World's Most Evil Killers - Season 6, Episode 2 - Jamie Raynolds - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[music playing] NARRATOR: In May 2013, 17-year-old Georgia Williams set out on a short walk to help a friend
with a photography project at his house in Wellington, Shropshire, England. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: She popped out through the door,
and I remember seeing a ponytail bobbing. She went and we never saw her alive again.
NARRATOR: Georgia's friend was 22-year-old Jamie Reynolds, a young man with a twisted secret fantasy life.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: He developed an obsession with viciously sadistic pornography.
Particularly, pornography that involved killing women. NARRATOR: It wasn't the first time Reynolds had used
a photo shoot to lure a young woman to his house, but this was the first time his sick fantasy
would become a reality. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Reynolds is a sexual sadist. He wants to dominate a woman.
He wants to have complete control over her. He enjoys the suffering of other people.
NARRATOR: All of it captured on camera. So now she's hanging in midair, in a hallway, in a house in Avondale Road, Wellington
in Shropshire, dying. And all the time, Reynolds is photographing her. He wants to capture every moment of her distress.
NARRATOR: So brutal and depraved was the murder of Georgia Williams, Jamie Reynolds will never be a free man again,
making him one of the world's most evil killer. [theme music] On May the 26th, 2013, Jamie Reynolds
asked his friend and neighbor, 17-year-old Georgia Williams, to his home in Wellington, Shropshire, England.
Georgia was keeping a promise she'd made to help him with a photography project.
Her dad, Detective Constable Stephen Williams, also knew Reynolds. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: I took him on face value.
I knew nothing about him from the police side of things. And he just seemed to me like an ordinary lad
when I met him and spoke to him. NARRATOR: What Stephen didn't know was that Reynolds had a documented
history of assaulting young women as a minor. GEOFFREY WANSELL: I think he was a virgin at that point.
He had a very weird relationship with girls and that comes increasingly clear during his adolescent years.
NARRATOR: Reynolds would fixate on a girl and write a sexually sadistic story about what
he wanted to do to her. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: What makes Reynolds one of Britain's most evil killers is that this murder
was years in the planning. When we look at the stories that he'd been writing, those stories are a link between thinking and doing.
And they were a real red flag in his case. NARRATOR: Georgia Williams was murdered within an hour
of entering Reynolds home. But that was only the first part of his sick fantasy.
RICHARD WHITTAM QC: He sexually attacked her as she was dying. And then, I'm afraid, after she was dead, cut her down, removed
her clothing, and carried out further sexual acts of indignity upon her. NARRATOR: When Jamie Reynolds had finished abusing Georgia's
dead body, he threw her in the back of his van and went on a road trip. It was a miracle that her body was ever found.
LYNNETTE WILLIAMS: If it hadn't have been for the family from Wales stepping up and saying,
look, you know, we think we saw him because he got stuck in the mud. She would never have been found, not where she'd been dumped.
NARRATOR: This killer's story begins in 1991. The youngest of two children, Jamie Reynolds
grew up in Telford, Shropshire, England. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Unfortunately, for Reynolds,
his early years were not great. His mother was a victim of domestic abuse. He witnessed this abuse, so he was partially a victim of it
himself. NARRATOR: Reynolds' mother left her abusive partner, taking Jamie and his sister with her.
She remarried, and that family unit appeared to be a warm, happy, and supportive one.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: The family lived in a nice street, Avondale Road in Wellington in Shropshire,
not far from Telford, not far from the Welsh border. Upright, semi-detached houses, little gardens,
the picture of normality-- suburban normality. NARRATOR: Reynolds attended senior school at Ercall
Wood Academy in Wellington. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And in this community, the-- the young people are quite kind of close knit.
Everybody tends to know everyone else, even if it's through a friend. He wasn't a stranger.
He wasn't an outsider. He might have been considered a bit odd, but he was still very much one of the community.
NARRATOR: Detective Constable Stephen Williams knew Jamie Reynolds through his children.
His youngest daughter Georgia had worked at the local petrol station with him. And Reynolds had been in the same school year
as his eldest daughter, Scarlett. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: I would speak to him briefly when
I went in there doing-- paying for my petrol, or buying a newspaper, or something like that.
