A man interested in child murders, including the Southport murder, has been jailed for 30 years for stabbing a 9-year-old girl while playing outside the house.
Jordan Wilkes, 29, attacked the girl on the stairs of a flat where she lived with her mother in Christchurch, Dorset, leaving her permanently injured.
Berenice Mulbany, who indicted, told Bone Mask Roun Court that the victim and another girl were playing with him when Wilkes left the apartment with a pocket knife and stabbed the nine-year-old with her neck, chest and knee.
Mulbany said that Wilkes had teared the girl’s hair and maintained it as a “trophy” until her mother told her to throw it away.
The girls fled the defendant and knocked on the door of the building’s apartment until their family took them to call emergency services, the court heard.
A wound to the girl’s neck narrowly missed a major artery that could lead to fatal blood loss if hit. The court heard she would be scared for the rest of her life.
Mulvanny said the search for the defendant’s house found several knives, some hidden objects. His cell phone analysis revealed 69 files of YouTube videos, news articles and podcasts focusing on murder and child murders.
This included the Valentine’s Day Massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people in 2018. He also investigated the riots in the aftermath of the murders of three girls in a Southport dance class in July 2024, hearing the day after the murders he clicked on the links to a local dance class.
On August 20, 2024, at 1:25am, the day of the attack on the girl, Wilkes looked into the case of 14-year-old Aidenhucci, who stabbed 13-year-old Tristan Bailey in Florida in May 2021.
In April 2016, Wilkes was sentenced to 14 months in prison, suspended for two years, and stopped for a “brutal” attack that caused actual physical harm to an 8-year-old boy. In October 2020, he was suspected of burning a pram.
Deciding Wilkes for attempted murder and possession of a knife, Judge Mousley told him: “You’re a dangerous criminal. You’re interested in killing children, and you decided to give it a try yourself.”
Wilkes was found guilty at the ju trial, and during trial the girl said: “I saw him reaching into his pocket. I didn’t know it was a knife, he hid his arm behind him and then he came to us. He ran to me. He grabbed my arm. [pointing to her neck]. ”
Defending Nick Robinson said Wilkes was living a “isolated” life with his mother and had a low IQ. He said the attack was “unplanned and voluntary.” In a statement read after the verdict, the girl’s parents praised her daughter for “resilience, courage, endurance, strength, strength and determination.”
