The sad life of a mother who turned to murder

CAROLINE Mawhood's road to self-destruction and the murder of the man she loved began when she was a child.

Her life to date has been a tale of loneliness and desperation to find love.

In court yesterday the judge called her "one of life's inadequates", and her own barrister said she was "a desperately damaged and vulnerable girl".

But there have been people who cared for her, and at least one man loved her - the man she killed.

Caroline was born in Ireland, but her parents' relationship broke up and her mother brought the children to England while Caroline was still a small child. After that Mawhood had little or no contact with her father.

She had leukaemia as a youngster, but battled through. The local community was so impressed by her courage that they raised money to help her.

But in her later childhood she was bullied by others in Tang Hall, where she lived, and hated her time at school.

She started drinking when she was 13 or 14, and over the years it built up until she was a self-confessed alcoholic.

Mawhood got a caution for criminal damage when she was 14, and a second caution when she was 16 for assaulting a police officer.

At 16, she was a school drop-out without qualifications, and her mother kicked her out of the family home.

Living alone in social services accommodation, she was desperate to belong and to be loved.

She was still 16 when she formed her first serious sexual relationship and moved in with a man two years older than herself. He used to cut himself with knives.

She followed his example and started slashing her wrists, which she continued after their relationship broke up two years later.

She did not enjoy their time together, and she split her time between his home and her flat in Bell Farm Avenue, where she was later to live with Simon Gilchrist.

By the time she was nearly 18, she had little self-esteem. She began spending time with another lonely person, Paul Bradbury, a schizophrenic, who lived round the corner, and through him met his brother, Roger, who later moved in with her.

He cared enough for her to hide knives whenever he feared she might self-harm herself. He covered up for her when she tried to stab him in a drunken outburst, even lying to his friends about it. Nor did he call in the police.

She repaid him by telling Leeds Crown Court she never really wanted a relationship with him. She often slept with other men, including Mr Gilchrist, during the time they lived together.

Roger Bradbury left her after the stabbing incident. A few months later, she was pregnant. She did not know who the father was.

She was two months pregnant when her deeper relationship with Mr Gilchrist began.

He cared enough to take on her unborn daughter, Ellie, knowing he was not the father. He went to the ante-natal classes with her and became the family wage earner.

Within two months of the birth, she was pregnant again, this time with their child, Shaun, whom they had planned. They became engaged. Again he went to the ante-natal classes with her.

Her children meant everything to her. She claimed in court that she had given up daytime drinking because of them and had not cut her wrists since Ellie was born. She could not mention them without her voice choking. She has been separated from them since her arrest around midnight on July 26, just after the fatal stabbing.

Because of the children and the difficulties of taking a tiny baby and a young toddler together up and down the stairs, she did not get out much. Her life had closed to the four walls of her one-bedroom upstairs flat. Shaun was only a few months old, Ellie only ten months older. There were four of them living in two rooms.

City of York Council staff were looking for larger accommodation for them, but, at about midday on July 26, she heard that there was still none available.

Was that why she got so very drunk that evening?

She denied drinking in the afternoon, but a neighbour saw her with a glass in her hand. She had already been on anti-depressants for a few months.

That night, after eight Bacardi and coke doubles, and a furious attack in a pub on Hannah Berry, a complete stranger, she turned on the man who had given her more than any other, and killed him in a drunken rage.

She had moaned about him in the pub to her friend Rebecca Adams that evening, but had not mentioned anything that could explain the stabbing.

Almost at once, she realised what she had done, not just to him but to herself.

"Don't leave me," she cried, as he lay dying in the street. But her own actions meant she had lost him and her children. They will be into their teens when she is released.

But at least she knows they are alive. Simon Gilchrist's mother does not have that comfort.

Drunk women 'are harder to control'

THE landlord of the pub in which Caroline Mawhood spent an evening drinking before killing her fianc in a drunken rage has warned that binge drinking by women seems to be on the increase.

Adam Harris, 35, has run The Marcia Inn, in Main Street, Bishopthorpe, for the past five years.

In that time, he has witnessed female drinkers knocking back up to 15 drinks in one session, often leading to "lairy" behaviour and, on occasion, confrontations with other drinkers.

On July 26 last year, Caroline Mawhood spent the evening with friends in the Marcia, where she consumed several drinks before returning home.

Yesterday, a jury at Leeds Crown Court found her guilty of murdering her fianc, Simon Gilchrist, whom she stabbed with a six-inch bladed kitchen knife.

Mr Harris said although this was obviously an exceptional case, aggressive behaviour by drunken female customers was something he has had to deal with as a landlord before.

"With the regular customers, it's easier to control, because we know them. But women are definitely drinking more than ever before, and some of them do get violent.

"One woman once threw something through the pub window when she was extremely drunk and, about two years ago, we had trouble with a hen party from Bradford, who picked a fight with a group of local girls," he said.

Jenny Harris, Mr Harris's mother, who helps to run the pub, agreed that women were drinking more and said that drunk women were "harder to control than drunk men.

"They're like tigers. They just get stuck in."

Discussing the case of Caroline Mawhood, a spokeswoman for Alcohol Concern, the national agency on alcohol misuse, said: "Luckily this kind of crime is quite rare and we don't often hear of cases as extreme as this.

"But 50 per cent of all violent crimes are alcohol-related and there are 23,000 alcohol-related violent crimes committed in the UK each week.

"There are more women drinking and they are drinking more and more, and so the incidents involving women are also on the increase, and that can include acts of violence, although many perpetrators are still men.

"Drink can make people more aggressive and angry and they take risks they wouldn't normally take."

Christine Godfrey, University of York health studies professor, stressed that this was not really her field of expertise, but said that changes to the drinking culture in Britain were likely to have an impact on the way women behave when drunk.

"Physiologically, damage from alcohol hits women at much lower levels than men. And you do see a lot more violence around with more binge drinking," she said.

She added that she was unsure exactly "how much research has actually been conducted into the issue of female drinking and violence".

Updated: 10:38 Wednesday, January 19, 2005