He was always polite, and you wouldn't think there was anything about him that you had to be wary of.
Even as a police officer, I didn't pick that up from him. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Jamie was a difficult teenager,
to put it politely. He developed-- and we cannot say precisely why or where it came
from, he developed an obsession with viciously sadistic pornography, particularly, pornography
that involved killing women. NARRATOR: Reynolds kept his pornography obsession a secret
from his friends, but he'd created his own sexually twisted fantasy world. GEOFFREY WANSELL: I suspect Jamie Reynolds
had a very high sex drive. But the trouble was, there was no outlet for it. He didn't form, quotes, "natural relationships."
It was all about his demonic view of what sex meant and what relationships with young women meant.
NARRATOR: Reynolds preferred hanging out with his female friends rather than with the boys.
STEPHEN WILLIAMS: And so Georgia and her friends got to know Reynolds really well.
Both Georgia and her friends described him as a quiet-- quiet lad with only about two or three regular friends.
They thought that he was vulnerable in a sense that they used to walk him home overnight.
They thought, if anyone was likely to get beaten up on the way home, which would be rare around this area
in any case, but it would be Jamie. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Jamie Reynolds liked to present to his friends
and colleagues in Avondale Road, Wellington, I was being a little vulnerable, a little shy
as a way of appealing to them, perhaps. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
He certainly gave Georgia the impression that he was, perhaps, needed looking after, because he's a little vulnerable, little oh, dear,
poor-- we need to look after him. There is that nurturing side, particularly in young women,
I think, that's absolutely fair to say. And Reynolds played into it. That was the role he played.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Reynolds is somebody who is not very emotionally complex. Everything is black and white for him.
There are no shades of gray in between. But he has this-- this really good understanding of other people's emotions,
other people's behavior. So with women, he will know how to turn on the charm. He will know how to present a particular persona,
how to appear non-threatening. GEOFFREY WANSELL: All the time, Jamie is building up his own personal collection
of violent extreme pornography-- 16,800 images, 72 videos, some of them are women actually being killed, and men
having sex with a dead body. This was Jamie Reynolds' fantasy. NARRATOR: January 2008, Reynolds' stepfather discovered
his collection and were so disturbed by the content, he reported his own 17-year-old son to the police.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And I think they were a really significant warning sign because they bridged that gap
between thinking and doing. And I think that there was an opportunity there to intervene,
but-- but it wasn't taken seriously enough. And this is something that is very serious
and indicates an individual is incredibly dangerous. NARRATOR: Reynolds digitally altered these images
with photos of his female friends, often adding nooses around their necks. And he wrote sexually deviant fantasy stories about them.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: This was a man who was living his own secret life in a very dark place, indeed,
because everyone was potentially a victim. I think it would always had to be based around terror, around subjugation, around violence.
NARRATOR: Throughout his teenage years, Reynolds' fixated on several young women
who mostly dismissed him as creepy and weird. But Reynolds wanted his sex stories and fantasies
to become a reality. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Reynolds' history is littered with examples of abusive behavior towards women.
This is a young man who feels entitled to go and take what he wants from women. NARRATOR: In 2008 at the age of 17,
Reynolds persuaded a redheaded young woman to come to his house to take part in what he called,
"an artistic photo shoot." GEOFFREY WANSELL: And he attacked the girl, tried to strangle her effectively.
She was terrified, as you could well imagine she might be. She screamed, she fought our way out.
She ran off. She had marks around her neck where he had his hands around it. NARRATOR: The woman reported Reynolds to the police,
and he was arrested. When interviewed, Reynolds minimize the whole episode, as if it was simply a misunderstanding.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Within two years, he's fixated on another redheaded girl, who completely dismisses him.
This one, his-- the fixation lasts for some months, but she will not have anything to do with him.
