A serial violent offender who previously tried to strangle his partner is now free to kill her after he was wrongly judged to be a “moderate risk” by the Probation Service.
When Lee Kendall murdered charity worker Michaela Hall on May 31, 2021, police had 34 domestic violence tips against her and he was charged with 100 offences. There were about 50 related convictions.
Police, social services, charities and probation officers knew he had tried to strangle Ms Hall, threatened her with a weapon and beat her so badly that she could no longer go to work.
He has been arrested 10 times for assaulting the mother-of-two, and officers were cited in court at least 14 times in the same month, many after being tipped off by neighbors.
Michaela’s father Peter Hall said: observer He claimed the death of his daughter, who was an RNLI fundraiser, was due to “systemic failure” as well as human error. “Our hearts were broken to hear that if these mistakes had not happened, our Michaela would not have died that day,” he said.
He added that her “charming” daughter, described by her sons as “the best mother ever”, paid the “ultimate price” for their shortcomings.
“The Probation Service has undoubtedly signed her death warrant,” he added. “How many people are we letting out of prison who shouldn’t be let out and who have been wrongly evaluated?”
Michaela, 49, has been referred six times to a multi-institutional expert panel because she faces such a high risk. However, despite knowing details of his background, the probation service classified Kendall, 45, as a moderate risk after he was convicted of two counts of assault against Hall in early 2021. rated it as.
The inquest heard he should have been classified as ‘high risk’ or ‘very high risk’ and that the assessment was carried out by unqualified staff. She later told the inquest that her boss co-signed her reports and that she sometimes looked over such documents because of what she described as “terrible work pressure”.
If she had read it properly, she might have noticed that it didn’t include important facts, such as Kendall’s attempted strangulation, which is a red flag for future deadly violence, the coroner’s report said. Ta. The risk rating was also given on the assumption that he intended to live in Plymouth rather than return to Cornwall, even though Kendal had said he intended to return to Cornwall to live with Hall. It was done.
As a result of this report, a judge imposed a non-custodial sentence on Kendall for the second-degree assault charge against Hall, after which Kendall was released on minimal supervision. Kendall’s case was then assigned to a private contractor rather than the National Probation Service, which would have been responsible if he had been classified as a more dangerous offender.
About two weeks after his release, and after a series of failures that included a missed mandatory in-person probation appointment, Kendall murdered Hall at his home near Truro.
The coroner heard the man grabbed her by the throat and stabbed her in the head with a kitchen knife, severing an artery. He has since been serving a life sentence.
On Friday, Cornwall’s chief coroner, Andrew Cox, said Mr Hall’s killing was “completely foreseeable” and could have been prevented.
He said if Kendall’s risk had been assessed correctly, he could have been jailed, served time on license and had visits at least once a week. “If no defects or errors had occurred, there is a good chance that Michaela would not have died when she died,” he says.
Details of the case shed light on a probation service that was repeatedly found to be failing in its mandate. In June 2022, violent, misogynistic racist Jordan McSweeney sexually assaulted and murdered law graduate Zara Arena after being mistakenly rated as ‘medium risk’. did it.
In September 2021, Damien Bendall, who was convicted of armed robbery and GBH, left his pregnant partner Terry Harris and her two children, as well as their friends, after being classified as ‘low risk’. killed one person.
The Michaela Hall inquest revealed how efforts to undo the failed privatization of parts of the probation service had left staff overburdened. The coroner said this “failed effort” had consumed “a significant amount of administrative time” at the time Mr Kendall made the wrong risk assessment.
“All the time spent planning for unification is time not spent managing criminals, which puts an additional workload on an already scarce workforce.”
The inquest heard that the police and council failed to do everything they could to protect her, and that officers did not enter her property on the night she was killed despite being tipped off. A number of failures by other institutions were also revealed. The day she died, she had been attacked.
Her friend told a Crime Stoppers dispatcher that she was on the phone with Hall, and Hall told her Kendall was “on the phone” when he strangled her, police said. She then heard cries of “Lee, don’t come near me” and “get off me”, followed by a scream and a muffled thud.
A report was passed to Devon and Cornwall Police, but it took 20 minutes for officers to attend, despite the incident being deemed an emergency. When they arrived, they knocked on the front and back doors but did not enter the premises. As he drove away, one officer said he had a vision of Kendall lying across the hall with a hand over his mouth. “What if she doesn’t help herself?” the officer asked his colleague over the radio. Hall’s body was discovered the next night.
The coroner said Friday that even if they had broken in, Hall would not have survived. Kendall injured her so badly that even if the attack had happened on her hospital doorstep, it wouldn’t have mattered.
But he said he should have done it regardless. “If we had any concerns that something serious had happened, we should have gone in to see if Michaela’s life and limb could have been saved,” he said. The coroner acknowledged that police were operating in a “complex” environment and had generally “responded more quickly” to Hall incidents than other agencies, but added that “everything that could be done was not done”. “I don’t think it’s because of this,” he said.
He also highlighted the failure of the council’s adult and children’s social care teams to share information, saying that while Ms Hall’s two children were looked after effectively, her needs were not properly assessed. He added that there was not.
Kendall’s abuse of Hall could also have been prevented if the charity she worked for when they met around April 2019 had properly checked the incomplete employment recommendation it received on her behalf. Maybe.
By failing to do so, the charity, which supports vulnerable people, including ex-prisoners, was forced to do the same after Ms Hall provided out-of-hours transportation to one of its service users over concerns about professional limitations. He was unaware that he had been suspended from his position. Let another person sleep in the car.
This led to her taking on a role for which she was “known to be temperamentally unsuited”, the coroner said. “If that hadn’t happened, she would never have met Kendall,” Peter said.
Hall’s family is currently considering legal action against the agency that failed her, and they want her story to be shared to help improve the system as a whole.
Peter, 72, said he was “absolutely shocked” that they were “a risk-critical institution woefully ill-prepared to protect us” and so far, things have changed. He said he hasn’t seen anything reassuring. For example, for the Probation Service, “there is still no robust system in place” to check who is assigned a pre-sentence report. “It’s an accident waiting to happen,” he said.
She added that things seemed to be improving in the days before her daughter’s death. During Kendall’s abuse campaign, Ms. Hall initially refused offers of help from the agency, fearing that things could get worse.
But in early 2021, she agreed to give a statement to police, telling officers she thought the violence was escalating. Although she later recanted it, Kendall pleaded guilty to two counts of assault, the first in connection with the assault against her.
Peter was then taken into custody, during which time he said his daughter seemed to undergo a “seismic change”. Two weeks before her death, she was sitting in her family’s kitchen with Peter and her mother Anne, drinking coffee and making plans for a future where Kendall wouldn’t be in the picture. “She was laughing, she was full of life,” he said. “Even her son said, “Mommy has changed.””
“That’s when it’s most dangerous,” he added. “The victim realizes, “I have to do something,” and the perpetrator knows they are letting go.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said Ms Hall’s murder was a “horrible crime and we deeply regret the unacceptable failure of this case”.
It has since reintegrated the Probation Department, eliminated the role of private contractors overseeing Kendall’s case, and invested in stronger oversight, reduced caseloads and hiring more staff. He said that
Devon and Cornwall Police said the two officers who did not invade her home had undergone a “reflective practice examination” after the charges were upheld by the police watchdog.
“Our thoughts and sympathies go out to the family,” the newspaper said, adding, “There were no police actions resulting from her death.”
