Original subtitles

(suspenseful music)

I'm David Wilson, emeritus professor of criminology.

And for over 30 years, I've investigated

the phenomenon of murder and what it is that might

motivate someone to kill.

Every murder case is different.

But time and again, a deadly pattern emerges

of warning signs and red flags.

In this new series, I investigate some of the UK's

most harrowing murder cases to understand how and why

these terrible crimes occur.

This is Murder UK.

(gulls squawking)

(soft music)

(Julie Aunger) Growing up, Katie and I were incredibly close.

I think, as a young child, she was the one

left at home while her bigger sisters went to school.

She was the only blond, blue-eyed one.

She was absolutely spoiled rotten by everybody.

Katie was very angelic, very sweet,

a lot of fun, very giggly.

Yeah, just a really sweet little girl...baby of the family.

(Emma Wilding) Katie and I were very close.

Our older sisters were sort of very outgoing,

and we were quite shy and reserved.

And that kind of built a bond between us,

that we would stick together.

Katie was very shy as a child, but just beautiful.

She always had a smile on her face.

And as she grew up and became more confident,

she just became the life and soul of the party.

(Julie) Katie had lots and lots of friends.

She was very popular.

And she was very easy-going, very giggly.

She liked to laugh.

She liked to get up to mischief.

(Emma) Katie left school at 15,

and she'd been doing hairdressing on a Saturday

as a job and just absolutely loved it.

So she decided to become a hairdresser

and won many awards as well.

She was a really fantastic hairdresser.

(suspenseful music)

By spring 2015, Katie Wilding, now age 19

and having done some travelling,

returns home from a trip to Australia.

(Julie) You can appreciate that after four or five months away,

moving back in with the old people, um,

wasn't really what she was looking for.

So we managed to find her a nice little flat just off the seafront.

It wasn't a huge flat, so it didn't take a lot of tidying.

But I think she enjoyed having her independence.

Katie had had boyfriends but no serious relationships.

She was enjoying her life too much, I think.

(David Wilson) Within just a few weeks of her return,

Katie meets someone new...

Mitchell Richardson.

Katie told me one day when we met that she had gone for lunch

at a sandwich bar with a friend.

And this guy had come over to her and said that he would

really like to get to know her.

(Julie) Mitchell's first words to Katie were,

"I've been watching you."

Katie was very flattered by that at this point.

When she told me about it, I was a little bit concerned...

not overly concerned, but it did seem a little intense.

Katie was 19.

Mitchell was 31 when they met.

She was very excited when she was describing Mitchell.

She said he was tall, he was dark, and he was handsome.

It was the old, old cliche going here.

But she was excited.

She said he was a proper man rather than a boy.

That's what I think she felt quite frustrated

with chaps of her own age, that she felt she was more mature than that.

So she was very excited.

He had a BMW car.

I think, at 19, she was a little bit, oh, this is quite nice,

to be treated, to be spoilt.

He took her to some very nice restaurants, initially.

He bought her a new mobile phone.

He was really spoiling her.

And I don't think that's something she'd had

from previous relationships before.

(Emma) The first time I met Mitchell was around Katie's flat.

And at first, he was very pleasurable.

But he almost tried too hard.

It was quite intense.

And Katie was learning to drive at the time,

so we went out for a drive to a local car park

so she could practise.

And quite quickly, I became a little bit uncomfortable

because of the way he spoke to her.

He was very controlling.

He put her down quite a lot about the way she drove.

And I just didn't like his attitude

towards her at that point.

And he was already displaying controlling behaviour.

(David) What's interesting is that very early on,

we see the move from love-bombing Katie

to establishing the elements of coercive control.

Richardson's quite clearly beginning

to see what the boundaries are, how dependent he can make Katie.

We see that in particular with the so-called driving lessons

in the car park, where he's not really giving her driving lessons.

He's putting her down.

This is a way of belittling her,

of establishing her dependence on him.

A few weeks into the relationship, Emma visits Katie again

at the flat the family had helped her find.

