Tragic tale of Gracie Spinks whose life was brutally cut short by her stalker ex-colleague after she turned him down…as her heartbroken family leave her bedroom untouched and blast police for ‘partly killing her’

Gracie Spinks’ bed room has remained untouched for the reason that day her life was so brutally snuffed out two-and-a-half years in the past.

Her towel stays on the radiator the place Gracie left it to dry the evening earlier than she was captured on CCTV leaving residence for the ultimate time, an empty crisp packet and a plate lie on the desk beside her unmade mattress.

Alison Ward instructed a sobbing inquest jury – who concluded on Thursday that Gracie was unlawfully killed by ‘obsessed’ former work colleague Michael Sellers – that she ‘can’t bear’ to maneuver any of the belongings part-time mannequin and artist Gracie left behind.

‘Her water cup is on the windowsill and her purse is the place she left it and her garments stay on the ground’, she mentioned. ‘I can’t bear to the touch something’, Mrs Ward mentioned.

Gracie was stabbed ten occasions at Blue Lodge Farm within the village of Duckmanton, Derbyshire, as she tended to her beloved horse, Paddy, in June 2021. The deadly wound was to her neck.

The physique of fun-loving Gracie, who beloved enjoying and singing alongside to Adele hits on her piano, was found by a mom and little one who had been visiting their very own horses. As they arrived on the stables simply after 8am they noticed a person operating away.

A police dragnet was launched to search out Sellers, with native companies issued his description and a main faculty positioned into lockdown.

However by lunchtime, officers despatched phrase that the scenario had been ‘resolved’ – 35-year-old Sellers’ physique had been discovered beneath a bush on the sting of a discipline half a mile away. He’s believed to have killed himself – the denouement of a six month marketing campaign of harassment and stalking of Gracie which the Derbyshire Constabulary had failed to analyze.

Mrs Ward was at work when she obtained a surprising name informing her ‘stunning’ Gracie had been discovered within the discipline, lined in blood.

She described how she ‘dropped the whole lot’ and rushed to the scene within the village of Duckmanton, Derbyshire, wrestling with the chance that one of many horses on the secure block had someway injured her as she drove.

It was a situation she solely thought-about fleetingly although, as a result of Mrs Ward was all too conscious that Sellers had turn into fixated on her daughter after the pair met at an e-commerce agency the place Gracie had began working.

The younger horsewoman had solely deliberate to work at Xbite’s warehouse in Markham Vale, Derbyshire, for a matter of weeks whereas on a pandemic-induced furlough from her lifeguard job. However the court docket heard she ‘progressed shortly’ on the firm and shortly accepted a everlasting place.

The coroner was instructed how Gracie initially thought Sellers was ‘candy and caring’. She had met up with him a handful of occasions exterior work; at her residence, the Sheffield home the place he lived together with his mother and father, or for walks or a meal.

However she referred to as time on their two month friendship after an incident in December 2020 whereas she was self-isolating, when Sellers visited her residence to gather one thing and was invited inside.

The court docket heard he ‘began kissing her and acquired on high of her’, and she or he needed to ask her to cease.

Gracie despatched him a textual content quickly afterwards saying he was a ‘nice man’ however she did not have time for a relationship. However the court docket heard he continued to attempt to have interaction together with her and would ask different employees for details about her at work.

The next month Gracie made considered one of her common journeys to see Paddy however noticed Sellers ready in an adjoining layby as she pulled up on the stables. Too scared to cease, she continued on to their office and reported ‘creepy’ Sellers to Human Assets.

Gracie described feeling ‘anxious and scared’ by Sellers’ actions – which included shopping for VW Scirocco after discovering it was her favorite automotive – and instructed how he had different workers monitoring her social media for him.

Xbite had already obtained complaints about Sellers from different workers and he was dismissed for misconduct after Gracie was added to the listing. Police investigations subsequently established that the loner and gymnasium obsessive had harassed or stalked a complete of eight different colleagues earlier than her, with some reporting that they’d give up their job and even moved home to flee him.

However with Sellers getting ‘weirder and weirder’, Gracie felt compelled to report him to police in February 2021 – 4 months earlier than he killed her.

She instructed a 101 name handler Sellers ‘grew to become obsessive about me’ after she referred to as off their two-month friendship, and described how the layby incident ‘scared me lots’.

She mentioned colleagues had instructed her that this Sellers had displayed related behaviour with different ladies beforehand at work, and had acquired ‘worse and worse’ every time, to the purpose the place he was now monitoring her on office CCTV.

Ms Spinks mentioned she did not need to pursue a prosecution however needed one thing on document as a result of she was anxious that ‘subsequent time he might kidnap somebody’.

Officers cautioned Sellers however didn’t request data from his employer about complaints in opposition to him or perform a nationwide database examine, and categorised him as ‘low danger’ – though he instructed a constable that he thought he was in a relationship with Gracie.

The Laptop, Sarah Parker, additionally admitted she had by no means seen a key danger evaluation kind which all officers had been supposed to finish in stalking circumstances – and agreed she was ‘successfully left to her personal gadgets’ on such circumstances, having obtained no coaching from her pressure on stalking. Lower than three months later, on Might 6 2021, a canine walker found a chilling cache of weapons in a rucksack dumped in a farm observe at Duckmanton and contacted police.

However once more officers failed to analyze, though the Nike bag contained searching knives, an axe, a hammer, a packet of Viagra and a sinister observe which learn: ‘Do not lie’.

One constable, Jill Lee-Liggett, instructed the inquest she thought the contents may very well be theatre props or to be used in a intercourse act.

