Yahoo News Mahek Bukhari and the 11 other murderers jailed by Leicester Crown Court in the past year
The past 12 months have seen 12 killers locked up for life after being convicted of murder by juries at Leicester Crown Court. Among them are TikTok influencer Mahek Bukhari and three of her co-defendants, as well as the father of month-old Ollie Davis and a 16 year old sentenced last week for killing 50-year-old Junior Osborne in Narborough Road, Leicester.
Two of the killers, Kyle Morley and Leighton Reid, were both convicting of killing men who were their close friends. Both of the crimes involved violence fuelled by drink and drugs.
And two cases were of men killing women they were in relationships with. Shannon Grant killed Natasha Morais and dumped her naked, tortured body in a bed storage compartment, while Richard Basson shot his girlfriend Carrie Slater in the face before making up a string of lies about how she sustained the fatal injury.
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Below are the 12 people who have been found guilty of murder at Leicester Crown Court in the past year:
Mahek Bukhari, Ansreen Bukhari, Rekan Karwan and Raees Jamal
TikTok influencer Mahek Bukhari and three of her co-defendants, including her own mother, were jailed for life in July last year for their roles in the murder of two men on the A46 in Leicestershire. Mahek will spend at least 31 years behind her bars while her mother, Ansreen Bukhari, who was also given a life sentence, must spend 27 years in prison before she can be considered for release.
Their co-defendants who were also convicted last month after a trial of murdering Saqib Hussain and Hashim Ijazuddin were also handed life sentences. Rekan Karwan (29), of Tomlin Road, Leicester, was given a minimum of 27 years behind bars, and Raees Jamal (29) of Lingdale Close, who was driving the Seat Leon that rammed the victims' Skoda Fabia off the A46, got a minimum of 36 years.
His sentence is five years longer than Mahek's because of unserved jail time for his 10-year jail sentence for raping a young woman in 2020. Three others who went on trial with them received manslaughter convictions and were also locked up.
Kyle Morley
Kyle Morley murdered his close friend after catching him having a sexual encounter in a children's playground with his ex-girlfriend. Morley will serve at least 18 years and six months of his life sentence before he is eligible for parole.
In the early hours of Friday, February 24 last year, Morley, who had been out in Hugglescote, near Coalville, drinking and taking cocaine, came across his ex-girlfriend Katie Lamb in a sexual encounter with his friend David Bettison in a park in Ashburton Road. Morley first punched Miss Lamb in the face before attacking 43-year-old Mr Bettison, who he had been drinking with earlier in the night.
Morley, 29, of St Bernards Road, Whitwick, had pleaded guilty to assault occasioning grievous bodily harm against Miss Lamb, 23, but had denied murdering Mr Bettison. When Leicestershire Police arrived, Morley pretended he had attacked Mr Bettison to stop him raping Miss Lamb but he later admitted that was a lie, saying he attacked the 43-year-old dad but did not mean to seriously hurt him.
Katie Tidmarsh
Katie Tidmarsh was convicted of wounding and later murdering a baby girl she had been set to adopt as her own. She was jailed for life with a minimum of 17 years at Leicester Crown Court.
Tidmarsh was found guilty by a jury of killing one-year-old Ruby Thompson, who had been placed with Tidmarsh and her husband by Leicestershire County Council. During her trial, the court heard the injuries caused to Ruby were equivalent to a fall from a second-storey window or a road accident at 60mph.
Ruby had been violently shaken and her head had been bashed against a hard object, breaking her skull. In August 2012 emergency services were called to the couple's home in Pickwell Close, Glenfield, and Leicestershire Police arrived to find the baby unconscious and rushed her to Leicester Royal Infirmary but she died in hospital two days later.
Leighton Reid
Hours of drinking and drug-taking led up to the brutal assault in which Leighton Reid stabbed his brother-in-law Liam Waldron to death. The jury took just three hours and 21 minutes to convict Reid of murder at Leicester Crown Court.
Reid had been on trial alongside his aunt, Angela Wright, who was accused of assisting a murderer. But Wright died during the trial.
Reid and Mr Waldron had met at the Melton Restaurant in Belgrave. They ended up at Mr Waldron's daughter's house in Gipsy Road, Belgrave, where, at around lunchtime the next day after having more alcohol, Reid took a kitchen knife and used it to slash Mr Waldron across the face and stab him once in the arm and twice in the leg, severing his femoral artery with an 11cm-deep knife wound.