(Emma) I went round to help her build some furniture.

And I realised that throughout the flat,

there was a lot of things that weren't hers,

and it was very much in a mess, which for some...in some ways,

was very unlike Katie.

And she told me at that point that Mitchell had moved in with her.

(Julie) Mitchell came to Katie and said

that he was being evicted from his home

and asked if he could move in with her just as a short-term measure

until he could find somewhere else to live.

(David) Katie is now living with a man

she's known only for a few weeks.

Her family watch with growing apprehension,

feeling that things are moving far too quickly.

(Julie) We were very concerned.

We didn't know who this man was.

We knew he was a little bit older.

We didn't know anything about his family or his friends.

So yes, we were quite concerned at this point

that we hadn't actually met him.

(suspenseful music)

(Emma) His words at the time were he was being evicted from his flat

for not being able to pay the rent.

But we soon found out that there was a lot more to it than that.

(Julie) When he moved in with her,

Katie found out that he had violence in his past

because he had to tell her that he had a tag on his leg,

which was given to him by the courts.

This was for violence against another man,

which Mitchell had claimed was in self-defence.

But Katie believed that he'd been misrepresented at court,

that he'd been misunderstood by the judge,

that nobody had listened to him.

And she didn't believe him to be violent.

She said she trusted him.

(apprehensive music)

It was a few weeks after they'd been living together

that we saw a change in Katie.

Katie was working at my friend's hair salon.

And my friend phoned me and said,

Katie has been coming in in the last few mornings in tears.

She's...she's upset about something.

And this particular day, about two to three weeks

after they'd been living together,

Mitchell walked into the hair salon...

And started shouting at Katie in front of everybody.

And he spat at her.

Mitchell threw a set of keys into Katie's face,

which caught her here, and left.

Katie was absolutely devastated.

When my friend, the owner of the salon, was talking to her

and calming her down, she said that it was entirely her fault

because she drank the last of the milk that morning

and hadn't left him any milk for coffee,

and that's why he was angry.

(David) Richardson's very public argument with Katie,

he's not ashamed by that, because it's done very deliberately.

And by doing this deliberately,

a number of psychological advantages accrue to him.

Katie is seen as his property, but it also serves to humiliate

Katie in a public setting.

And that humiliation further serves to emphasise

the power dynamic within the relationship

and her dependency on Richardson.

It's a subtle form of self-blaming.

It's an acceptance that she must be in the wrong

even when she's not.

(Julie) I was devastated.

This was my baby.

I wanted to challenge Mitchell, but Katie asked me not to.

She said it was okay. She dealt with it.

He'd apologised, and they'd moved on.

Katie was signed off work very soon after that

with anxiety and depression.

A few weeks later, Mitchell and Katie

are spotted by her mum's friend Sue

and her husband in Torquay Harbour.

(Sue Carpenter) A car pulled into the loading bay,

and Katie and Mitchell got out of the car.

And they started to walk back towards the bars

and the restaurants.

And another car pulled up right behind Richard's car

and caused his car alarm to start going off, at which point

he completely lost his temper and started screaming and shouting

at the gentleman in the car behind

and was getting very animated and shouting and screaming at him.

And Katie tried to calm him down.

And then he started shouting at her also.

And he got into the car and sped off.

It was a very shocking incident to see and made me feel

very uncomfortable and very worried for her.

It was the quickness with which he lost his temper over nothing.

My husband was very shocked by what he saw.

And he said to me that

if he was talking to her like this in public,

then what was he talking to her like in private?

How was he treating her behind closed doors?

(David) Sue immediately informed Katie's family about the incident.

(Emma) This is the point where I started

to see the change in my sister from being that bubbly, happy,

sort of outgoing person to becoming very withdrawn

and...and hiding things from us.

Katie left her job.

She went to the doctors and was signed off

with anxiety and depression.

And that started her on a spiral.

(Emma) Very quickly into the relationship,

Mitchell cut her off from her friends.

And I think that was for control.

(Julie) Katie would tell us that Mitchell

was adamant that her friends were trying to split them up.