Nothing. Eventually, in August 2011, he confronts her in a car park. And she tells him, in no uncertain terms,
I don't want anything to do with you, and I'm certainly not taking part in any artistic scenario
you may have come up with. And in an absolute rage, Jamie Reynolds gets into his car
and reverses fast across the car park and bangs into her car. That's how angry he was, and that's how
much rage there was in there. NARRATOR: This time, Reynolds told the police that he was distressed at being
rejected by the woman. And the incident was treated as an accident. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: So he's like Teflon guy.
Everything just slides off him. And when you look at the impact of that on him, he learns that actually, there are no consequences
for harassing women. There are no consequences for-- for being persistent, and for being fixated, and obsessive.
NARRATOR: Undeterred by his run-ins with the police, Jamie Reynolds' mission was to turn his twisted fantasies
into reality, bringing to life his lurid stories and their recurring themes of young women
with red hair and vivid red lips, strangulation, hanging, and most disturbing of all, necrophilia.
[music playing] May the 26th, 2013, Wellington, Shropshire, England, Jamie Reynolds had developed a twisted sexual obsession
with his friend and neighbor, 17-year-old Georgia Williams. She'd become the central character
in his latest sordid fantasy. GEOFFREY WANSELL: One of the targets of his fantasies,
his stories, is a neighbor in Wellington in Shropshire called Georgia Williams. Bright, red-headed, suits his obsession, and he
starts to write a story-- one of his many stories, they were all very peculiar and ugly.
And this one's called "Georgia Williams in Surprise." ELIZABETH YARDLEY: This is a fixation on her,
an obsession with her, and he writes this story about luring her to his house. And it's very detailed in terms of the lipstick
that she's wearing, in terms of the clothes that she's wearing. And he's planning to-- to dominate and kill her.
NARRATOR: Although Reynolds was in Georgia's circle of friends, they had nothing in common.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Georgia Williams was quite an incredible young woman. She was 17 years old.
She was bright. She had a bright future ahead of her. And she was an individual who was quite well known
in her community, somebody who was going places, someone who this community were proud of.
NARRATOR: Georgia was a lifelong fan and member of her beloved AFC Telford United football club.
LYNNETTE WILLIAMS: She'd started going to the football with my dad when she was eight.
So my dad always say, well she's my lucky, sort of little mascot to go around because people would buy more if she was there
and handing out the tickets. They go, oh, no, we'll have two off Georgia because we might win.
NARRATOR: At 17, Georgia had her future all mapped out. LYNNETTE WILLIAMS: She couldn't wait to get to 13 because then
she could join the cadets. And she absolutely loved the cadets. And that's where she really thrived.
So she did everything that they-- they asked of her. She tried everything that they even didn't ask of.
So in Georgia's head, it was just, I'm going to join the-- the RAF, you know, I love it.
And you could tell she loved it. Absolutely loved it. NARRATOR: Reynolds had once asked Georgia to go out
with him, but Georgia had a boyfriend and and made it clear to Reynolds that they were firmly in the friend zone
and would never be anything else. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: Yeah, I remember Georgia telling him straight that she didn't want to go out.
She said-- but she told him in a nice way. And that if he was OK with it, they should
still ought to be friends. NARRATOR: May the 26th, 2013, it was as a friend that Jamie Reynolds asked Georgia for a favor--
to come to his house and help him with a photo shoot. GEOFFREY WANSELL: It's a perfectly ordinary Sunday
afternoon, later afternoon, Georgia tells her mom and dad that she's going to see Jamie Reynolds.
I mean, they know him. He's one of the neighbors, so to speak, and it's not a big place.
What's-- what's the problem? They do not know, of course, about the attacks on other women.
LYNNETTE WILLIAMS: I knew she'd already said that she was going up to Jamie's that night because he wanted
some help with a photograph. But her other friends were going up, as well. NARRATOR: Just in case Georgia didn't show,
Reynolds had a backup plan. He'd also invited several other young women that evening.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: He's absolutely determined that he's going to kill somebody on this day.
I think Georgia was very much at the forefront of his mind. She's the one that he wanted.
But he was prepared to settle for somebody else. He just wanted to dominate a woman.
NARRATOR: Reynolds had told Georgia that the theme of the shoot was biker chick.
