Lucas Markham And Kim Edwards Named As Britain's Youngest Double Murderers

A Bonnie and Clyde-style relationship.
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A couple believed to be Britain’s youngest double murderers have been named after a High Court ruling. 

Fourteen-year-old Kim Edwards plotted with boyfriend Lucas Markham, also 14, to kill her church-going mother Elizabeth Edwards, 49, and little sister Katie, 13. 

On Friday a judge ruled the pair could be named at the Court of Appeal in London meaning the full details of the case can be revealed for the first time. 

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Kim Edwards with Lucas Markham
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The dinner lady and her younger daughter were found with their throats cut in their beds at their home in Spalding, Lincolnshire, on April 15 last year. 

After having a bath to wash off the blood, the teenage sweethearts ate tea cakes and ice cream while watching vampire movie Twilight before having sex. 

The “Bonny and Clyde” killers - now aged 15 - became the youngest double murderer couple in UK history when Kim was found guilty of murder last October. During their trial, the court was told how Kim conspired with Lucas to commit the depraved murders because she felt her mother “favoured” her sister. 

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Liz Edwards and her daughter Katie Edwards were killed by the teenage couple
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Kim said she felt like “a train wreck” compared to her “bright angel” sister Katie and tried to run away and be adopted several times. 

The court heard she first became aware of Lucas in September 2013, when he threw a chair across the room in English class. They began socialising in January the next year and discovered they had the same attitude to life: “It was s**t and it was going down hill”. 

Lucas asked Kim out on Facebook on May 23, 2015 after discovering she fancied him, and the pair started their “intense, toxic relationship”. 

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Like Edwards, Markham was originally given a 20-year minimum custodial term, reduced by judges to 17 and a half years each
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It was Elizabeth who described Kim and Lucas as “a time bomb waiting to go off” on February 24 last year - seven weeks before they killed her. 

Dr Philip Joseph said Kim killed because she felt her mother was trying to split them up and the murder “would never have happened” if Lucas and Kim had not met. 

Lucas was excluded from Gleed Academy in Spalding where the two were at school and moved to First Steps School in Boston, Lincs, in March. Kim took an overdose of pills a few days later and when she was admitted to hospital she said she did it because “I felt useless”. 

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Edwards was reportedly jealous of her younger sister Katie's relationship with their mother
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Kim said she had felt like killing “for quite a while” but it was on April 10 she hatched the plan. The day before Kim and Lucas had barricaded themselves in Lucas’s room after Elizabeth told Kim she would turn out “just like your dad”. 

But they were caught when they sneaked out at 2pm the next day to get Kim’s contraceptive pills and Kim was taken back home by her mother. On April 11 Elizabeth threw Kim’s belongings away to “pay her back” and Kim then vowed to take “revenge”. 

Lucas visited that evening and said jokingly: “I really want to kill your mum” but when he realised Kim was serious, it “escalated”. They plotted that Lucas would bring knives from home, climb up to her window that night, knock on her bathroom window and she would let him in. She was to take one knife and kill her sister, while Lucas would take another and stab Elizabeth to death. 

Kim said she “didn’t mind” her sister and she “didn’t deserve it”, but she had to die because “if we left her behind she would find mum and be upset”. 

That night Lucas came to the window, but Kim was asleep. The next day they “planned more” at McDonalds, but Kim fell asleep again. At 12am on April 14 Kim saw Lucas through her window scaling the fence and when he knocked three times as agreed she let him in. 

In a chilling account of her “cold, calculated killing” Kim said he climbed through and handed her his backpack containing six kitchen knives. She said: “I unzipped the bag and Lucas said: ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ 
“I said yes but I said I didn’t exactly want to kill my sister. 

