Trusting and devoted 17 year-old Jayden Parkinson, was murdered on 3rd December 2013 by controlling, dominant and jealous former boyfriend Ben Blakeley, just hours after she told him she was pregnant with his baby.
Despite having eventually plucked up the courage to end the extremely violent and abusive relationship with Blakeley a month earlier, Jayden described by the trial Judge as a “decent young woman” decided to meet Blakeley on that fateful day and tell him she had just found out she was pregnant with his child.Doing what she thought was the right thing cost poor Jayden her life, Blakeley strangled her then callously dumped her body in a ditch and went back to his normal life.
Six days later, on 9th December along with his brother, Blakeley returned to the body deposition site, stuffed Jayden’s remains in a suitcase, flagged down a taxi and moved her to a graveyard where his uncle had recently been buried.
They desecrated the grave, dug it up and dumped poor Jayden’s remains on top of his uncles’ coffin.Having violently taken the life of Jayden he embarked on a planned course of action thinking he would cover his tracks and conceal evidence namely the remains of poor Jayden.
He certainly was not panicking or regretful for what he did, this is someone who thrived on violence and had no respect for human life, his concerning behaviour goes back many years.
Blakely not only displayed extremely violent and abusive behaviour during the short relationship with Jayden, he also had been abusive and violent to previous girlfriends and even beheaded a neighbour’s cat and put the severed head in a former girlfriend’s bed as revenge for her allegedly “sleeping around”
Domestic abuse and torturing of animals are early behavioural traits regarding progression to more serious crimes, indeed this is something which featured in the serial killer Peter Tobin case I investigated where he decapitated a puppy dog and used this act to instil fear and control / dominate one of his former partners.
Not only did Blakeley display early behavioural murderous traits, as a young teenager aged 13, he had spoken about burying a body in a cemetery if he ever murdered someone.
This is someone who would eventually commit murder and sadly, on 3rd December 2013 he killed poor Jayden and calmly disposed of her body in someone else’s grave.His actions were outrageous, sacrilegious and totally disrespectful to the church priest, congregation and family members of those buried in the graveyard and showed no respect for human life, Jayden and her family.
The concealment and non-availability of murdered human remains does create investigative and evidential challenges for the police which was the intention of Blakeley, however the police were meticulous in their investigations and fastidiously analysed his movements and those of Jayden with the help of CCTV.
I have investigated cases where it is suspected a missing person had been killed but no body had been recovered, it is a very difficult to balance the investigation on the theory a person was killed and manage family / relatives expectations that he or she may be still alive.
I can relate to the challenges the officers investigating Jayden’s case would be facing, suspecting she had been murdered, working alongside her family trying to support them and then recovering her body two weeks later.Jayden’s family were put through hell, they would have suspected something terrible had happened to Jayden but at the same time would have been living in hope she was still alive, never in their worst nightmares could they have imagined what Blakeley did to Jayden and the callous bizarre way he disposed of her body.
Ben Blakeley is pure evil and has no respect for human life, I do not think he will ever change and will always be a danger to society.
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