LYNNETTE WILLIAMS: I actually said to her in a bedroom, are you sure that's the only sort of thing that--
I said, you're not going up there doing anything-- don't be stupid, she said. I wouldn't do anything like that.
Because she was quite self-conscious of her body. She was sort of straight up, straight down sort of girl,
so she didn't really like showing herself off in-- in that way. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: She came down, and she got
a tight pair of black jeans on. I remember a pink socks with little sweets on. It got her hair in a ponytail, and she got a baggy T-shirt
on with a big, red London bus on the front, which I think she'd only bought that day with her mom.
And she-- she came out, and I said, oh. You look just like Olivia Newton-John from "Grease."
NARRATOR: Georgia had her first driving lesson the following morning, and her mom
wanted her to rearrange the photo shoot for another day. LYNNETTE WILLIAMS: So I said, just stay in, I said--
I said, just tell him. She said, no, 'cause I can't. 'Cause I feel really sorry for him.
He really wants to sort of do better in life. And there's a few of us going up, she said.
So it'll be all right, she said. And I'll see you later. Because then, I'll be OK for tomorrow.
Um, so we all went out and waved her off on the front. Have a nice time. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: She popped out through the door.
And I remember seeing a ponytail bobbing. I did, actually, think she looks really nice, as well.
And so, off she went. And-- [clears throat] we never saw her alive again. NARRATOR: Georgia walked to Reynolds home on Avondale Road,
arriving around quarter to 8:00 in the evening. There was no one else there. She was alone with her friend, Jamie Reynolds.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: I speculated many times that I'm sure that it wasn't until the very last moment
that Georgia realized she was in the gravest danger. NARRATOR: Despite being the only one there,
Georgia agreed to go through with the photo shoot. And at first, everything was innocent and a lot of fun.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: The first shots are about perfectly inconsequential. There's some in the hall, and there's some in the kitchen.
But then, things go a little further. Jamie Reynolds persuades Georgia Williams to go upstairs
to the place beneath the attic where he's put an oar, and he's thrown a red rope over the oar with a noose
at the end of it. And he persuades Georgia to put the noose around her neck to add to the artistic scenario.
Reynolds, quite suddenly, pulls the noose tight, and ties it to the banister, knees her in the back,
and kicks the box away. So now, she's in a house in Avondale Road, Wellington in Shropshire, dying.
And all the time, Reynolds is photographing her. He wants to capture every moment of her distress.
NARRATOR: May the 26th, 2013, Wellington, Shropshire, England. Less than an hour after arriving at Jamie Reynolds home,
17-year-old Georgia Williams was dead. But there was a second part to Reynolds' sick fantasy.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Words sometimes fail me. It's-- it's just so depraved. He indulges his full necrophiliac preoccupations
on the poor, now dead girl. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When you look at individuals who engage
in necrophilia, there is something that's going on underneath here. What you have is a dead body.
A dead body can't reject you. It can't refuse you. You can do whatever you want to with it.
So for somebody like Reynolds who enjoys that dominance and who enjoys that mastery over another person,
this is just another part of the process that he's really enjoying. NARRATOR: May the 26th, 2013, Reynolds continued
violating Georgia's body throughout Sunday night into Monday morning. Somehow, he'd obtained the password to Georgia's phone
and texted her mom, Lynette, saying, ended up going out. Don't know when I'll be back.
Phone is about to die, too. LYNNETTE WILLIAMS: But we had a few bits of-- not banter, but messages go in between us,
me trying to find out who exactly she was with, where she was going, and what she was doing.
And her replying, saying that she was OK. She-- she was going to friends. And I said-- I asked again, which friends?
In the end, I got a reply back. So basically telling me that, I'm OK. I'm going to friends.
I'll see you tomorrow. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: And we had no reason to believe otherwise.
Because we believed that those messages were from Georgia, and she was fine. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And when you look at the actual text
that he's sending, he's mimicking her texting style because she always puts three kisses in text to her parents.
And he mimics that. So you can just see how-- how cunning this individual is in terms
of his attention to detail. NARRATOR: On Monday morning, Georgia's parents weren't overly concerned that she wasn't home yet.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Georgia was not the type of girl who would disappear off the radar
and not tell her mom and dad where she was going. This is not just some 17-year-old
who's decided to go off with her mates or go off with a boyfriend. This is something that is out of character for Georgia.