“He said: ‘Ok, I will do it instead.’ He got one of the large knives and he went into mum’s room. “ 

Kim watched on as Lucas crept into her mother’s room, knelt astride her, pinned her face down with a pillow and stabbed her to death over a 10 minute period. At one point she accidentally grabbed her dying mother’s hand, thinking it was Lucas’ before “rocking back and forth” on the floor repeatedly saying “it will be over soon” to herself. 

She told police how she could hear Elizabeth “gurgling” and watched her “legs kick out” with blood splattered across the bed, wall and floor. 

Lucas then crept into Katie’s room and smothered her with her pillow and stabbed her twice in the neck. Kim said: “I didn’t exactly want to be there because I hated my mum, but I didn’t mind my sister so I didn’t want to be in the room.” 

She heard her sister screaming “get off” in a “croaky voice” from the bathroom before Lucas emerged with “blood on his face, jumper, hands and neck”. 

Kim then ran a bath as they had planned before because she “doesn’t like the smell of blood” and they washed together for 20 minutes. She then got dressed into Minions pyjamas, covered Katie with a blanket and dragged Kim’s mattress downstairs. 

The sweethearts then “got the drink in” had sex and watched three of the Twilight films while eating “ice cream and toasted tea cakes” in the early hours of April 14. 

Kim and Lucas had planned to commit suicide at 2pm, but Kim said “for some reason it never happened” and they watched the fourth episode of Twilight instead. A suicide note was found that read: “I want Lucas and my ashes scattered at our special place. From Lucas and Kim, we don’t give a f**k anymore.” 

Jane Markham had reported Lucas missing that morning and knocked at the house at 5.10pm, so the lovers turned the TV off and went to sleep. They woke at 9am on April 15, and after visiting once at 9.30am, police broke in at 12.17pm. When officers asked Kim where her mother was she said “upstairs”. Two policemen went up and found the bodies. 

The officer who was downstairs asked what had happened and Lucas looked him in the eye and said: “Why don’t you go up and see?” 

Kim and Lucas were arrested on suspicion of murder and Kim later told Dr Philip Joseph she did it to stop Elizabeth “corrupting” people’s lives. In a chilling interview with the psychiatrist she said she “missed” her sister but was “glad” Elizabeth was dead, “even if it leaves me in a sticky situation”. 

She said she had done her sister and her mother “a favour” by killing them as they “didn’t have to go through the heartache” of living with her. 

Psychiatrist Dr Indranil Chakrabarti said the girl had “abnormality of the mind” that would “substantially impair” her ability to make “rational judgments” at the time. When he interviewed her after the killing he said she “felt like she was in a box and screaming to get out”. 

Dr Joseph said when he interviewed Kim she was “inappropriately upbeat” and said her and Lucas had been “laid back” about the killings. She said she used a knife because, although a gun would have been “easier”, they were hard to get so a blade was the “better solution”. 

Kim told him “everything” must be wrong with her, because she described the killing her mother and sister as “like a breeze” and felt “glad”. She also said the fact it happened “quickly” had given her “peace of mind.” 

But Dr Joseph said the killing was “rational, logical, cold” and would “never have happened” if it wasn’t for the sweethearts’ “intense, toxic relationship”. 

Incredibly, Kim told Dr Chakrabarti following the double murder of her family she realised Lucas “ might not be the right person” for her and the relationship ended in June. 

Dr Joseph concluded that it was “clearly” a “planned, controlled killing” and none of the requirements for diminished responsibility were met. 

After the ruling, Detective Superintendent Martin Holvey, head of Major Crime at Lincolnshire Police, said: “The judges have ruled that there is a strong public interest in the full facts of this exceptional case being known, meaning that Lucas Markham and Kim Edwards can now be named. 

“The murders of Elizabeth and Katie Edwards were horrific and brutal and the whole country shared a sense of shock that two juveniles, who were only 14 years old at the time, could have carried out such a horrendous act. 

“I’m sure that sense of disbelief and horror will be deepened now it is known that it was Elizabeth’s own daughter who was responsible for plotting with her boyfriend to carry out the murders.”