Their names are barely known, except to families and friends. But two other women and a teenage girl were killed by men in the same week that Sarah Everard’s murder shook the country to its core a year ago. Four murders of women in such a short space of time is unusual – it tends to be between two and three per week – but it is a stark reminder of how many of their deaths go unremarked.
Around 125 women have been killed by men since March last year. The figure is not definitive because the perpetrator has yet to be identified in some cases. But we know that the victims ranged in age from 16 to 88. Most were attacked by someone known to them and many died in their own homes, challenging the notion that the streets are the most dangerous place for women.
Some of their faces are familiar, such as Sabina Nessa, the 28-year-old primary school teacher attacked while walking through a London park to meet a friend; Julia James, 53, a PCSO killed while walking her dog; teenager Bobbi-Anne McLeod, who went missing from a bus stop and was found dead on a Devon beach in November last year.
Dozens more – some of whom are pictured above, all of whom are named below – we are seeing for the first time.
The figure is substantially higher than in 2020, when the annual Femicide Census recorded 110 women killed, but similar to the 128 recorded in 2019. Despite all the assurances by police and government ministers that they are determined to protect women, the number killed by men has never fallen below two a week.
The list shatters some myths, demonstrating that stranger-killings like that of Sarah Everard are comparatively rare. The largest number of women are killed by current or former partners, while the next most significant group is mothers killed by sons; anyone who thinks that matricide is a rare event, confined to Greek tragedy, should think again. Sexually motivated murders are third on the list.
The popular notion that women in their 20s and 30s are most at risk is quite wrong, confirming the urgent need to make tackling violence against older women a priority.
Of the women killed over the last 12 months, 11 were in their 70s, another nine were 80 or older and 14 were in their 60s. That’s over a quarter of the total. There is a peculiar horror about these fatal attacks on older women, some of them carried out by men they gave birth to and raised.
In April last year, a DJ strangled his mother, 85-year-old Loretta Herman, in their east London home. Mark Herman, 54, later killed himself in a secure mental health facility. It is one of many cases in which there were warning signs: Herman, who had been unable to work because of Covid, had previously attempted suicide and attacked his mother.
It followed a horrendous murder-suicide the previous month in Northern Ireland. Karen McClean, 50, was stabbed to death by her son, Ken Flanagan, 26, who went on to kill his girlfriend, Stacey Knell, 30, and himself. Friends of the family, who lived in Northern Ireland, said Ms McClean had been worried that her son was using drugs and might hurt himself or someone else. Ms Knell’s previous partner, who had a child with her, had contacted police and social services the day before the double murder.
There is a repeated sense of the police letting women down. One of those failed was Yasmin Chkaifi, 43, who was killed in January, in Maida Vale, by her ex-husband. There was an arrest warrant out for Leon McCaskie, who had been accused of breaching an interim stalking protection order and failed to appear in court, when he stabbed his former partner on the street. Friends told how Yasmin had previously predicted that she would die at her ex-husband’s hands. Her son, Zayd Bakkali, has since said he will “never fully trust” the police again.