NARRATOR: On Monday morning, Stephen and Lynnette called round Georgia's friends,
but no one had seen her. Stephen decided to call his colleagues at the police, and an officer called at their home.
He explained his daughter's last known whereabouts to the female officer, who then relayed the information
to the police station. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: Oh, hang on a second. And she was getting message.
She goes-- right, OK. Right. And then, her face got a little bit concerned. She's-- she-- they finished the message,
too, which I couldn't hear because she was using their phone. And she says, I'm just gonna have
to pop back to the station, um, but I'll come back as soon as possible. And she left then.
NARRATOR: 30 minutes later, another colleague from the police station telephoned Stephen.
[ominous music] STEPHEN WILLIAMS: And he said to me, he says, um, this Jamie Reynolds, this is, um--
I just wanna check, he says, is he-- is he the one with the funny hair cut, he says, the-- the floppy fringe, curly over his eye.
I said, yeah, he's the one. He says, all right. It's just, I'll, um, I'll get back to you.
And the conversation stops. I then think everything now with Jamie Reynolds just gotten floppy--
So then I think, he must have a photograph of Jamie Reynolds for him to be able to describe him to me.
Because that's the way he's a-- well, it was his most distinctive, this floppy fringe and curly--
unkempt, otherwise. So I think to myself, they must have a photo of him up there for some reason.
Well, once again, being a policeman I'm not panicking, because I think to myself, oh, kids,
I wonder if he's had a fight with somebody, gentlemen. NARRATOR: Monday, the 27th of May 2013,
sometime after midday, Jamie Reynolds dumped Georgia's naked body, her clothes, and any other incriminating evidence
in the back of his stepfather's gray Toyota van. He meticulously cleaned the house
and downloaded the images from his stepfather's camera onto a hard drive before deleting the files.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: So he has that kind of forensic awareness, or he thinks he does.
But he didn't realize that actually deleted images can be recovered quite easily.
It's not a difficult thing to do. NARRATOR: The police arrived at Reynolds home to find it empty,
no sign of Georgia or the Toyota van registered to his stepfather. All they knew is that Reynolds was probably
the last person to see Georgia. She may not be with him, but the police needed to find him.
A UK-nationwide appeal was launched to locate the van. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: People who kill,
often their reaction is one of utter horror after the event itself. They're so horrified at what they've done,
the enormity of it, of the effect on them and other people that they cannot function normally,
than they can't even move from the spot where it happened in some cases. So looking at Reynolds and looking at the kind of things
that he was able to do after he'd killed this young woman was absolutely horrendous.
NARRATOR: Reynolds drove across the border into North Wales towards a town called Ruthin.
But en route, he made a chilling detour. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: So he's taken Georgia's life away.
He has her body in the back of his stepfather's van, and he's gone off to the cinema.
This tells us that Reynolds, he is just reacting to his own wants and needs. So it's just a case of, oh, I fancy going to see a film now,
so I'm just gonna go and do it. NARRATOR: News of Georgia's disappearance began to spread through the local community of Wellington.
The UK-nationwide alert issued by the police notified West Midland's press association
journalist Richard Vernalls. RICHARD VERNALLS: And I have to say that with Georgia,
from the minute on that Monday morning that we became aware that she'd been missing over the weekend,
I think we all in-- in the press got the gist there was something more to this, something untoward.
NARRATOR: After watching a film at the cinema, Reynolds traveled on to a beauty spot in the Nant Y Garth Pass
Valley in North Wales and dumped Georgia's naked body in a shallow stream. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: So he takes it to quite an isolated area.
But he doesn't bury the body. He doesn't make any more efforts to try and hide it.
He knows that at some point, somebody is going to come across Georgia and find her.
NARRATOR: But when Reynolds returned to the Toyota van, he found it stuck solidly in mud.
Despite the isolation of the location, a passing motorist stopped to help him out.
