The shadow of Nikita Grinder’s short life was cast not by fate, but by the monstrous obsession of a man who was supposed to be family. On February 5th, 2011, the 19-year-old, nine months pregnant with her daughter Kelsey May, was found dead in her Newport, South Wales flat. It was an act of such visceral brutality that even seasoned investigators were left stunned.
Nikita was not just a victim of murder; she was a victim of the ultimate betrayal, her life and that of her unborn child extinguished by a cousin who was driven by a lethal cocktail of jealousy, rage, and a pathological sexual fixation.
The initial call seemed like a tragic accident. Emergency services rushed to the scene of a fire in a flat, the blaze having broken out in the early hours of the morning. The body of Nikita was discovered in the bedroom, a scene that initially suggested a possible fire-related death.
However, a chilling detail emerged almost immediately. Detective Chief Inspector Jeff Renain, the senior investigating officer for Gwent Police, noted a crucial anomaly. He asked if Nikita was found in the fetal position, a classic pose for someone unable to escape a fire, but the answer was not what he expected.
The revelation that she was lying on her back on the bed was a glaring red flag. Within hours, a post-mortem would confirm the unspeakable truth: Nikita had been stabbed twice, once in the neck and once through her abdomen, the latter wound directly killing the fully-formed baby girl she was carrying, a daughter they had already named Kelsey May.
A shadow of profound darkness cloaked the investigation. The scene was not merely the site of a murder; it had been staged. The perpetrator had attempted to use fire to destroy the evidence, a final, despicable act to cover his tracks.
Police launched a full-scale probe, their suspicion immediately drawn to a figure who had been lingering on the periphery of Nikita and Ryan’s perfect life together: Carl Want. Want, the 29-year-old cousin of Nikita’s partner, Ryan Maize, was a man of contradictions. To his younger cousin, he was a heroic figure, an older brother who had introduced him to the nightlife, the clubs, and the scene.
He was a man who projected an image of being a hard-man, a bouncer, and a bodybuilder, but the reality was a fragile facade.
That facade hid a deep, destructive insecurity. Dr. Kerry Nixon, a forensic psychologist specializing in violent offenders, analyzed Want’s profile, noting his history of low educational attainment, a speech impediment that punctured his self-esteem, and a serious 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 problem that fueled his aggression.
He was a prolific 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 user, reliant on cocaine and MCAT, a habit funded through residential burglaries and theft. The drugs and steroids he used to inflate his physical stature only exacerbated his volatility. But it was a more specific, insidious infatuation that ultimately led to his downfall.
Want had developed a dark, sexual obsession with Nikita, a woman who was carrying his cousin’s child. It was a fixation rooted in a seething jealousy of Ryan’s happiness, his home, and his beautiful, popular girlfriend. While Nikita and Ryan were preparing for a bright future, Want was a man spiraling in a world of resentment and aggression.
The night of the murder, February 4th, 2011, started innocently enough. It was a Friday, and Nikita visited her parents, Paul and Marcia, for a short while, looking beautiful, telling them she would see them the next day. Ryan was out with a group of friends, attending a house party, with Want present.
As the night progressed, Ryan, happy and content, spoke of his future with Nikita and their imminent parenthood. He told Want that his nights of partying were coming to an end. That conversation, perhaps more than any other, triggered the bomb inside Want’s mind.
Shortly before 5 a. m. , Want told Ryan he was going to get cigarettes.
He left his address. CCTV footage shows him in his car, driving through the industrial landscape of Newport, but not towards a shop. He navigated his vehicle toward the flat that housed Ryan and Nikita.
The prosecution would argue he was consumed with anger and resentment, and that he was set on raping Nikita. He had a knife stashed in the car, and with an act of premeditation, he retrieved it. The evidence suggests that upon entering the flat, he attacked the tiny, heavily-pregnant Nikita.
This was not an accident. It was a planned, sexual assault. Nikita, with her strong-willed personality, fought back.
But the violence of the attack was overwhelming. Forensic later revealed that Want had sexually assaulted her, leaving DNA inside her. After the rape, the brutality escalated.
He stabbed her in the neck, which ultimately killed her. But in an act so cruel that even hardened detectives felt it, he then turned his rage on her stomach. An autopsy showed he had plunged the knife into her abdomen, directly into the unborn baby, killing Kelsey May instantly.