He would tell her, your friends don't like me.

Your friends are telling lies about me

because they don't like us together.

They're jealous of our time.

They're jealous of our love, of our mature relationship.

Slowly but gradually, she lost touch with all of her friends.

(David) Richardson can be seen as following

almost a classic playbook of coercive control.

She becomes further isolated.

She's no longer in touch with her family in the way

that she once had been.

And this serves to create a dependency

even further on Richardson.

She is totally dependent on the person

who is actually abusing her.

A year into the relationship, Katie is

completely isolated from her friends,

living alone with an abusive boyfriend.

And now she's set to lose the home that she and her mother

had found together.

Katie was evicted from her flat...

Because Mitchell had started to smash the flat.

Neighbours were starting to complain to the landlords

that there was screaming, there was shouting coming from the flat.

So all at the same time, she lost her job, she lost her flat.

And she definitely started to withdraw from us, from her family.

(David) In their increasingly fractious relationship,

a worrying new ingredient is spotted in the mix.

(Emma) I became aware that Mitchell took drugs.

There were drugs all over the house.

He quite openly offered me drugs many, many times.

He would...in fact, he would boast about the drugs

that he had in the flat.

And he would often offer them to Katie.

Katie would say that she didn't want to take any,

but he would then laugh in her face

and just really humiliate her for not wanting to take them.

The drugs made him extremely paranoid.

So from the beginning of the night, where he would very much

be the gracious host, you know, offering drinks, playing games,

and then as soon as the drugs came out,

he would become paranoid and angry

and try and control everybody in the room.

He would humiliate Katie.

He would call her names.

He would spit at her, and all because she didn't

want to take the drugs with him.

(Julie) The minute the drink or the drugs or the combination started,

he would become very aggressive. He became very paranoid.

He'd check her phone three, four, five times a day.

He would always say, are you wearing that?

What's that for? Who are you going to see?

He accused her of sleeping with his friends.

Always, he was paranoid, absolutely paranoid.

(David) With Mitchell's paranoia intensifying,

the family fear his control over Katie's every move

is becoming absolute.

(Emma) Mitchell would control her money.

He would control what she was allowed to wear,

whether she could shave her legs, whether she could buy new clothes,

whether she was allowed to drive her car.

If she stepped out of line, he would do things

like cancel her car insurance or smash her phone

so that she couldn't contact anybody.

(David) And Mitchell insists on knowing

his girlfriend's location 24 hours a day.

(Julie) He put a tracker on her phone.

And he sold this idea to Katie so that

he would know that she was safe.

(David) Despite the tracker, Mitchell's paranoia persisted.

He continues to suspect Katie is cheating on him.

Mitchell then lost his job

because he was coming home to check where she was all of the time.

(David) When Richardson loses his job,

Katie actually becomes Richardson's sole priority.

That allows him to dominate and control 24/7.

When a person like Richardson forms this level

of controlling obsession, the relationship with Katie

is only ever going to go in one direction.

(Julie) My husband and I quite often

talked about kidnapping her, taking her away,

breaking that mind control.

But that would have been...we would have been making her choose.

And to make her choose between him and her, we would have lost.

As hard as this is to say, it was better to allow her to choose

to go back to him, knowing that she'd be back a few days later,

than to risk saying, you have to choose, Katie.

We would never have seen her.

I wanted to keep some form of contact with her.

(David) Just over a year after meeting Mitchell,

having suffered months of isolation and abuse,

Katie finally tells her sister the painful reason

why she hasn't ended the relationship.

(Emma) During one night when I was around for a party

and he'd flipped out, I managed to get her on her own

for about two minutes.

And she broke down, and she told me she was afraid of him

and that she didn't know how to get away from him.

And when I asked her why she'd never told me this before,

she said that she was trying to protect me.

And I told her it was my job to protect her.

(suspenseful music)

Mitchell took Katie to Egypt for her 21st birthday.

And Katie was very, very excited.

(Julie) I think she was looking forward to the holiday

because she thought he would relax.