Reynolds then continued on his journey, heading north towards Scotland. With CCTV footage, the police managed to track Reynolds' van,
but there were some blind spots along the route. He was seen alone at various gas stations.
At 3:20 in the afternoon, on Tuesday the 28th May, just over 24 hours after leaving his home on Avondale Road
in Wellington, Reynolds' van was spotted in a hotel car park in Glasgow, Scotland, where cameras
also captured him happily chatting to staff at the check-in desk. The Scottish police apprehended Reynolds for questioning
and were able to search his van. He denied any knowledge of Georgia's whereabouts.
And after an initial search, only one small item was recovered from the back of the van.
In Wellington, word of Georgia's disappearance had spread. RICHARD VERNALLS: So the community response was--
was strong as you might imagine. Georgia had a lot of friends. Her friends got together with the family,
and they held a vigil at the church down in Wellington, which is sort of lovely community setting.
Leave leaflets here to try and raise awareness about the disappearance. There were posters.
And it felt like they all wanted to do something. NARRATOR: Tuesday, the 28th of May 2013,
in the early hours of Tuesday morning, less than 72 hours since Georgia had left home,
the police visited Stephen and Lynette. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: And he gets a photograph
out of his pocket, a Polaroid, which sends a crime use. And he says, do you recognize this sock?
And I can see that it's taken-- the photo's been taken with the background what looks like the grooves in the back of a van.
And I look at the sock, and I say, yeah, I'm sure that's Georgia sock. This is pink.
With a little sweets on that she went out in. I says I think that's Georgia's sock.
NARRATOR: Jamie Reynolds was detained by police in Glasgow, Scotland but claimed to have no knowledge of where Georgia was.
There had been no sightings of Georgia with Reynolds on any of the CCTV cameras that captured his journey to Scotland.
Aware that they had an incomplete picture of Reynolds' route, the police appeal to the public on a national UK
TV show called "Crimewatch." RICHARD VERNALLS: Jamie Reynolds knew all along what he'd done,
and he could have brought closure quickly to Georgia Williams' family. Instead, she was out there for days, undiscovered.
And Jamie Reynolds seems to get a kick out of that. NARRATOR: Tuesday, the 28th of May 2013,
as the police continue to question Reynolds, a forensic team moved in to search the house in Avondale Road.
Among the items seized were Reynolds' computer and his step dad's camera. All the deleted files were recovered.
The photographic evidence was conclusive. Jamie Reynolds had killed Georgia Williams.
[music playing] STEPHEN WILLIAMS: There's no words (VOICE BREAKING) to explain when somebody says, your daughter's not coming
back, you know what I mean? And then when you start to think in what circumstances and stuff like this,
and, uh, I just don't know what to do. GEOFFREY WANSELL: I'm more convinced than ever
that the true victims of these dreadful crimes are the families of the victim, because they can never recover.
The Williams family will never recover from the death of Georgia at the hands of Jamie Reynolds,
nor will her sister. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: We went round to the Catholic church around the corner.
We went into their church, which was open. And we prayed, and we prayed that they would find Georgia.
We knew Georgia was dead then. So we were praying that we would find and we could see her one last time and help her on her way.
NARRATOR: Reynolds continued to deny any involvement in Georgia's disappearance.
But the "Crimewatch" UK TV appeal paid off, and the motorist who'd help Reynolds move his van
came forward with information. On Friday, the 31st of May, five days after Georgia was murdered, her body was found,
Jamie Reynolds was formally charged with murder on the same day. Despite the overwhelming evidence and the discovery
of Georgia's body, Reynolds continued claiming no knowledge of her brutal murder.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: And he insists, I'm pleading innocent. Fully aware that this will mean Georgia's parents
were put through the ordeal of a full trial, which will involve the description in detail of what
he did to their daughter. It is-- it is an evil thing to do. NARRATOR: After several delays, Reynolds' trial
was listed for the week before Christmas 2013 at Stafford Crown Court in England.
