The distraught mother of a schoolgirl stabbed to death by her father has spoken for the first time to plead for his release from prison.
Simon Vickers, 50, is a month into a life sentence for the murder of 14-year-old Scarlett Vickers, who was killed by a knife wound to the heart in the family’s kitchen. But Vickers’ partner of 27 years, Sarah Hall, refuses to condemn him and has launched a campaign to have his murder sentence overturned.
She said: “All we want is to be able to grieve for our daughter together. How can I blame him for an accident when I know he’s in as much pain as I am?” Ms Hall says the evidence of a pathologist that said Vickers must have had a firm grip on the knife when it entered Scarlett’s chest was flawed and wants to appeal against his conviction for him to be freed. Yet there is a possibility that his sentence may in fact be increased.
Sarah said: “We want to remember Scarlett and grieve together, and go to the places we went with her and remember her. I don’t think we’ve ever come out of shock, it’s just been a never-ending nightmare.” The Solicitor General has referred the case to the Court of Appeal in an attempt to have the 15 year minimum term imposed on Vickers increased because it was “unduly lenient”.
Ms Hall, 44, has found the courage to go back to the family’s home in Darlington, Co Durham for the first time since Scarlett died on July 5 last year on what the family of three called “happy Fridays.” They were in the small kitchen of their semi “mucking around” when Scarlett was fatally injured.
A judge said Vickers stabbed her in a “momentary but devastating act of anger.” But Ms Hall, who was present at the time, has dismissed that idea as “absurd” and says: “I honestly don’t know how the jury have come to that conclusion.” Speaking to the BBC, Ms Hall said: “I know he’d never harm Scarlett and I know that it was an accident. How can I blame him for an accident when I know he’s in as much pain as I am? If I thought he’d done it deliberately then no, I wouldn’t have been here (protesting his innocence.) I would have protected her with my life, as would he.” She believes a number of factors went against Vickers in his trial that were unfair.
Ms Hall said: “The family photographs and character references weren’t read out. He had character references from all members of his family, including two of his work colleagues as well, saying how much he loved her and that he would never hurt her. I honestly don’t know how the jury came to that conclusion. When they announced the guilty verdict I thought I’d misheard, I was shocked. I couldn’t grasp it.” Asked why Vickers didn’t plead guilty to manslaughter, a lesser charge that would have carried a shorter sentence, Ms Hall said: “He needed to stand up in court and tell them that he would never, ever harm her.”
The case hinged on a few seconds in the family’s kitchen. Teesside Crown Court heard that Vickers and Ms Hall had been drinking and that he had also smoked cannabis. At 10pm they began cooking spaghetti bolognese and Scarlett came down from her room, where she had spent the majority of the night.
Horseplay between the three of them then began, with Scarlett and her mum trying to throw grapes into each other’s mouths. Simon Vickers joined in the play fighting and protested when Ms Hall pinched his bottom with the kitchen tongs. He spun round and the tongs caught his finger which caused him to say: “Ow.” Laughingly, Scarlett called her dad “a wimp” and he responded: “How would you like it?”
At this point Sarah Hall turned back to tend the bolognese and only Scarlett and her father saw what happened next. Prosecutors claim Vickers picked up the kitchen knife and thrust it into Scarlett”s chest between her fifth and sixth ribs, the blade going 11cms into her chest cavity and piercing her heart. The family say Vickers did not suffer a fatal flash of anger and instead swiped the kitchen togs along the counter towards Scarlett, but also caught the kitchen knife.
As Scarlett jumped forward the knife was skidding over the kitchen counter and they met with sufficient force to send the blade into her chest. Ms Hall remembers Scarlett saying “ow”. So she turned around and looked. “There was no blood at first”, said Ms Hall. “But then she started bleeding a lot from her side. I just thought ‘that’s not right, there’s something seriously wrong.” She grabbed a tea towel to stop the bleeding until Vickers took hold of the towel and told her to phone an ambulance.
She said: “It felt like forever for the ambulance to come, but it must have only been five minutes”. Ms Hall said she and her husband gave Scarlett CPR before the ambulance arrived, and when it got there she thought “she’s going to be alright.” What neither expected was for the police to arrive and for both of them to be arrested for attempted murder and taken to separate police stations.
At the police station Ms Hall was given the news that her daughter had died and she remembers sobbing “no, no, please no… my little girl.” She was given a sedative and put into a cell where she remembers waking up intermittently, crying and going back into a medicated sleep. Remembering her daughter, Ms Hall said: “She always made us laugh, she was full of energy, boisterous, sassy’. She was an incredible girl and she was becoming an incredible young woman. She was beautiful.”
Both Ms Hall and Vickers were charged with murdering their daughter. Later the charges against Ms Hall were dropped, but in January Vickers stood trial at Teesside Crown Court charged with both murder and manslaughter.
After a 10 day trial the jury, in majority verdict, found him guilty of murder. Sentencing him, trial Judge Mr Justice Cotter said: “It was a momentary but devastating act of anger. It stole one young, precious life and ruined your life, your wife’s life and Scarlett’s relatives’ and friends’. The clock cannot be turned back, and you must now face the consequences that the law intends.”
Ms Hall said: “It’s absurd. He never had a flash of anger. I was there that night, there were no arguments. There was no temper, no shouting.” She denied online accusation that Vickers was a controlling partner, saying: “He was understanding, comforting. We support each other. It was very supportive, never controlling.”
Ms Hall explained that, despite saying that Vickers had drank alcohol and smoked cannabis on the night Miss Vickers died, she does not believe this contributed to her daughter’s death. “On the weekends, yes, we’d have a drink. He’d worked hard all week,” she said. “And the cannabis? Yes, it was to relax because he had quite a strenuous job, a manual job. It helped with the backache and his pains.”
Ms Hall said that her family was a happy one, and that they “did everything together”. She said her partner and their daughter had a very loving relationship, and that they were “as daft as each other”. “They were just happy. We were all happy together. We used to say we were the three S’s – Scarlett, Simon, and Sarah. I want people to remember Scarlett for the bright, happy, funny girl she was.”
The anguished mum says she dreams about her daughter every day, and that she wakes up only to realise she’s not there. She added, “I just want her back so much. I’m not sleeping well, I’m not eating well. I’m just existing.” Ms Hall said that their family’s home is now no more than a “shell” to her because “they’re not here”.
“It was a happy house. I see the memories everywhere,” she said. “Even going back into her bedroom, she left a blazer there with all her school stuff still in. Everything was just left how it was.” The Mirror told how Vickers could have pleaded guilty to manslaughter but he was determined to clear his name. A source close to the case said: “He could have been out in 2-5 years if he had pleaded guilty to manslaughter.”
