've been too hard-blooded man.
24:48That's the first time I've watched that.
24:51I just can't believe that is the aftermath.
24:54She was horrible to me.
24:55It's kind of like a justification that she was nasty to me,
24:58so I paid her back to her.
25:00I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
25:02Do you think he was at any point going to hurt himself in front of her?
25:30All we can see very clearly is that he wanted to get her on her own,
25:36that he'd been carrying a knife for a number of days
25:40and that he stalked her to the point where he could grab her on her own
25:45and commit this incredibly violent attack.
25:54What's your date of birth?
25:56You don't know. Stop being clever, right?
25:58You know how much bother you're in.
25:59I can't read it, right.
26:00What's your date of birth?
26:01I can't read it, right.
26:02Right.
26:03But you know what your date your birthday is?
26:04No, I don't.
26:05Huh?
26:06I know nothing.
26:07You don't know anything.
26:08You don't know what date your birthday is.
26:09How old are you?
26:1116.
26:1216.
26:13Where are you from?
26:15Where do you live?
26:16He doesn't look at all flustered.
26:18He doesn't look at all shaken.
26:20No.
26:21He comes across a little cocky.
26:23Yeah.
26:24And it is hard to understand that that's the person who just stabbed somebody 36 times in a minute.
26:31It's most extraordinary.
26:35This kind of demonstrates how he's able to control the narrative, bring it about himself, talk about himself in a victimized manner, even though he's committed this brutal, heinous crime.
26:47It's really just so chilling to see how calm Logan is in that footage when he's arrested.
26:57I can't even imagine what it was like for Michaela and Lee to arrive at that scene.
27:08When you heard Holly as being stabbed, did you think Logan did it?
27:11Yes.
27:12You knew?
27:13Because it wouldn't have been anyone else.
27:14He started that she was going to be okay.
27:18When did you realize the severity of her wounds?
27:23One of the advanced paramedics at the back of the ambulance, he said, she's really ill and we need to go now.
27:30And the ambulance started moving as he closed the rear door.
27:34The police officer had took me in the car to the hospital and we went in and they took us into the waiting room and I'd said to them, I'm not sitting in there.
27:47And she said, why?
27:50I said, that's the room that you see on the movies where they tell them that their family members died.
27:54The doctor had come in and he said, oh, we're getting a specialist from another hospital, he's going to come in, we're going to get blood into her.
28:04And I was like, yeah, that's great.
28:08He came in and said, look, we're getting specialists, they're on the way now.
28:13That gave us a load of hope.
28:17And it honestly didn't seem like two minutes later when he sat down and he said, I'm really sorry, there's nothing else we can do for her.
28:22Did you get to go and see her?
28:39Yeah, but I couldn't, I was told that if I touched her or, you know, I couldn't touch her, I couldn't do anything because she was gripesy.
28:48She couldn't hug her or hold her hand.
28:51No, you can't touch her. If you touch her, you're arrested.
28:55Because she's, you know, she's evidence.
28:59So it's awful because you can't, you know, you can't, you can't do anything.
29:08Hearing Michaela speak about Holly's death is just utterly heartbreaking.
29:14Especially when she says she can't hug her.
29:16And as a mother, I can't imagine what it would be like not to be able to touch and hold your daughter one last time.
29:26I think people who live in Hexham couldn't believe that it had happened.
29:39Hearing that a child has been killed by another child, hundreds of people turned out.
29:45They went to the park, the candles lit, everybody was wearing purple, which was Holly's favourite colour.
29:54And I think that really sums up how this crime had affected people.
29:58And also just that huge sense of sympathy for the family of what, you know, the unimaginable horror of this happening to your child.
30:08Logan was eventually charged with Holly's murder, GBH with intent for his attack on the other boy, and also carrying a bladed article.
30:24The difficulty of reporting this case was that we weren't allowed to name Logan, so that meant that we couldn't tell anybody why he carried out the killing.
30:37All we could say to people was, yeah, she was stabbed to death, but couldn't tell people why or how.
30:44It was very frustrating.
30:46He hunted her down because he didn't want her to have anyone else.
30:49And if it wasn't him, then it was nobody.
