A man with an interest in child murders, including the Southport killings, has been jailed for 30 years for stabbing a nine-year-old girl as she played outside his home.
Jordan Wilkes, 29, attacked the girl in the stairwell of the flats where he lived with his mother in Christchurch, Dorset, leaving the girl permanently scarred.
Berenice Mulvanny, prosecuting, told Bournemouth crown court that the victim and another girl had been playing together when Wilkes came out of his flat with a pocketknife and stabbed the nine-year-old in the neck, chest and knee.
Mulvanny said Wilkes tore a clump of hair from the girl, suggesting he kept as a “trophy” until his mother told to throw it away.
The girls ran away from the defendant and banged on doors of flats in the building until a family took them in and called the emergency services, the court heard.
The wound to the girl’s neck narrowly missed major arteries that could have led to fatal blood loss if they had been hit. The court heard she would be scarred for life.
Mulvanny said a search of the defendant’s home found a number of knives, several hidden. Analysis of his mobile phone revealed 69 files of YouTube videos, news articles and podcasts focused on murders and child killings.
This included the “Valentine’s Day massacre” at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 in which 17 people were killed. He had also looked up the rioting in the aftermath of themurder of three girls at a dance class in Southport in July 2024, and a day after the killings he had clicked on a link for a local dance class, the court heard.
At 1.25am on 20 August 2024, the day of his attack on the girl, Wilkes looked up the case of 14-year-old Aiden Fucci, who stabbed to death a 13-year-old, Tristyn Bailey, in Florida in May 2021.
In April 2016 Wilkes had been given a 14-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, for a ‘‘brutal” assault causing actual bodily harm on an eight-year-old boy. In October 2020 he was suspected of setting a pram on fire.
Sentencing Wilkes for attempted murder and possession of a knife, Judge Mousley told him: “You are a dangerous offender. You had an interest in child-killing and you decided to try it out for yourself.”
Wilkes was convicted by a jury. During the trial, the girl said: “I saw him reach into his pocket, I didn’t know that it was a knife, he hid it with his arm behind him then he came at us. He came running at me. He grabbed hold of my arm, really tight, so I couldn’t escape and he was aiming for this area [pointing to her neck].”
Nick Robinson, defending, said Wilkes lived an “isolated” life with his mother and had a low IQ. He said the attack had been “unplanned and spontaneous”.
In a statement read out after sentencing, the girl’s parents praised their daughter for her “resilience, bravery, endurance, strength, power and determination”.