Britain’s youngest female murderer who stabbed stranger and bragged about it ‘makes bid for release’

Sharon Carr was just 12 years old when she stabbed Katie Rackliff, 18, to death as she walked home from a nightclub in Surrey

Sharon Carr, Britain’s youngest female murderer, is seeking to be released from prison after 25 years (PA)

Britain’s youngest female murderer who stabbed a stranger to death and was only caught after bragging about it is seeking to be released from prison after 25 years.

Sharon Carr was just 12 years old when she knifed 18-year-old Katie Rackliff more than 30 times in an unprovoked attack in June 1992.

The killer, dubbed the Devil’s Daughter, had picked the teenage hairdresser out at random as she walked home from a nightclub in Surrey.

The murder went unsolved for two years until Carr attacked a girl with a knife at school in Camberley, Surrey, in June 1994, and tried to strangle two nurses at an assessment centre while awaiting trial.

Katie Rackliff, 18, was murdered by 12-year-old Sharon Carr as she walked home from a nightclub in Surrey in June 1992 (Family handout/PA)

She ended up in a young offenders’ institution where staff caught her bragging about Katie Rackliff’s murder on the phone to relatives and in prison diary entries and alerted the police.

In one note, she wrote: “I was born to be a murderer. Killing for me is a mass turn-on and it just makes me so high I never want to come down.

“Every night I see the Devil in my dreams – sometimes even in my mirror, but I realise it was just me.”

Police later discovered Carr had decapitated a neighbour’s dog with a spade, and there was also a “suggestion” from a friend that she had fried live hamsters.

Katie Rackliff’s parents Helen and Joseph and sister Joanne (right) leaving Winchester Crown Court in March 1997 after Carr was sentenced to life imprisonment (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Carr, now 42, was convicted of murder in 1997 and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 14 years.

Two years ago, Carr was deemed too unstable to be released from HMP Bronzefield in southwest London after she attempted to get her restricted prisoner status downgraded, according to the Daily Express.

She was denied permission to seek a judicial review after a judge heard she fantasised about murdering another inmate.

However she is now applying for a full release or move to an open prison and a Parole Board hearing is expected to be heard in early October.

Sharon Carr is seeking to be released from prison 25 years after she was jailed for stabbing 18-year-old Katie Rackliff to death in an unprovoked attack (PA)

A spokesperson for the Parole Board said: “We can confirm the parole review of Sharon Carr has been referred to the Parole Board by the Secretary of State for Justice and is following standard processes.

“Parole Board decisions are solely focused on what risk a prisoner could represent to the public if released and whether that risk is manageable in the community.

“A panel will carefully examine a huge range of evidence, including details of the original crime, and any evidence of behaviour change, as well as explore the harm done and impact the crime has had on the victims.”

Carr was described as “an extremely dangerous young woman” when she was sentenced in March 1997, almost five years after Ms Rackliff’s murder.

Judge Mr Justice Scott Baker told her: “What is clear is that you had a sexual motive for this killing and it is apparent both from the brutal manner in which you mutilated her body and chilling entries in your diary recordings you had done, that killing, as you put it, turns you on.”

Police initially thought they were hunting a man for the murder of Ms Rackliff, who suffered injuries all over her body, including to her intimate areas.

After she was jailed in 1997, criminal psychologist Gordon Tressler said the case was difficult to understand because it involved a child killing an adult, rather than another child.

“This is an extremely dangerous person because she is clearly prepared to kill without an adequate motive,” he said at the time.

“That makes her conduct very unpredictable and very dangerous. She is a great danger to the public.”

Britain’s youngest female killer is Mary Bell, who was convicted of manslaughter after strangling two young boys to death in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1968. She committed her first killing when she was just 10 years old.