30:5116-year-old Logan McPhail has been charged for the murder of 15-year-old Holly Newton.
31:10He viciously stabbed Holly 36 times after school on the High Street in Hexham.
31:16I can see here that Logan was arrested at the scene on the 27th of January 2023.
31:26In February 2023, he was charged, but his trial didn't actually begin until the 15th of July 2024.
31:33So that's 18 months it took to get to trial.
31:37That delay must have been so awful for Michaela and Lee.
31:41All they wanted was justice for Holly.
31:43So why did it take so long?
31:44It was a really, really complex case to get to trial.
31:50Logan has autism, he has various other learning difficulties,
31:54which means he can't read or write particularly well.
31:57So his team attempted to get a ruling that he was unfit to plead.
32:03Now what that means is that he wouldn't have been able to comprehend the legal system
32:06and what was going on around him and so therefore wouldn't have been able to take part in this trial.
32:15There was a lot of court dates to decide whether he was fit enough to actually go to trial.
32:25Let alone plea.
32:26Countless expert witnesses, hearings on his competence and then constant delays from the defence team.
32:41It was just frustrating.
32:42It was just frustrating.
32:43There was far too many allowances made for him, definitely.
32:47It was really hard obviously, every time we were let down it was upsetting.
32:51We've not felt like we could grieve for Holly until after the trial.
32:54The judge was able to make an assessment that McPhail had full capacity, therefore he would be able to stand for trial.
33:07He claims that he blacks out, he doesn't know what he's done, but the first thing he says when he's been arrested is,
33:20she's been horrible to me.
33:22She's been too horrible to me and I don't have that night without a mental health.
33:27That's the first thing he says.
33:28No remorse.
33:29No?
33:30She's been too horrible and gone too far.
33:31Straight away it's blaming her.
33:33What's happened?
33:37Logan's defence said he blacked out during the attack and he would only admit to manslaughter.
33:43He denied intending to murder Holly, but would a jury believe him?
33:48He admitted killing Holly, but he denied murder saying that he couldn't remember anything about the killing itself.
33:57When we interviewed the police, they told us that his defence that he couldn't remember anything just wasn't plausible.
34:03I think the overall evidence against Logan was that he had tried incredibly hard over a two day period to get physically in front of Holly.
34:15The CCTV footage as well, which mapped exactly where he'd been that day, he is clearly following Holly in that footage.
34:25He even sent one of her friends a message asking her to trick Holly into meeting him so that he could end it in person.
34:32I want to talk to you about Logan's intentions.
34:41Do you feel like a lot of leading up to the event was planned, that he had thought about getting close to her and what he would do if he was close to her?
34:48His intent is absolutely if I can't have you. Nobody is going to have you. And not only that, I am now just seeing you with somebody else, with another guy, which could have incensed him further and added fuel to his fire.
35:05I don't think you go out and carry a knife if you haven't got some kind of sense of what you might do with that knife.
35:17Do you think he came that day to kill her?
35:21Yes. He hunted her down, yeah. He absolutely did and I think from very early on that was his intention.
35:30He claims that it's not, but I definitely think it was.
35:34I think obsession had turned to anger.
35:37He was really, really angry and just couldn't handle the fact that actually he was seeing in front of his eyes that she did not want to be with him anymore.
35:45It took the jury two days to come to their conclusion. They found Logan McPhail guilty of Holly's murder.
36:03They found him guilty of GBH with intent against the boy.
36:07Logan McPhail, for the murder of Holly Newton on the 27th of January 2023.
36:16Sentences that you are to be detained at his majesty's pleasure.
36:21That could not be for a period less than 17 years in total.
36:26Logan McPhail kept his head bowed for most of the sentencing hearing here at Newcastle Crown Court today.
36:31And the judge described him as someone who was jealous and resentful and who had decided to murder Holly Newton because she had ended their relationship.
36:40Something he said that, of course, she had every right to do.
36:43To think that Holly should have been collecting her GCSE exam results last week, but instead our baby girl's future was truly taken away from her.
37:01On sentencing, I was really upset.
37:15I think, you know, he's going to be early 30s.
37:17By then, he could get out and start a family and live a normal life.
