The night of October 3rd, 2012, Natalie Jarvis kissed her family goodbye and slipped out of the house in Kent to meet Adam Wheeleran. She called out her usual farewell to her mum Adele: “Slers. See you later. Love you.
Bye. ”
It was the last thing she ever said. Thirty minutes later, a driver found her lying face down on the pavement in Swanley Village. Natalie was 23 years old.
She was fun, bubbly, outgoing, and loved by everyone who knew her. She lit up every room she walked into. So her family couldn’t understand it. Why Natalie?
What could possibly have happened to her in those thirty minutes? The answer would be revealed in court, and it would expose Adam Wheeleran, the man she thought was her friend, as one of the most cold-blooded killers imaginable. Adam Wheeleran was born in February 1990 in Bexley, Southeast London. By his early twenties, he seemed like an ordinary young man.
He worked as a trainee BT engineer. He’d held down jobs. He’d never been in trouble. He had a tight group of male friends.
His best friend Tom had known him since they were five years old. They saw themselves as brothers, not friends. They went to the pub, drank, and did what young men with money do. It was in that atmosphere of ladish revelry that Natalie Jarvis first crossed paths with Adam, back in 2008.
They were both in other relationships then, so there was no connection. It wasn’t until 2012, when she saw on Facebook that he was single, that she reached out. Natalie was living with her parents, Adele and Mark, in Swanley, just four miles from Adam’s home. Her older sister Gemma was her best friend.
They were always together. But 2011 had been hard on Natalie. A serious boyfriend got her pregnant, then made it clear he didn’t want the baby. She chose to have an abortion.
They broke up, got back together, and broke up again. He broke her heart. Her family supported her, but she wasn’t the same person. Then she met Adam again, and they fell into a casual arrangement.
Adele noticed his name coming up more and more. Adam would pick Natalie up, take her to the cinema or for dinner. But whenever Adele asked if he was her boyfriend, Natalie would laugh and say, “No, Mum. He’s just a friend.
”
Still, Adele suspected there was more to it. What she didn’t know was how Adam really saw her daughter. Adam and his friends called Natalie “JC,” a cruel reference to the actor James Corden. They mocked her in private messages.
His friend Tom had joked that he’d rather sleep with James Corden than with her. It was callous, nasty, uncaring talk. Natalie had no idea. In July 2012, just days after they first slept together, Natalie texted Adam to say she was pregnant.
He didn’t react well. He sent ugly messages. Things like, “That’s nothing to do with me. You’ll have to prove it.
I don’t want it. ”
Whether or not Natalie really was pregnant, no one ever knew for certain. But something changed in Adam’s head. On July 23rd, he tweeted: “It’s all right to kill someone these days, isn’t it?
Think I might just do that. ”
A week later, he tweeted again: “I think I might do it. #murderousmind. ”
His friends were in on the dark jokes too.
On September 6th, Tom texted him, “Why don’t you just get on and kill her? ”
On September 17th, Tom sent another message: “The end is nigh for JC. The end is nigh. ”
None of them tried to stop him.
They egged him on. On October 1st, Adam drove Natalie and a friend to a Burger King. After dropping the friend off, he and Natalie drove around for a few hours. Something spooked her that night.
She posted on Facebook that she was being kidnapped. When her sister messaged her about it, Natalie made light of it, saying it was just a joke. But Adam had a knife in the car that night. He told a friend that he’d been ready to do it, but the Facebook post had stopped him.
Next time, there would be no backing down. On October 3rd, 2012, Adam met up with his friend Tom after work. They went to three different pubs and drank heavily. At 9:40 p.
m. , Adam texted Natalie, asking if she wanted to meet up and talk. She was wary. She replied that he’d been mugging her off all along.
He insisted they could go and talk and have fun. While she agreed, his friends were exchanging cryptic messages about what might happen next. Natalie came home from her shift at McDonald’s around 10:30. She had a shower, put on pajamas and a pink dressing gown, and cuddled with her mum.
“I’m going out for a bit,” she said. At 10:32, she texted Adam, then shouted up the stairs, “Love you. ”
And she was gone. What Natalie didn’t know was that Adam’s friend Tom was hidden in the boot of his car.
Tom was in the boot, messaging a girl he knew, saying, “I’m in the boot of the car. Oh my goodness, I don’t know what he’s about to do. ”
Natalie got into the passenger seat. They drove to a quiet country lane in Swanley Village.
During the drive, she noticed a warning light showing the boot was open. When they parked, she insisted he stop so she could check it. She got out and walked to the back of the car. That was when the joke became a nightmare.
Adam attacked her without warning. He stabbed her in the throat again and again. In total, he inflicted 20 stab wounds to her neck and chest. One wound was more than four inches deep, nearly severing her carotid artery.
Natalie fought back. Her hands and arms were covered in defensive wounds. She staggered toward a lit window, but collapsed before she could reach it. Adam followed her.
“I’m dying,” she begged. “Please ring my mum. ”
He took her phone and threw it over a hedge. He left her there, bleeding out on the ground, and got back in the car with Tom, driving off in the opposite direction.
As they drove, Adam messaged his friends: “Done. Not lying, covered in blood. So sorry I let you boys down. ”
Minutes later, a driver spotted Natalie lying in the road.
He called paramedics and gave her CPR, but it was too late. She was pronounced dead at 11:30 p. m. Seven minutes after that, Adam and his friends were eight miles away, buying beer and cigars with his credit card.
They went to a friend’s house and drank. Adam bragged about what he had done. He was covered in blood. Eventually, his friends urged him to go to the police.
Adam walked into Bexleyheath Police Station at around 3 a. m. on October 4th with blood on his hands and face. He said he thought he had killed someone in the Swanley area.
He claimed self-defense. He said Natalie had brought a weapon and attacked him, and he had merely disarmed her. But the story was full of holes. He seemed completely unmoved by what he had done.
Later that morning, Adele woke up to find Natalie wasn’t in her bed. She called and called. No answer. She rang 999 to check for accidents, and a detective came to the door.
“We found a body, and we believe it’s your daughter,” he said. Adele screamed at him. She couldn’t believe it. The family was only allowed to see Natalie two days later at the mortuary.
She had a towel up to her chin, hiding the wounds around her neck. They touched her face and her hair, kissed her, and cried. At the funeral, just over a month later, more than 300 people came. Natalie’s coffin was white with a rainbow on it, reflecting her colorful life.
Everyone wrote little notes to put inside. The trial began on April 3rd, 2013. Adam was charged with murder, and so was his friend Tom, who had been in the boot and drove Adam away. Both pleaded not guilty.
Adam stuck to his story of self-defense. But the forensics destroyed it. The pathologist described wounds of such fury that it was clear he had kept stabbing her long after she could have been a threat. She had walked 35 meters after the first fatal spurting of blood, until the life ebbed out of her.
Text messages proved premeditation. Adam had expressed his desire to kill her for over a month. He had no interest in seeing her, then suddenly suggested a meeting. And Natalie had not been pregnant.
On April 24th, 2013, the jury took less than four hours to convict Adam Wheeleran of murder. The judge sentenced him to life in prison with a minimum term of 26 years. Afterward, a police officer recalled asking him if he felt anything about Natalie’s family sitting in the courtroom. Adam said no.
“It was as if he wasn’t the same species as us,” the officer said. Natalie’s family was left to pick up the pieces. “When I think of Natalie,” Adele said, “I just think fun. Boom.
There she is. She was my world. ”