And when he was relaxed, they got on,

or, you know, the relationship was easier.

(David) It may have been a change of scene,

but it was the same old story.

(Julie) That evening when they arrived on her 21st birthday,

in front of other guests at the hotel,

he punched her in the face and gave her a black eye.

She spent the majority of the holiday with thick makeup on,

trying to cover a black eye.

Again, she said that she'd moved.

He hadn't meant to hit her.

That was...that was a usual excuse.

He was aiming for the wall, and she got in the way.

(Emma) And then after that, the violence

seemed to get worse and worse.

On the evening of the 8th of October,

Mitchell finds her dress in Katie's bag,

which he thinks is nightwear,

making him wrongly suspect that she's cheating.

He's angry, and his use of alcohol and drugs

is about to make for a dangerous cocktail.

(Julie) He started to drink, and he started to take tablets.

He took a quantity of Valium, drank a lot of a bottle of Jack Daniels,

threatening to throw himself off the balcony if she left.

(David) Fuelled by alcohol and drugs,

this dangerous cocktail results in a violent,

unprovoked attack on Katie.

(Julie) It was in the early hours of the morning that the neighbours

called the police because they said for the first time,

they were frightened for Katie's life.

And he was arrested and taken into police custody.

(Emma) My mum actually informed me of what had happened.

And I...I was devastated and angry and all of the emotions,

really, because I felt like, you know, she was my baby sister.

And I wanted to protect her, and I couldn't.

So yeah, it was really heartbreaking.

(David) During his police interview,

Richardson refuses to cooperate.

(David) Crucial to the police case against Richardson

was any evidence Katie could offer.

However, despite the brutality of the attack,

she decided not to take the matter any further.

(Emma) I believe she didn't make any formal complaint

against him mostly out of fear.

At this point, you know, he was almost all she had.

Or that's how she... that's how he made her believe.

I still believe, at this point, she loved him and believed

that he would change for her.

And I still believe, at this point,

she had hoped he would change.

(David) During his police interview,

Richardson refuses to cooperate.

But whilst Richardson is in custody,

Katie seizes the opportunity and decides

to move out of their shared flat and into her own place.

(Julie) I can't begin to tell you how amazing it was to think

that she was finally... her decision,

not being forced into it by anybody...

she was making the decision to leave.

It was incredible.

And it was going to be fantastic and the start of a whole new life.

(Emma) So when Katie first moved into her new flat,

it was kept a secret so that it was very much a safe house.

And a panic alarm was fitted at the flat.

And Katie did seem happier.

She did start seeing friends again.

She started messaging a bit more.

And she was looking for work and just really looking to the future.

(David) Mitchell Richardson is released

on bail with one condition.

He mustn't contact Katie or her family.

But will he comply?

And more importantly, is Katie now safe?

(Julie) He was released.

And within hours, he was on the phone to Katie,

demanding to know where she was.

So she blocked his number.

And he immediately started to phone me.

And he was desperate for information about where she was.

I said to him that I was really quite worried about her.

If he stopped all of this and he got help,

then she might come back because I said, she loves you.

She loves you.

But he laughed, and he said that she would come back anyway.

I said I was worried.

You know, I said, I'm frightened for you...

for Katie, of you.

And he laughed and said, well, you're probably right.

It was a horrible conversation.

And one of the last things he said to me before I ended

the conversation was, well, you know,

I could easily kill her with drugs, and you'd never prove it.

I truly believed he was going to kill her.

(gulls squawking)

(David) Mitchell Richardson has breached his bail conditions

by contacting Katie.

Her mother alerts the police and demands they find her daughter,

but neither Katie nor Mitchell can be located.

(Julie) I tried all morning to get hold of Katie,

and her phone was switched off.

So eventually, I tried Mitchell.

His phone was switched off.

Been to the flat...nobody there.

So I went early to the police station

and told them that I was genuinely worried.

I got a call from my mum to say that they were both missing.

And I was actually at uni at the time, so I left uni.

And we all went out searching for her.