37:21And that's something that Holly never got to do.
37:26Lee, how did you feel the day of sentencing when you heard? Did you feel like justice was done?
37:31The 17 years that he was given, I felt that was a bit light.
37:36It should have been a lot more.
37:38But we've all said it before, it doesn't matter what he was given, it would never be enough.
37:46He'll never bring Holly back.
37:51In his sentencing remarks, the judge said that he couldn't be sure that Logan had taken that knife to Hexham to kill Holly.
38:00We know that the defense had been that he'd planned to kill himself.
38:03But the judge did say that he felt when he saw Holly in that bus stop,
38:07that was the latest point in which he must have decided that he was going to kill her.
38:11The stark facts are that you made the decision to stab a 15-year-old girl to death with a knife,
38:19which you were carrying unlawfully in a public place, having followed her in secret around town for an hour.
38:27All because your relationship with her had ended, and you were jealous at the thought that she might see someone else.
38:33Anyone who's under 18 that is tried in an adult court has their identity protected, an order is put down protecting them.
38:44We argued that it was in the public interest that we should be able to identify him, because then we could tell the full story.
38:50How did that make you feel when they gave his name up to the public?
39:00It definitely felt like we got some justice from that. Without his name coming out, we couldn't tell the whole story.
39:07We weren't allowed to talk about the domestic abuse that she'd faced, because then that would tell people who he was.
39:14From the start, Holly's murder has been categorised as knife crime. She can't, in the eyes of the law, be classed as a victim of domestic abuse.
39:27You have to be over 16. So although Logan being 16 could be classed as the perpetrator of domestic abuse, Holly can't be the victim,
39:36because she was 15 at the time that she was killed.
39:38Without a doubt she was a victim of domestic abuse. Part of the problem is that we very much see domestic abuse through the lens of adult relationships in terms of domestic violence will only take shape in the home of the two people living together.
39:57But of course, for young people, that's not the case. They're actually being violated and threatened and coerced.
40:04Through the use of digital technology in the four walls of their bedroom, whilst their parents are sat downstairs.
40:11What's the importance of it not being just a knife crime?
40:25I don't want it to become another cystic. I just think that she deserved the domestic homicide review that she never got.
40:38She definitely deserves more than just being put down as knife crime, because Holly's story is so much bigger than that.
40:43Can you tell me a little bit about the legacy of Holly and Holly's Hope?
40:56Yeah, so we set up Holly's Hope earlier this year.
41:01And we still are raising money for critical injury kits and bleed boxes that can stop like a major bleed.
41:09We really want to help young people see the signs of domestic abuse, under 16s especially.
41:15So we've started building an education package to take into schools, youth centres, cadet centres, anywhere where, you know, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 children can have access to this.
41:28And hopefully we can help somebody else who finds themselves in that situation and hopefully help them before it's too late.
41:35Holly's family are now really trying to fight for something called Holly's Law, which would see the current law change so that anyone who's under 16,
41:47who is killed by a partner or an ex-partner in the way that Holly was, can be classed as the victim of domestic abuse.
41:54And that means that more families would be able to get more answers, lessons can be learned from what happened.
41:59I think we hear all too many times that young women, young girls like Holly, don't even realise that these types of behaviours are concerning.
42:11I think the legacy hopefully will be more open conversation so that nobody has to experience this kind of behaviour or this kind of fallout again.
42:24It will always be really hard, but how do you like to remember Holly?
42:27You know, just bright and bubbly.
42:33She just loved being around people and our animals, like she just, she loved being outdoors.
42:41I like to remember her as, you know, the fun, happy Holly.
42:48This case began as an everyday teenage romance and ended with Holly's murder.
42:53Holly's family are now campaigning to change the law.
42:58The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, was asked about a Holly's Law and he responded by acknowledging there has been an increase in violence in teenage relationships in recent years.
43:07He added, we do need to look at this at the earliest opportunity.
43:11But for Michaela and Lee, it's too late.
43:15They can't get Holly back.
43:16I'm so glad I'm getting holly back.
43:17I arrived.
43:19I'm going to get Holly back.
43:20Transcription by CastingWords
43:50CastingWords
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