As Nikita lay dying or dead, Want then set the bed on fire, hoping the flames would erase the entire crime scene and his callous acts.
He then casually drove back to the house party, but when he arrived, he was “covered in scrapes” that he attributed to a fight with an Asian man, a claim that was completely disproven by CCTV. The police were called to the fire at around 8am. Nikita’s mother, Marcia, rushed to the scene in a state of absolute terror.
Upon seeing the fire and emergency services, she knew the worst had happened. The family quickly feared the dynamic with Want. Marcia had seen him at her home with flowers, offering his condolences, but her instincts screamed at her that he was responsible.
Meanwhile, the forensic investigation was yielding stunning results. The fire had not destroyed the evidence as Want had hoped. During a postmortem, detectives found traces of semen.
Initial assumptions were that it would belong to Ryan, but DNA analysis revealed two profiles: Ryan’s, which was a benign presence from previous sexual contact, A “second profile” belonging to Carl Want. Police found a crucial piece of evidence in Want’s car—a car he was known to use for work. Under the driver’s mat, forensics discovered blood stains matching the shape of a knife that appeared to have been recently hidden there.
When the evidence was being tested against the Clothes he wore that night, a shirt and jacket were found to have Nikita’s blood on them. The scratches on his arms, which he’d attempted to pretend were from a brawl, were the marks left by Nikita, perhaps in her final desperate defense against her attacker.
Want was arrested and charged. In his interview, he had a pathological need to confess the final act of betrayal. He was taken to trial at Newport Crown Court in January 2012.
The court heard a slew of evidence, but it was Want’s defense that was as 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 as the crime itself. In an attempt to explain his DNA being inside Nikita’s body, he claimed to have had a threesome, a consensual sexual encounter with Ryan and Nikita the day before the murder. It was an absolutely depraved attempt at destroying his cousin’s memory and reputation.
He suggested that his cousin had participated in this grotesque activity while his fiancé was at full term, pregnant. It was a statement disbelieved by the prosecution, adding a layer of psychological cruelty to the physical atrocities.
The jury, composed of their peers, saw right through him. After a bench trial, they found him guilty of all charges: murder, rape, arson, and the destruction of an unborn child. The trial judge, describing him as “calculate, vain, and devious,” handed down a life sentence with a non-parole period of 35 years.
The sentence was the truest of the events, but there was no satisfaction for the victim’s family. That family, Paul and Marcia, had to suffer the indignity that they could not even view their daughter’s mutilated body. Instead, they were allowed to hold the body of their granddaughter, Kelsey May.
It was a heartbreaking act of saying goodbye to a future that never was.
Paul, the father that Nikita idolized, felt the greatest fury and sorrow, and was a shell of the man he was. The memory of finding his daughter, who had fought her attacker, haunts every waking minute. The community rallied around the family, bringing flowers, but the pain was permanent.
Psychologists note that the fact Want had killed an infant shows a high level of psychopathic tendencies, an individual who can commit the highest evil with no regard for life. His motive squarely was a jealous rage, a man who could not stand seeing his cousin achieve the happiness he, himself, was incapable of. The case, captured in the documentary series “Britain’s Darkest Taboos,” serves as a longstanding, bleak reminder that evil often resides closer to home.
Ryan, who lost his fiancee and unborn daughter, faces the horror that the monster is the man he called a brother. The very man that Ryan looked up to and had considered a protector was the one who inflicted the greatest trauma. In the words of Marcia, has a constant reminder: “I don’t want people to forget what he done.
He’s a monster. And I want everyone to remember for life how much of a monster he is.”
Roger Want, in his description, did not act like the alpha male he pretended to be. He was a coward, who preyed on a woman almost 10 years younger than him, who was heavily pregnant and alone, set a fire that temporarily threatened a whole block of flats, and then returned to his night of drinking as if nothing had happened. It is one of the most disturbing tragedies to have hit the grim, but obvious criminal justice system.
It remains a chilling tale of jealousy and unchecked brutality. While the system has justice, Paul and Marcia are left with a life sentence of their own, bereft of the daughter, the only daughter, and the granddaughter who was expected to be their world. The pain is unending, a scar that will never heal, as they now live with the shame in a quiet lonely roaded Newport, answering questions to a void that can never be answered.
