Bletchley Christmas Day killer gets 39-year jail term
A paranoid father who stabbed two women to death on Christmas Day while high on drugs has been jailed at least 39 years.Jazwell Brown, 49, smoked crack cocaine before murdering his partner Joanne Pearson, 38, and neighbour Teohna Grant, 24, at a block of flats in Bletchley, near Milton Keynes.Brown admitted the two murders and also attempting to murder his son, Jake, who was 17, and his neighbour Bradley Latter, 30.Mr Justice Kerr sentenced Brown to a life in jail and told him he would serve a minimum of 39 before being considered as eligible for parole.
Luton Crown Court heard Ms Pearson and Ms Grant died at the scene after being repeatedly stabbed.Ms Pearson lived with Brown in a block of flats where they had been smoking crack cocaine. Brown's son Jake, now 18, arrived and he was also attacked, but survived.Ms Grant lived in a neighbouring flat and was murdered, while her partner Mr Latter was also attacked, but survived.Ms Pearson's dog, Tilly, also suffered stab wounds, but survived. Brown fled the scene but was spotted by eyewitnesses and captured on CCTV.Live updates from the sentencing hearing as they happenedHe was arrested shortly afterwards and told officers: "I lost my cool tonight" adding it was "not self-defence... plain murder, it's plain murder, not self-defence'."Family members were in court and heard how Brown's behaviour on the day was triggered by drug use.
Deanne Heer KC, prosecuting, said Brown, his son Jake and Ms Pearson had been in the living room smoking crack cocaine before Brown "began attacking" his partner after she refused to hand over the crack pipe.She told the court that the teenager had described the scene as "like watching a horror film".Ms Heer described how Jake was attacked after he attempted to save Ms Pearson.He suffered a stab wound before grabbing his phone and shutting himself in a bathroom to call 999.Ms Pearson could be heard on the emergency call screaming: "Jaz, no, you're killing me, tell my children I love them."She suffered 31 stab wounds to her face, neck, chest, abdomen and arms as well scratches that were believed to have been inflicted after her death.Brown then made his way next door and attacked Ms Grant and her partner Mr Latter.
Brown's sentence was broken down as follows, with prison terms to run concurrently:39 years for the murder of Joanne Pearson39 years for the murder of Teohna Grant18 years for the attempted murder of his son, Jake Brown21 years for the attempted murder of Bradley Latter18 months for the unlawful possession of a knife in a public placeNine months for causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal
Charles Miskin KC, mitigating for Brown, said he was "very, very sorry" and "cannot forgive himself" for his actions."It's very difficult for him to prove remorse... he cannot understand why he did it, but he did," he said.Brown sobbed in the dock as a statement from his son was read out. "Watching people you love being stabbed is heart-breaking... I heard Jo screaming for her life, begging him to stop," Jake said."Every night I hear Jo screaming for her life, and see Jo being stabbed."
The families of Ms Pearson and Ms Grant released statements following Brown's sentencing.Ms Pearson family said they would "never understand why" he killed her."Jo always cared for everyone around her, which was evident even in her last moments of her life," they said. "She was inseparable from her dog Tilly who she told us was her rock."Ms Grant's family added that the "pain will never go away"."The heartbreak is intensified by the realisation that we lost her due to the senseless, cruel actions of someone else," they said. "Our world is emptier, full of sadness and holds a lot less laughter now that she has gone."
Brown, who the court heard had 10 previous convictions, had entered guilty pleas at a hearing in Luton Crown Court in April.
'Healing journey'
Det Ch Insp Stuart Brangwin of Thames Valley Police said after sentencing that the scenes in the flats were "indescribable" to witness."The surviving victims and the families of Teohna and Jo have suffered enormously," he said."Family members have described today's sentencing as part of the healing journey."We know there is a long way to go but I hope that after today they can at least start that process."Celia Mardon, of the Crown Prosecution Service, added: "Our thoughts today are with Jo and Teohna's families and loved ones who have suffered such unimaginable loss."We worked closely with Thames Valley Police to build a case to secure justice for all of those affected by Jazwell Brown's inexplicable and violent actions."
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this story, there are contact details for dedicated support services available on the BBC Action Line
Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
32 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Revealed: Kenneth Noye's new life. He brutally stabbed two men and stole £26m. Now as he swans around Kent with a much younger lover and plays doting grandfather, friends expose the dark truth
Life, of late, has been undeservedly kind to Kenneth Noye. Despite having a couple of killings under his belt, not to mention a ruthless hand in one of the most lucrative heists in British history, the gangster is a familiar sight on the streets of Sevenoaks, Kent. He is often seen pottering around his local supermarket, clutching an eco-friendly bag for life, nipping into the gym opposite his top-floor flat or simply whizzing around in his Mercedes 4x4. Noye, 78, has been spotted, too, playing the part of doting grandfather alongside other families during sports day at a nearby £30,000-a-year private school.
Daily Mail
32 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
GUY ADAMS: Vegan influencer and founder of the hate-filled gossip website Tattle Life Sebastian Bond is said to be lying low in Thailand. Now he's feared to be trying to hide his fortune - as a raft of celebrities on his site line up to sue...
Every notable king has a castle – and, for Sebastian Bond, that fortress is a four-bedroom house lying a stone's throw from Glastonbury 's historic abbey. Security cameras monitor the driveway, which is protected by a set of tall metal gates, and, when the Mail visited this week, the curtains on every single window were firmly drawn.