The officer, who can be a member of the Nice Britain ladies’s bobsleigh squad, mentioned she might see no proof of blood on the weapons. They had been logged as misplaced property after her sergeant dissuaded Laptop Lee-Liggett from investigating a receipt within the bag which might have led officers to Sellers’ door.

Gracie’s father, Richard, 68, a neighborhood radio DJ who previously labored as a broadcaster on the QE2, mentioned he solely came upon in regards to the weapons haul being found when he examine it on Fb on the day his daughter died. 

Mr Spinks mentioned he would have ‘taken each step to maintain her secure’, had he identified. Within the early hours of that morning, the killer was seen on his personal safety digital camera loading a field containing the homicide weapon into the again of his VW.

Following the homicide and obvious suicide of Sellers, police interviewed his mom, who instructed officers she had seen knives in her son’s bed room two months earlier than the homicide. She instructed him to eliminate the blades, including that Sellers had gone on a ‘downward spiral’ after shedding his job for harassing Ms Spinks. The inquest additionally heard that Sellers’ mom additionally discovered a bag of carrots and apples in his bed room the day earlier than Ms Spinks was killed – and have become involved the subsequent day when she observed the bag had gone, as a result of she remembered Ms Spinks had a horse.

She reportedly went to seek for her son – heading within the course of Duckmanton – to inform him to ‘come residence’, however discovered the village cordoned off and so returned residence. Within the ultimate days of the three-week inquest, Detective Superintendent Darren De’ath, who leads Derbyshire Constabulary’s public safety group, formally apologised to the Spinks household and instructed the court docket the pressure ‘ought to have achieved higher’.

Mr De’ath mentioned he was ‘appalled’ on the approach the pressure had ‘failed’ to document and retain data in connection to Gracie’s report of stalking in February 2021, and the canine walker’s report in regards to the bag of weapons. Coroner Matthew Kewley instructed jurors there was just one conclusion they might come to due to the character of the proof. However though he acknowledged that Derbyshire Constabulary had accepted its failings, he instructed jurors it was not for them to ‘think about whether or not if any of those failings had not occurred, the end result might need been totally different.’

As a substitute, he instructed jurors to reference the failings of their conclusion, so ‘there’s a clear document of the very fact that there have been severe failings by the police’.

Outdoors court docket, Mr Spinks and Mrs Ward, 52, accused officers of giving ‘absurd’ proof to the jury, including: ‘If that is the prevailing tradition of Derbyshire Constabulary, then this isn’t only a handful of dangerous apples however your entire rotten orchard.’

At a disciplinary assembly held by the pressure final November following an investigation by the police watchdog, two constables had been discovered to have breached requirements of police skilled behaviour for duties and duties, and obtained written warnings in relation to the failure to analyze the bag of weapons correctly.

No motion may very well be taken in opposition to a sergeant as a result of he had retired.

Potential breaches {of professional} requirements by a constable and sergeant had been discovered not confirmed at a separate listening to in relation to Gracie’s stalking report.

The disciplinary conferences present little consolation to Gracie’s devastated household.

Gracie’s brother Tom – who had efficiently utilized to turn into a police officer with the Derbyshire pressure, till turning into ‘fully disillusioned’ after his sister’s dying and turning the job supply down – in the present day mentioned the pressure had contributed to the dying of his sibling and ‘greatest good friend’.

Tom mentioned: ‘Folks I’ve spoken to have mentioned that if that’s the usual of policing in Derbyshire, no-one is secure in any respect.

‘The entire level of us talking out is to attempt to verify this does not occur once more.

He spoke on the household’s semi-detached home in Outdated Whittington, Derbyshire, the place a figurine of a horse’s head nonetheless sits on Gracie’s windowsill and the place she was as soon as the ‘life, soul and power of the home’.

The 24-year-old described Gracie’s room as ‘sacred floor’.

He mentioned: ‘We have now put some issues in there –playing cards from her funeral, and a reminiscence field – however we’ve not taken something out of her room in any respect.

‘There’s nonetheless garbage in her bin, and a can of her favorite cocktail that I purchased her remains to be on her windowsill.’

He mentioned police ‘performed a large half’ in Gracie’s dying, including: ‘In my eyes they partly killed her. ‘He (Sellers) was the one with the knife however they killed her by letting her down on so many various alternatives after they might have intervened.’

He added that if the household had identified a bag of weapons was discovered simply yards from the place Gracie tended to her horse, ‘she would by no means have gone on her personal wherever.’

Mrs Ward mentioned the coroner wasn’t allowed to ask the jury to contemplate whether or not police failings contributed to Gracie’s dying – for the easy truth they didn’t act in any respect.

She added: ‘As a result of the police did not truly do something in any respect or examine the case, it meant the jury could not be requested in the event that they’d failed. It’s a little bit of a authorized loophole, however they could not go for causation.

‘We had been actually upset the coroner could not instruct them legally to go for causation, however we understood why. I believe that if he might have, he would have. He was superb all through the inquest at questioning the witnesses.’

She agreed that her daughter would nonetheless be alive if police had achieved their job, including: ‘You encourage your daughter to do the correct factor and ring 101. You place your religion within the police.

‘Little did we all know the police would do completely nothing, nothing in any respect.

‘We do imagine as a household that had the police acted otherwise, she would nonetheless be right here.’

She mentioned that after the household get better from the ‘traumatic inquest’ they hope to deliver modifications nationally, probably by talks at police coaching centres about their expertise.

She mentioned: ‘Sadly a number of it’s common sense. In case you requested Joe Public what you considered that bag, they’d say it was sinister.’

Mrs Ward added: ‘We’ll by no means know, however hopefully we now have already helped save lives by preserving Gracie’s story alive and on the market.

‘If we will simply save one particular person’s life, will probably be price it.’