BLACKMAN, ALEXANDER: War and Justice: The Case of Marine A TV -
The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that seven Royal Marines have been arrested on suspicion of murder in Afghanistan. War and Justice: The Case of Marine A, Channel 4 2022
It’s looks to be a cold-blooded shooting. ibid.
The sergeant, known only as Marine A throughout the trial, is the only UK serviceman to have faced such a charge of murder. ibid.
Al Blackman has been in prison for five months. An appeal has reduced his sentence from ten to eight years. But he remains a convicted killer. ibid.
A Shameful Injustice: Mail fights to overturn conviction of Marine given life for ‘murdering Taliban in the heat of battle as shocking flaws in his trial are revealed’. ibid. Daily Mail headline
Two years after Al Blackman is imprisoned a second appeal is launched to free him. ibid.
This is believed to be the first time an adjustment disorder diagnoses has been associated with the killing of an enemy. ibid.
BLACKWELL, BRIAN: Real Crime: Brian Blackwell: Killed by a Perfect Son TV - Daily Mail -
On Sunday July 25th 2004 in a quiet suburb of Liverpool public schoolboy Brian Blackwell kills his parents in an horrific attack at their home. Brian Blackwell then leaves the bodies where they’ve been killed and takes his girlfriend on a holiday of a lifetime to America. Real Crime: Brain Blackwell s6e6: Killed by a Perfect Son, ITV 2007
Brian Blackwell was becoming more and more adventurous in his lies. ibid.
Brian Blackwell hit his seventy-one-year-old father over the head with a claw-hammer and stabbed him thirty times with a ten-inch carving knife. He then knocked his sixty-one-year-old mother unconscious with the hammer before stabbing her in the head and chest around twenty times. ibid.
BLAIR, MITCHELLE: True Crime Recaps 2023 -
When it comes to horrific crimes this story is hard to beat. Michelle Blair kept a freezer in plain sight in her living room, and every day her two kids would have to pass it knowing that the bodies of their brother and sister were inside. And that was just the beginning. True Crime Recaps: Locked in a Freezer: The Horrifying Case Behind the ‘Freezer Mum’ Revealed, Youtube 8.41, 2023
2015: She’s a 35-year-old single mum of four … The house is a freaking cesspit of garbage, old food … ibid.
‘I killed those demons and I would do it again.’ ibid. Mitchelle
She inflicts this level of punishment on Stephen that would make the guards at Guantanamo flinch in horror … Slowly she starves Stoni … She told the judge she only has one freezer so where else is she supposed to put her. ibid.
Mitchelle Blair was sexually abused as a kid. ibid.
All four of them suffered terrible abuse at her hands. ibid.
BLAKELEY, BEN: When Missing Turns to Murder TV - How I Caught the Killer TV -
A 17-year-old girl [Jayden Parkinson] has gone missing. She is pregnant and her mum’s desperate to find her. When Missing Turns to Murder s1e8: Parkinson, Netflix 2019
One of these friends is Jake Blakeley. Jake has an older brother, Ben. ibid.
He had a history of coercive and controlling behaviour … He was very violent. ibid.
Oxford: The 17-year-old was Jayden Parkinson who had been missing for 7 days. How I Caught the Killer s3e3: Parkinson/Blakeley, BBC 2023
Jayden was in a relationship with a man called Ben Blakeley. She discovered she was pregnant. ibid.
The police were now aware of just how dangerous Ben Blakeley was. ibid.
BLAKELOCK, KEITH murder [viz Miscarriages of Justice: Silcott, Winston et al: Paul Foot - The Observer online - BBC online - Crimes that Shook Britain TV -
The Broadwater Farm case was worse than all of these. At least, in the Birmingham case, an explosives test (recently discredited) had proved positive on two of the six men’s hands. At least in the Guildford case one of the defendants had apparently, voluntarily, spilled out the names of the other people who later confessed. At least, in the Bridgewater case one confession led to another, and back to the first one again.
The importance of the Blakelock case is that police now know that if the press is on their side and if the crime is dramatic enough, they can get a conviction just by picking on anyone in the street and taking notes of a conversation which can be construed as a confession or a part-confession. It is the random nature of the arrests of all six people who allegedly ‘confessed’ to the Blakelock killing which has the most chilling consequences.
The power and confidence of the police has increased hugely since the case. Until the Blakelock case, a jury would have insisted on some corroboration before sentencing anyone effectively to life in prison. Now that a jury has so obliged the police, the police have responded with a renewed public relations campaign to take away the powers of the jury. Paul Foot, Confessions & Repressions, 1987
‘They created Winston Silcott, the beast of Broadwater Farm. And they won’t let this creation lie down and die.’ It was a defining moment of the Eighties – the brutal murder of PC Keith Blakelock during the Tottenham riots. For Winston Silcott, jailed for the killing but cleared on appeal, the story goes on. In a revealing interview, he tells David Rose about life in prison, his fight to clear his name – and what happened on the night of 6 October 1985.
‘I’m not free,’ says Winston Silcott. ‘I might be standing here posing for your photographer. But in the minds of so many, the association just goes on – Winston Silcott and Keith Blakelock.’ He twists the brim of his baseball cap against the winter sun, then unexpectedly smiles. ‘An ordeal like mine either makes you or breaks you. They tried to crush me, but I wasn’t having it. Yet sometimes I chuckle to myself. There’s just me and this huge system, and over the years, I’ve got it in disarray.’
It is 17 years since Silcott, now 44, sat with five other men in the dock at the Old Bailey accused of murdering PC Blakelock, hacked with machetes and stabbed with knives in the riot on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, north London, on 6 October 1985.
Once he had entered his plea of ‘not guilty’ Silcott did not speak, but he dominated the two-month trial that followed. Reporters who covered the case thought we saw a tall, bearded, well-built Afro-Caribbean man who always dressed immaculately. The police and prosecution urged us to believe we were looking at a monster, the ringleader of a savage mob, which had planned to sever Blakelock’s head and mount it on a pole, like a medieval trophy.
Atavistic racial imagery lay close to the surface. According to statements taken by detectives, Silcott had brandished a machete, dripping with blood, and proclaimed to cheers: ‘This is bullman’s blood.’ He had, they claimed, thrust a sword into the hands of a 13-year-old white boy, Jason Hill, and forced him, on pain of death, to slash Blakelock’s prostrate form to ‘make my mark’ and then told him: ‘You cool, man.’
In the third week of March 1987, after two months of evidence and three days' deliberation, the jury returned to court. Silcott, Engin Raghip and Mark Braithwaite, known from that day on as the Tottenham Three, were pronounced guilty. Silcott, said the judge, must serve at least 30 years: he was ‘a very vicious and evil man’. The Observer online article David Rose 18th January 2004