Murder of Kelly Anne Bates

Kelly Anne Bates was a 17-year-old from Manchester, England, who was killed by James Patterson Smith, a man with whom she had been in a relationship since her mid-teens. Over a period of about four weeks before her death on 16 April 1996, Bates was subjected to sustained torture in the home she shared with Smith on Furnival Road in the Gorton area of Manchester, and she died by drowning in a bathtub. Smith, who had a documented history of violence against former partners, denied murdering Bates but was convicted at Manchester Crown Court and sentenced to life imprisonment on 19 November 1997.

Smith, an unemployed divorcee then in his mid-forties, met Bates in 1993 while she was babysitting for friends; she was 14 years old at the time. About two years later, after Bates had left school, she moved into Smith's home in Gorton, concealing the age gap between them from her parents, who said they had been uneasy about Smith from their first meeting and had tried to persuade her to leave him. Although Bates left Smith at least once following arguments, she was again living with him by the end of November 1995. In the following months, her parents noticed bruises and bite marks on her, which she attributed to accidents; she became increasingly withdrawn, resigned from her part-time job in December 1995, and was seen only briefly at an upstairs window by a concerned neighbour in the weeks before her death. In March 1996, anniversary and birthday cards purportedly sent by Bates to her parents had in fact been written by Smith.

On 16 April 1996, Smith told authorities that he had accidentally killed Bates during an argument in the bathtub, saying she had inhaled water and died despite his attempts to resuscitate her, and that she had a habit of pretending to be unconscious. Police went to the house and found Bates' naked body in a bedroom, with blood found throughout the property. The inquiry was led by Detective Sergeant Joseph Monaghan of Greater Manchester Police, who said he had served fifteen years and had never seen a case so horrific. A post-mortem examination recorded more than 150 separate injuries, including scalding, burns from a hot iron, a fractured arm, stab wounds from knives, forks and scissors, crush injuries to both hands, mutilation of her ears, nose, mouth and genitalia, and wounds from a spade and pruning shears. Both of her eyes had been gouged out, which the examining pathologist estimated had occurred between five days and three weeks before her death; stab wounds were later inflicted on the empty eye sockets. During the final month of her life she had been kept bound, at times tied to a radiator or furniture by her hair or by a ligature around her neck. She had lost around 20 kilograms in weight from starvation and had been denied water for several days before she died. The cause of death was drowning, immediately preceded by being struck about the head with a showerhead.

At trial, Smith denied murdering Bates. He said she had provoked and taunted him and had a habit of injuring herself to make him appear responsible; asked why he had blinded, stabbed and beaten her, he said she had dared him to do it. A consultant psychiatrist who examined Smith testified that he had a severe paranoid disorder with morbid jealousy. The prosecution argued that Bates' injuries were not the result of a single outburst but of prolonged, deliberate mistreatment. A jury at Manchester Crown Court took one hour to convict the then 49-year-old Smith of murder. The trial judge sentenced him to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years, describing the case as a catalogue of depravity and Smith as a highly dangerous abuser of women. Jurors, who had viewed photographs of Bates' injuries, were offered professional counselling, which all of them accepted.