Every week we relive the day our Megan was murdered.... yet soon her killer will be free to live his life

Megan Newborough not only had her whole life mapped out, she wrote down that plan in a little notebook covered in pink and blue butterflies.

- LYDIA VELJANOVSKI

She decided her career, listed her future children's names and jotted down ideas for her wedding, even drawing designs of dresses she liked.

Megan also wrote a lengthy list of "life goals". She wanted to fall in love, start a family, eat an entire cake, own a chinchilla, go parachuting, run a marathon, go on a river cruise and see turtle eggs hatch on a shore.

She didn't do any of this because her life was senselessly taken away from her by sadist Ross McCullam.

They had been dating a few weeks when he strangled her in 2021 in his parents' living room before slashing her neck 14 times.

McCullam was convicted of murder and sentenced at Leicester crown court to a minimum of 23 years in jail.

The current sentencing starting point is 15 years for domestic killings when the murder weapon was not taken to the scene with intent.

If he had killed Megan outside the home with a weapon he had taken to the scene, the jail term starting point would have been 25 years.

The Mirror's new Justice for our Daughters campaign is urging readers to help end this disparity by having their say on the murder sentencing consultation which is open until March 4 on the Ministry of Justice website.

The tragedy of what happened to their youngest daughter has still not fully sunk in for Megan's distraught parents Elaine and Anthony.

"It's like you're in this film and it's all going on around you but not happening to you. I still feel like that," says Elaine, 53, as Iwe sit in their home in Nuneaton, Warks.

Megan's presence is alive in every room.

Photos adorn the walls, her dog Frank is barking at our feet, and by the front door are three pairs of heeled boots neatly lined up. "They are her shoes," says Anthony, 55, quietly. "That helps me." "She had beautiful big eyes," says Elaine, with sadness in hers. "People were drawn to her eyes.