Leeds Crown Court: Man given whole-life term for 'ferocious and merciless' murder of ex-girlfriend and new partner

Marcus Osborne said: “Romeo and Juliet can die together now” after the brutal double killing which left Katie Higton, 27, with 99 injuries and Steven Harnett, 25, with 24 wounds.

Leeds Crown Court heard Osborne, 35, lay in wait for Ms Higton and launched a brutal attack on her as soon as she came through the door of the house they once shared in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

Osborne then used Ms Higton’s phone to pretend to be her and lure Mr Harnett, 25, to the house.

He then raped another woman, who he had held captive in the house overnight, at knifepoint.

The court heard four children were in the house during the murders, which happened in the early hours of May 15 last year.

Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford KC said: “The defendant committed a premeditated and brutal double murder motivated by sexual jealousy, a desire to exercise control over Katie Higton, an unwillingness to accept her decision to leave him and her freedom to form a relationship with another man.”

Ms Higton had been in a relationship with Osborne for five years, but left him in early May last year after an assault on April 28 which was “the last straw”.

She later told police the relationship had become “coercive, controlling and physically abusive” in the last two years and that she had been regularly assaulted, including one incident when he threw a cat at her, the court heard.

Osborne also has convictions for violent offences against two previous partners in 2011 and 2012, Mr Sandiford said.

In the days before the murders, Ms Higton told West Yorkshire Police Osborne had told her “he would slit her throat if she said what he had done”, and that “if she ever got a boyfriend he would kill them both".

On May 12, Osborne was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence offences and bailed with conditions not to go back to their home, but spied on her over the following days before taking a taxi to the house on the night of the murders.

The court heard he found out about the developing relationship between Ms Higton and Mr Harnett by hacking into her Snapchat account.

A victim personal statement by Ms Higton’s mother Nicola McAlister, read in court, said Osborne was “a monster of the worst kind”.

The judge, Mrs Justice Lambert, imposed 10-year concurrent sentences for the rape and false imprisonment of the other woman in the house.

She told Osborne: “There are no mitigating factors in your case other than your guilty plea. There is no psychiatric or other evidence placed before me to explain or help me understand your actions.

“This is a case of such exceptional seriousness that even a very long minimum term would not be a just punishment. What you did that night was horrific.”

The judge said the killings were “sexual in nature” and driven by Osborne’s “pathological jealousy”.

She told Osborne: “They were driven by your sexual jealousy arising from Katie’s decision to start a new relationship with Steven.

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“I do not accept (the murders) are explained by your entrenched insecurity about being abandoned as a result of a neglected childhood.

“Everything you did was motivated by sex and your need to sexually humiliate and degrade.”