Reid was caught on camera leaving the property, followed by badly injured Mr Waldron, who fell down on the ground. Reid began attempting to drag Mr Waldron back into the house but then gave up and left, leaving his brother-in-law to bleed to death on the street.
Reid, 43, of Oxford Street, Syston, walked to his 64-year-old aunt's house in Shanti Margh, Belgrave, and she drove him back to his home. Reid was jailed for life with a minimum of 17 years before he is eligible for parole.
Shannon Grant
Police entered a flat in Whetstone belonging to Natasha Morais and found her naked, beaten body hidden in the storage compartment under her bed. The following day the man she had been in an intimate relationship with, Shannon Grant, was arrested near his home in Rotherham Road, Coventry, and later charged with her murder.
During a trial at Leicester Crown Court the 27 year old denied beating, torturing and strangling the 40 year old and claimed that they were both involved in the drug trade and that an armed gang of masked men had burst in and killed her. He said they had demanded to know where drugs and cash were and she had refused to tell them.
But the jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder. Grant had previously admitted a second count of possessing an illegal shotgun with a shortened barrel. He was sentenced to life with a minimum of 34 years in jail before he is considered for parole.
Michael Davis
Father Michael Davis who beat his infant son to death was jailed for a minimum of 22 years for murder. The baby's mother, Kayleigh Driver, 31, was jailed for seven years for the crimes of causing or allowing the death of a child and causing or allowing a child to suffer serious physical injury.
Davis was found guilty by a jury at Leicester Crown Court of murdering Ollie Davis after he physically abused the month-old child and caused 40 bone fractures, including a snapped neck, which ultimately killed the infant.
Paramedics were called to Driver's mother's home in Upper Temple Walk, Beaumont Leys, Leicester, in October 2017, after Davis found the baby unresponsive in the crib next to his bed. At first there were no visible signs of abuse but a post-mortem examination revealed horrific injuries including brain damage and wounds all over his body that experts said could not have been caused by one incident, but by days of abuse.
Davis, 29, denied causing the fatal injuries but the jury found him guilty after hearing that the horrific injuries had been caused over several days - most of the wounds, including the fatal neck fracture having been caused between 10 and four days before his death.
Richard Basson
Richard Basson, 45, was found guilty of his girlfriend Carrie Slater's murder after he shot her in the head in their home last year. When the emergency services arrived he lied about her confronting him with a knife, leading to him accidently stabbing her in the forehead with a pool queue.
But the forensic evidence showed that a bullet had caused the injury and he had also shot at her a second time, hitting a wall at their home in Long Clawson, near Melton. He was jailed for life to serve a minimum of 32 years, having also pleaded guilty to possessing of a prohibited firearm and ammunition.
During the trial a haunting recording of Bassson's 999 call was played to the jury in which Miss Slater, 37, could be heard moaning in the background after suffering the injury. She was taken to hospital but died two days later after her life support was withdrawn.
Daniel Rounce
When Daniel Rounce was jailed for life with a minimum sentence of 25 years for killing a complete stranger, he was described by the judge as "one of the most difficult, manipulative and potentially disruptive prisoners I have experienced". Rounce had been arrested by Leicestershire Police a few hours after he had walked into the home of a woman while she was having tea with her ex-husband, stabbing the man in the heart before fleeing.
Rounce refused to speak to the investigating officers - or even leave his cell - and also failed to co-operate with his own legal team on many occasions. Last year, having been deemed unfit to stand trial, a "trial of fact" was held and a jury at Leicester Crown Court decided Rounce had committed the act of stabbing Gerald Wickes, 79, in Queens Park Way, Eyres Monsell, Leicester, in February 2023.
But further expert evaluations of Rounce, of The Green, Markfield, decided the 18 year old was fit to stand trial and it began earlier this year. He was later found guilty of murder after he refused to give evidence in his defence.
Nero McLean
A 50-year-old father was killed in Leicester by a "pack" of "feral" teenagers - including twins who had celebrated their 16th birthday the day before the fatal attack. Nero McLean was convicted by a jury of murdering Junior Osborne in Narborough Road just after 9.30pm on Wednesday, September 27, last year.
During the trial at Leicester Crown Court, CCTV was played showing Nero McLean sprinting across Narborough Road, near to the Subway takeaway, and - while children played nearby - stabbing Mr Osborne in the back of the neck with a "very large knife" as he was on his bike on the pavement. The knife went through his jugular vein and down into his abdomen, cutting one of his lungs.
Four co-defendants were convicted of manslaughter and each jailed for eight years, including McClean's twin brother Nevardo.