(David) For 48 gruelling hours, the search continues.

(Julie) Everybody...the police, as well...were out looking for them.

Couldn't find them.

And I was convinced that something terrible had happened.

(suspenseful music)

(David) Five days after Richardson is released on bail,

the police receive shocking information

suggesting he's holding Katie hostage in his flat.

(Julie) When the police forced the door open,

Mitchell had heard them as well.

And he just sat in an armchair... it was a tiny little room...

waiting.

Katie was on the bed, on the pillows, sort of all crunched up.

And they arrested him and took him away.

He'd held her there all night, beating her black and blue.

And when I got there, I barely recognised my own child...

lots of bruises.

So the police officer said to her, Katie, we really need you

to give some evidence to stop this.

So that's what we did.

We took her straight to the police station.

I've never, ever been so proud of her as I was on that day.

And she was very brave enough to decide

to do a video statement of what had happened the night before.

(Julie) She looks so young and vulnerable.

You can tell she's nervous.

But yes, it's...it's emotional, seeing her so vulnerable.

(soft music)

(David) Katie tells the police that, once inside her flat,

Richardson began accusing her of cheating

and became increasingly angry.

(Julie) She thought he could do it.

Sorry, that's really hard to hear.

(Julie) It's just really horrible to think

that this 33-year-old man could do that to my 21-year-old child.

(Julie) It's heartbreaking hearing her little voice telling

of this beatings and of how he controlled her and how he told her

he was going to kill her.

And again, she's asking him to go, and he's just not listening.

Gosh, to see her.

(clears throat) Sorry.

(David) Richardson's threats don't stop there.

She's scared that he's going to come and hurt me

while she's being strangled.

(grim music)

She wasn't...still wasn't thinking of herself, was she?

(Emma) If they hadn't arrived when they had,

Katie would have been dead.

(David) During the interview, the police focused

their questioning on Katie's relationship with Richardson.

(exhales sharply)

Sorry, I have no words for that.

And to hit her to teach her a lesson, not just once

but over and over, what sort of man does that?

(David) When Richardson states that he's hitting Katie

to teach her a lesson, I think you've got the essence

of what their relationship was actually like.

It's about master and servant.

There's a sense of the sadomasochism in terms of what

their relationship had become, because, of course,

what he's trying to do is create somebody who's

totally obedient to whatever it is that he would like to happen.

And of course, that's not about a true relationship.

That's about him exercising total domination, total control.

(Julie) She's right.

I've seen him switch from towering over me, raging, to...

it was almost like a light bulb, and it would switch off.

He was very much a Jekyll and Hyde.

I knew that even though she loved him and this was

probably the most hardest thing she'd ever done,

but she was so brave to speak out and tell the truth

and just be honest about what was really going on.

(David) Just a few hours later, Richardson was brought in

for questioning by detectives.

(Julie) He's beaten her. He's held her overnight.

He's tortured her. He strangled her.

He's cut her lip.

And there is no remorse.

All he's thinking about there is himself.

I haven't heard one thing where he said, I'm sorry.

I know I've done wrong.

How is she?

There's no concern about Katie whatsoever.

(suspenseful music)

In court, Richardson pleads guilty to criminal damage,

resisting arrest, and two counts of assault.

He's due to be sentenced six weeks later.

But despite previously breaching his bail conditions,

he is again released on bail.

I was always worried that Mitchell would have a hold over her.

But he had a sentence hearing not long after,

and he was going to prison.

And so I believed that if we could keep her safe until that point,

then, after that, we could help her rebuild her life,

and she would be happy again.

(Sue) Julie was very concerned for Katie, very concerned.

She said to me, I'm so worried he's going to kill her.

And it was one of those throwaway comments,

but you didn't actually think that anything would happen.

(David) I don't think there's any way that this can be sugar-coated,

but the decision to grant Richardson bail

is a major, a catastrophic error

of judicial judgement.

When one looks at that film of him talking,

he is just filled with self-pity.

There is absolutely no remorse there.

