Teenager jailed for life for murdering ex-girlfriend, 15

An obsessed ex-boyfriend who stabbed a 15-year-old girl 36 times in an alleyway after school has been sentenced to life with a minimum of 17 years in prison.

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

Logan MacPhail's attack on Holly Newton after he stalked her for an hour through the town centre of Hexham, Northumberland, was so savage that the blade snapped.

The killer, now 17, was unmasked by a judge earlier this month after he was convicted of murder following a trial at Newcastle Crown Court.

Jailing him for life yesterday, judge Mr Justice Hilliard told the teenager he was “filled with resentment and jealousy” when he attacked Holly in January 2023 after realising their 18-month relationship was over.

“The stark facts are that you made a conscious decision to stab a 15-year-old girl to death with a knife that you were carrying unlawfully in a public place having followed her secretly around town for an hour, all because your relationship with her had ended,” the judge said.

“You were jealous of the fact she might see someone else. What happened in this case should not happen to any child or any parent.”

In a moving victim impact statement read to the court on Thursday while her daughter’s killer watched remotely via videolink, Micala Trussler said Holly “died not knowing her mam was by her side”.

Ms Trussler, a mother-of-four, said she raced to the scene of the tea-time attack only to be met with a more horrific scenario than she had imagined. “The enormity and severity cannot be put into words,” she said.