Around 9 p. m. , the two girls stopped beating her long enough to take a selfie. They were smiling, holding a bottle of cider to their lips.
In the background, Angela was curled up against the wall, her face already bruised and swollen. Then they went back to work. Angela Marjorie Wrightson, 39, was known in Hartlepool as Alco Ange. She started drinking as a child, and by adulthood, alcohol had consumed her entire life.
She stood 5’4″ and weighed only 91 pounds. By her 30s, she had 47 criminal convictions and had spent years in and out of prison. It was during one of those prison sentences that she met Donna Jenkins, who described Angela as a lost soul who found life easier inside. Her job at a laundromat while incarcerated was the first time she felt valued.
When she was released, the structure vanished, and the cycle began again. Her final release came in 2011, when she moved to 14 Stephen Street in Hartlepool. For a brief time, she was happy. She met a boyfriend, and he was everything to her.
That didn’t last. He died from an alcohol-related illness, and Angela was left heartbroken and alone. From that point on, people began using her home as a doss house. She stopped buying food and spent her entire benefits check on alcohol, consuming nine liters of strong cider every day.
She drank from the moment she woke up until she passed out. She slept on the sofa and rarely used any other room. Despite her struggles, she was house proud. She loved animals, feeding local dogs and taking in strays.
She looked after a neighbor’s dog for three weeks and was heartbroken when she had to return him. She bought chocolate bars for a neighbor’s young son and slipped them through the mailbox. Her neighbor, Siobhan Quinn, said Angie craved company. That’s why she caused havoc sometimes.
She was just lonely. Angela would call Siobhan about broken appliances or electrical problems that didn’t exist because she needed a reason to talk to someone. She would sit on her front doorstep for hours, hoping someone would stop and talk to her. Her social worker tried to help.
In 2012, Angela spent eight months in a residential facility, doing well until she figured out how to leave and buy alcohol. She kept returning drunk and aggressive, and eventually lost her placement. In 2013, her social worker drove her to a rehabilitation retreat near York. Within 24 hours, Angela took a taxi home.
She later said she had been desperate for a drink. The retreat refused to take her back. Dozens of people came through her door at all hours without knocking. People with names like Mad Molly, Goofy, and Cider Bill.
Groups of teenagers showed up first thing in the morning to get her to buy cigarettes. Others came in the evening begging her to buy alcohol. The arrangement worked this way: Angela couldn’t afford company on her own terms, but she could afford to buy what teenagers wanted if they sat with her while they drank. For a few hours, she wasn’t alone.
On December 8, 2014, two teenage girls arrived at Angela’s home and pushed through the unlocked front door. They were known in court documents only as D and F due to a lifetime anonymity order. We’ll call them Olivia and Yasmine. Olivia was 14 and living in a children’s care home.
She had started drinking and taking drugs at 11 or 12. She had grown up in a home where she was beaten by her parents. Two months earlier, she had been arrested for assaulting a staff member at her care home. Yasmine was 13.
She was placed with a foster family after her biological parents said they couldn’t manage her anymore. She had run away from home multiple times. Her own defense attorney described her as someone who thought as a child, spoke as a child, and acted as a child. The girls had known each other since early childhood but had grown close in the months before that December.
They met up every day, obsessed over clothes and makeup, and posted on Facebook constantly, declaring their love and loyalty. Five weeks earlier, Yasmine had sent Olivia a message calling her “my partner in crime. ”
That afternoon, Angela’s landlord, John Meggison, arrived at her house. She was already drunk.
She wanted him to buy alcohol for her. When he refused, she threw her keys at him. He took the keys and left, planning to return them in the morning. Olivia and Yasmine spent the early evening drinking cider and taking selfies.
Olivia had argued with her mother earlier that day, who told her to go off and remove herself from this earth. Just before 7:30 p. m. , they arrived at Angela’s home and sent her to the corner store to buy cider and chocolate.
Security footage captured her making the purchase, wearing multiple layers of clothing, with no visible injuries. She returned to the girls. What triggered the attack has never been definitively established. But between 7:30 and 9 p.
m. , Olivia and Yasmine began beating Angela inside her own living room. They used their hands and feet first, then reached for what was around them. A shovel.
An 18-inch wooden baton filled with screws down its length. A CRT television set. A kettle. A metal pan.
A glass vase. Ornaments from Angela’s shelves. A coffee table. A printer.
A picture frame. Finally, a mirror, smashed directly over her face. Angela was restrained throughout. She raised her hands and arms to ward off the blows.
A pathologist later counted 22 defensive wounds on her hands and forearms, including three fractured fingers. She was hit so hard that her own teeth cut the inside of her cheek. Her face was struck so many times that blood pooled in both sides of her brain. She pleaded with them to stop.
She said, “Please don’t stop. I’m scared. ” She said it more than once. At around 9 p.
m. , the girls stopped to take the selfie Yasmine posted to Snapchat. Then they continued. During the attack, Yasmine made a Facebook call to a friend.
The friend heard Yasmine shout, “Go on, smash her head in, brain her, fucking kill her. ” In the background, there was laughter. Angela had 124 separate injuries. Seventy were slash wounds.