And rather than think through

what we know he had been doing to Katie,

it seemed to me that Richardson was able to convince

the authorities of a narrative

that he was carefully constructing.

And of course, by granting him bail,

it is merely opening the door to him using lethal violence.

(Julie) After he'd been released on bail from the court,

we believe that there was a time that they weren't in touch,

and Katie was back to her...or building herself

back to her usual self.

She was starting to come back to us.

It was absolutely lovely to see that.

(David) But after a few weeks, Katie suddenly

stopped taking her mum's calls.

It's a deeply worrying development for the family.

Had Richardson forced his way back into her life?

I sent her a message to say, I am starting to get worried.

We haven't heard properly, haven't seen you for a few days.

Can we meet?

Yep, yep. We'll definitely meet.

Definitely meet.

And she cancelled that one.

She kept assuring me she was safe.

So we got to Em's birthday on the 14th,

and she'd still been in touch, but just very small,

quick text messages.

And I spoke to Emma, and Emma hadn't heard from her.

And that's when, a quarter past 7:00 that evening,

the police knocked on the door.

And I don't really remember a great deal after that.

I remember bits until Andy picked me up off the floor.

And I remember I could hear this noise.

And I've heard people say it before, and I thought, stupid.

I could hear this noise.

It was like a howling, and it was me.

And he picked me up off the floor.

And the policeman left.

(grim music)

All we were told on that night was that Katie and Mitchell

had been found both dead.

(Emma) So this one police officer, he put his arm out to stop me

from entering the flat.

And I just cried and said, is it my sister?

Is it my sister?

And his only answer at that point was,

you need to leave because we're about to bring

their dead bodies out.

Hearing those words just absolutely broke me.

I can't even begin to explain the pain that I felt...

I'm sorry, I'm going to get emotional now...

but also the guilt that I felt because she was my baby sister,

and I was supposed to protect her.

And I...I promised her that I would look after her

and that nothing bad would happen to her.

And knowing that I couldn't keep that promise has always just hurt.

(Sue) Katie did leave him. Eventually, she left him.

She did all the right things.

She...she got her own place.

She got panic alarms.

She did everything that she should have done correctly.

But still, somehow, he managed to get to her.

Very soon afterwards we were told that this was...

it was drugs overdose.

And when I asked about, what about the domestic violence?

What about the threats to kill?

What about all of that?

They said to me, Julie, it's drugs.

That's...that's it. That's the end of it.

That's what it is. It's drugs.

They did an investigation, but they did an investigation

based on the fact that it was the drugs that killed my daughter.

(gulls squawking)

What was put on social media about Katie and Mitchell

was that it had been a "Romeo and Juliet" scenario,

where they had been told by the police

that they had to stay apart.

Mitchell was on bail.

They weren't allowed to spend time together.

So they decided, in their wisdom, to take their own lives.

Can you imagine how that...how that felt?

How my daughters felt, knowing the extent of how much he'd beaten her,

how much he'd hurt her, how brave it was of her

to leave in the first place?

It was heartbreaking.

(Emma) There's never been one point that I've ever felt

that it was a suicide pact or that she chose to die with him.

Knowing my sister my whole life,

it's just never something that she would do.

(David) We've got to remember that this young woman had shown bravery

in terms of reporting what had happened to her

when she was in a relationship with Mitchell.

It denies her agency in terms of planning for the rest of her life.

It denies the fact that she had to be moved into a safe house.

So the idea that somehow she would then take her own life

with Mitchell because of her undying love to him

denies everything that we know about domestic abuse.

(suspenseful music)

(Julie) Just a few weeks earlier, he had threatened to kill her

with drugs and we would never prove it.

And a few weeks later, they're both found

side by side in the exact manner that he told me he would do it.

In Katie's own interview with her own words,

tells how Mitchell has told her he will kill her.

I thought I was going to die, basically.

And I thought he could do it.

I don't believe in coincidences.

(David) The critical piece of evidence here

is Mitchell's specific threat to Julie that,

I could kill her by using drugs,

and you'd never be able to prove it.