Times
33 minutes ago
- Times
How the IRA stole £26.5 million in a single night — and got away with it
If you ever thought, as I did growing up there, that Northern Ireland's fame was limited to 30 years of bombs and bullets, or building a ship that sank on its maiden voyage — you'd better think again. Twenty-one years ago, we were also host to the biggest robbery in British or Irish history at the time — in fact, the sixth biggest robbery in the world. Pretty impressive, eh? In one sense, it was impressive. On December 20, 2004, £26.5 million in cash was stolen from the Northern Bank headquarters in Belfast's city centre — in clear view of the public as Christmas shoppers strolled round the continental market just feet away. Glenn Patterson, an admired Belfast-based novelist, has written a book showing how the robbers did it, and how they got away with it. It was not just a monetary robbery, but a symbolic one. The Northern Bank building is a landmark in Belfast's post-industrial city centre, a great, sturdy 1970s edifice in concrete. It's a building you can imagine Bill Bixby walking out of, coat over shoulder, in the credits for The Incredible Hulk. But the robbery was not the first of its kind that year. Already in 2004 there had been other 'tiger kidnappings', where robbers would take family members hostage and force bank employees to help them to carry out the heist. In response, the Northern Bank had changed its operations so that two key holders were needed simultaneously to access its cash vaults. The criminals' solution? To abduct two employees' family members at once. Kevin McMullan, the bank's assistant manager, and Chris Ward, a junior employee, both had a knock on the door the night before the robbery. Armed men took over their homes and held their families hostage while McMullan and Ward were taken away. The men were held overnight, then told to go to work the next day and act normally. At clocking-off time they were to use their access to remove cash from the vault, disguised in containers to look like rubbish, and load it into a waiting white van. And so they did: great blocks and boxes of new and used notes, kilos upon kilos of it. The cover of Patterson's book shows a CCTV image of Ward leaving the bank's side entrance with a holdall over one shoulder. The holdall contains £1.2 million. Little wonder he's leaning to one side to counter the weight. So who did it? There's no doubt: the only criminal outfit in Northern Ireland with the organisational capability to plan and execute the robbery so methodically was the IRA. (The single sign of amateurishness was that two men in the van wore Russ Abbot-style ginger 'Jimmy' wigs beneath their baseball caps. This odd sight alerted passersby and almost foiled the robbery.) Opinions are divided on why the IRA carried out the robbery. For a pension fund? Investment abroad? • The 21 best history books of the past year to read next The whole story is presented beautifully by Patterson, who adopts the right tone for each phase of the tale. The abduction scenes have the horrible tension of a thriller, and reminded me of Brian Moore's great Troubles novel Lies of Silence. Elsewhere, Patterson adopts a tone of amused incredulity at the shocking details of the robbery and its aftermath. 'You have to take your hat off to this country. It has a way of exceeding your worst, most lavish expectations.' But the robbery also presented a political problem for the British and Irish governments. In 2004, the fledgling Northern Ireland Assembly had collapsed, and there were 'talks about talks' to get it up and running again. Indeed, when MI5 detected high levels of phone activity between senior IRA men the night before the robbery, they optimistically — naively — thought it meant an announcement was imminent on the decommissioning of IRA weapons, to break the political deadlock. When it was announced who the likely culprits were, Sinn Fein — the IRA's political wing — complained of a smear on republicans. But as Patterson points out, in one of the few passages where he sounds truly angry, this was a common tactic for Sinn Fein. He reminds us about the brutal murder of Robert McCartney after an argument in a Belfast bar in January 2005, when nobody in the pub — including the future Stormont minister Deirdre Hargey of Sinn Fein — would speak to the police about what happened. Instead, Hargey claimed that reports of IRA involvement in the murder were 'part of the onslaught by the media and governments and political parties to criminalise Sinn Fein and the republican movement'. As Patterson coolly observes: 'There is chutzpah, and there is chutzpah.' • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List Hardly any of the money has been recovered, and only one person was prosecuted for the robbery. That person was … one of the victims, Chris Ward, who was prosecuted on circumstantial evidence that the robbery had been an inside job — the IRA men were so well prepared that someone in the bank must have helped them. The case was abandoned partway through. Patterson attended every day of the trial. The case was clearly not an outstanding example of prosecutorial craft. Phil Flynn, who was vice president of Sinn Fein, took the view that 'there was nobody killed. At the end of the day, it was only money.' But it wasn't only money. The robbery revealed a lot about what was important in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein was welcomed back into government. And in a world where every conspiracy theorist sees two-tier justice in any outcome they don't like, the aftermath of the robbery provided a real example. The senior IRA man Bobby Storey — believed to be the brains behind the robbery, and 'a great human being' in the words of Gerry Adams — died in June 2020 and his funeral attracted more than 1,500 people, in contravention of Covid regulations. Other people could have no more than 30 at theirs. None of the Sinn Fein politicians who attended were prosecuted, while at a Black Lives Matter protest in Belfast a few weeks earlier, 70 people were fined. Patterson had once planned to write a screenplay of the robbery. I wish he had. It has everything: tension, dark comedy, human interest, big issues and more. But this book will do very nicely in its place. And if the Northern Bank heist was indeed a symbolic robbery, then here is the other symbol. Why did they do it? Because they knew they could get away with it. As Patterson points out: 'Something [else] disappeared in that white van in December 2004 that has never been recovered.' The Northern Bank Job: The Heist and How They Got Away With It by Glenn Patterson (Head of Zeus £16.99 pp272). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