Fifty-four were blunt force injuries. Seventy-one were to her head and face. Investigators later found shards of glass and small pieces of gravel deliberately placed on or around her genitals. Ash from burnt paper was placed inside her ear.
At approximately 11 p. m. , two of Angela’s regular drinking buddies arrived at her front door. They knocked and shouted, but there was no response.
One looked through a window and saw the living room in total chaos. She called out, “Someone’s wrecked Angie’s house. You should see the state of it. ” The other replied, “I don’t care.
” They left. Shortly after, Olivia and Yasmine walked out. They visited a friend who noticed they were covered in blood. They claimed they had fallen.
Then they sat with him and listened to rap music. At approximately 2 a. m. on December 9th, the girls went back to Angela’s house.
Security cameras captured them walking back through the dark streets. According to court reports, they went back to see if she was dead. When they found out she was still alive, they continued the attack. At 4 a.
m. , one of them texted a guardian for a ride. There was no response. They called 999 twice, requesting a ride home from the police.
In the audio recording, one of the girls is heard laughing as she tells the operator they’re freezing and need a ride. Shortly after, officers arrived to collect them. In the back of the police van, the girls posed for a Snapchat photo. The caption read, “In the back of the busy van again.
”
The next morning at 8:45, John Meggison returned to give Angela her keys. He found the living room covered in blood, glass, and broken furniture. Angela’s body lay on the couch, half naked and battered beyond recognition. She was just 39 years old.
That same morning, while Angela’s body was still in her living room, Olivia went to the youth workers at her care home and asked what prison sentences looked like for murder. Yasmine was quiet and shaking. She texted a friend, “I might be getting sent down. ” She told another friend what happened in enough detail that investigators would later use those conversations as evidence.
Both girls were arrested the same day. Olivia denied hurting Angela, saying she was fine when they left. Yasmine told police Olivia got into an argument with Angela and hit her with a table and kicked her, but that Angela was still alive when they left for the final time. The girls blamed each other.
Fingerprints belonging to Olivia were found at the scene. No fingerprints from Yasmine were recovered from any of the weapons, but her phone contained the photographs. She had made the Facebook call. She had posted to Snapchat twice that night.
In Olivia’s bedroom, police found a sketch she had drawn depicting a person being stabbed in the chest. Both girls were charged with murder. The first trial began in July 2015 at Teesside Crown Court. It lasted just three days.
More than 500 threatening comments were posted to Facebook in connection with the trial. Both the prosecution and defense agreed there was a real risk of an unfair trial. The jury was dismissed, and a reporting ban was imposed until after the verdicts. The second trial began in February 2016 at Leeds Crown Court.
Both girls denied responsibility. Olivia placed all the blame on Yasmine, claiming Yasmine told her to knock Angela out and sat on her phone saying, “Fucking hell, isn’t she knocked out yet? ” Yasmine blamed Olivia. The prosecution argued neither account told the whole truth.
Both girls were there. Both stayed, returned, and took photographs. During the trial, Olivia attempted to remove herself from this earth four separate times, twice at the court building itself. Once, in a bathroom, she attempted to use her own hair as a noose.
April 6, 2016: both girls were found guilty of murder. The following day, they were sentenced to a minimum term of 15 years. Olivia was 15 at sentencing. Yasmine was 14.
Angela’s mother, Maureen, submitted a victim impact statement. She described seeing her daughter’s body in the mortuary and said she didn’t think she would ever be able to stop seeing it. She couldn’t understand how the girls could have been so sadistic and violent. Angela’s extended family released a statement.
It read in part: “It’s true that Angela led a troubled and at times chaotic lifestyle. And as a family, we were not as close as we ought to have been. The chance to put that right has been taken away from us. Listening to the details of her injuries and her final moments has been a harrowing experience, something which will continue to haunt us each and every day.
No sentence, regardless of its severity, will ever bring Angie back. The two girls responsible will one day be women themselves, free to live their lives and perhaps have children of their own, a right which was taken from Angie. ”
Hartlepool was stunned. Tributes poured in, and flowers were left on Stephen Street.
On a nearby wall, someone wrote “RIP Ange” in spray paint. It stayed there for a long time. Angela’s niece, Rachel Tressider, rejected an apology offered by the mother of one of the killers. She began advocating for what she called Angie’s Law, which would give care providers the legal authority to obtain orders protecting vulnerable adults from individuals who intrude on or take over their homes.
She said, “Angela was failed by the system. ” Based on our research, the law never went into effect. Angela’s funeral was held on January 28, 2015, at Corporation Road Baptist Church in Darlington. Only people who knew her were there.
Her mother, Maureen. Her sisters, Joanne and Michelle. Her niece, Rachel. For a family that had been scattered through the care system for decades, it was one of the only times most of them had been in the same room together, and it was because of Angela.
Angela Marjorie Wrightson drank nine liters of cider a day, slept on a sofa, and was desperate for human connection. She was lonely in a way that most people should never have to experience. She let anyone who knocked come in because the alternative was silence.