And of course, that's exactly the circumstances in which

his body and the body of Katie is found.

So this is him enacting a plan to murder.

This is premeditated.

This is evidence that this was not some kind of pact

between Romeo and Juliet, but, in fact, an abuser

using lethal violence to gain control over his victim.

A coroner holds a joint inquest, concluding that

both Katie and Mitchell died from an overdose

of cocaine and morphine.

Crucially, the coroner is unable to determine

how and why they took the drugs.

Katie's family immediately begins a campaign

demanding a domestic homicide review.

(Emma) So the domestic homicide review

is when agencies come together to review what happened

up until the point of death, to see whether lessons can be learned

and to see what went wrong and to make

recommendations for the future.

(David) Such a review can only take place

when a death appears to have resulted from violence, abuse,

or neglect by someone in an intimate personal relationship

with the deceased.

This is part of the justice system.

Over the next two years, the family's request

for a domestic homicide review is rejected three times.

It was extremely difficult to get a domestic homicide review

because at the time, they didn't see it as a murder

and therefore told us that we didn't fit the criteria.

(David) But in December 2020, a domestic homicide review

is finally granted.

(hopeful music)

It just meant that, finally, people were acknowledging

that Katie died and had been a victim of domestic abuse.

That might not have caused her actual, physical heart to stop,

but she was a victim of domestic abuse.

(David) Katie's family were left waiting for the outcome

of the review into her case.

(Sue) It was getting somebody, the authorities,

to recognise that this hadn't simply been a drug death,

that this was something... there was something more to this,

and that it warranted being looked into.

(Julie) My theory on Katie's death is that

Mitchell knew he had lost control of her.

She'd left him.

And I think that in the last week or two before her death,

he started to woo her again

and started to get to see her again.

And I believe he planned to take my daughter's life

and to kill himself.

(Emma) He was due to be sentenced only a couple of weeks later.

And knowing his previous criminal record

for violence against both men and women,

he was going to go to prison for a long time.

And I believe he decided that he would rather die

and take her with him than face prison.

(sombre music)

(Julie) I come back here because this is the place

that we sent Katie to the stars.

She was too young to go into a box in a dark hole in the ground.

So we put her ashes into fireworks

and sent them off from the headland here

so she'll travel the world around in the sea.

I bring these flowers because they're called baby's breath.

Katie was my baby, so these flowers are for her.

Katie dying will never... there'll never be a reason.

It'll never be a good thing.

But if we tell her story and one woman listens and gets out,

that's a legacy.

And that means that she'll live on.

There is a pattern for women out there.

And if we can only recognise it,

I think we could intervene much sooner.

And if I had been aware of this and been able

to pick up the signs, then maybe we could have intervened.

I've said it over and over.

She was 21, beautiful, young, loved, good job, hard working.

If it can happen to Katie, it can happen to anybody.

(Emma) I miss everything about my little sister.

She really was my best friend.

I feel like she lost her life far too early,

and she had so much to give in this world.

And there were so many things that she still wanted to do.

And knowing she'll never get the chance to do that,

just...yeah, it's really sad.

She was just on the cusp of adulthood and all the things

that, you know, we've all experienced.

And she'll never have that.

She'll never get married. She'll never have children.

She'll never have that.

It's all just been taken off her.

Do I hate Mitchell?

No, because I'm not going to waste that amount of energy on him.

But I do hate what...

what he did to my daughter when she was alive.

Do I think Katie would still be alive if she hadn't met Mitchell?

Yes, absolutely.

I wish more than anything that I could turn back time

and stop that initial meeting

because then I'd still have my baby sister here.

(David) Katie's family had to wait for seven years

before the domestic homicide review was completed in 2023.

And that DHR, Domestic Homicide Review,

was reviewed by the home office in 2024.

And what did it demonstrate?

It demonstrated that Katie faced severe domestic abuse

from Richardson and that time after time,

the authorities missed the warning signs

that might have saved her life.

Subtitles by accessibility@itv.com