At the very last moment, Reynolds changed his plea to guilty. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: The function of changing your plea to guilty
is, there is no trial. So you are the one who is in control of the narrative. There is not going to be witness evidence given that contradicts
your version of events. NARRATOR: In the absence of a trial, Reynolds' case went straight to sentencing
in late December 2013. During sentencing, the full horror of what Reynolds had done to Georgia was revealed.
The photographic evidence was damning. The court also learned of his previous failed attempts
to carry out his sick fantasies on other young, red-haired women. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: If the police officers would have taken
serious note of what the father was telling us in 2008, that that's what it was--
that was his aim when he attempted to strangle that girl in 2008. And that-- that was an obsession that one day,
he'd do everything he could to achieve that obsession. It was there. It's glaring.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: He's 22 years old when he commits this heinous murder, and people don't go from being psychologically
healthy people one day to committing a murder the next. It's a process that takes many, many years.
It's a gradual escalation of behavior. So he's definitely been engaging in harmful behavior
towards women for many years, which suggests that he started very, very young. And that is something incredibly chilling.
STEPHEN WILLIAMS: The police had all this evidence at the time, and they decided to give him, basically, what
amounts to a slap on the wrist. NARRATOR: The judge concluded that Reynolds was beyond effective rehabilitation
and sentenced him to a whole-life term. His crime was so severe, so sadistic and cruel that he should never be a free man again.
After reviewing the photographic evidence, the judge believed that if Jamie Reynolds
was ever to be released from jail, he would become a serial killer. After sentencing, a serious case review
examining Reynolds' previous contacts with the police and other agencies was announced.
West Mercia police force made a commitment to making significant changes to their working practices
and issued a heartfelt apology to Reynolds' victims and the Williams family. The worst part was when he then
decided that he wanted to appeal because he just got over the fact of going to trial.
And then you-- he'd been convicted, which we thought was so great. But it is great, if you know what I mean.
And then he's putting you through all that pain then of having to wait again to go through the whole process
again, and then not knowing what the outcome of that's going to be. NARRATOR: Reynolds' appeal was heard
a few months later in 2014. The Williams family were represented by Richard Wittham QC.
RICHARD WHITTAM QC: He was only age 22, and it's very unusual for somebody of that age
to get a whole-life term. The law is, you can't be a borderline decision. It must be a really clear decision that the offense was
so serious, so bad that only a whole-life term could be justified. Firstly, Georgia was 17.
That means she's classified in law as a child. It doesn't matter that she wasn't a very young child.
Secondly, it was a sadistic murder, quite clearly it was, killing somebody in the way he did
and watching them die. Thirdly, it was sexually motivated. That's a further aggravating factor,
as was disposal of the body and the deceit that he exercised on the family by sending false messages.
NARRATOR: Reynolds' only defense was one of diminished responsibility that might reduce his conviction from murder to manslaughter.
Psychiatric reports declared Reynolds sane, not suffering from any illness, and concluded that he
would be a threat to women for the rest of his life. RICHARD WHITTAM QC: Lord chief justice and the rest
of the Court of Appeal had found that there was absolutely no merit in the argument the judge got it wrong,
and they were utterly persuaded that the right sentence for Jamie Reynolds was a whole-life term.
STEPHEN WILLIAMS: The justice that can be served has been served in this country.
I think he is inhuman. He had no purpose to murder Georgia other than his own sexual gratification,
which included gratification from the act of murdering itself. NARRATOR: Georgia's family and friends
hosted their final farewell at the home of her beloved AFC Telford United. The community of Wellington was shocked to its very core,
but determined Georgia Williams would never be forgotten. LYNNETTE WILLIAMS: I've got a mum-- bless her--
to go and find all blue and orange ribbons from the florists down in Wellington.
And then we made big bows, and then we went around the route that the funeral car was gonna go,
and we tied all these orange and blue ribbons all through the time. And yeah, [inaudible] where she'd been with her granddad
for many years. They-- they really stepped up and let us use their facilities for everybody to go about there.
And, um-- and they all did. They really did give her a good sendoff. It was good.
NARRATOR: The Williams family established The Georgia Williams Trust in memory of their wonderful daughter.
Its aim is to help young people achieve their potential and do all the things that Georgia did in her short life.
LYNNETTE WILLIAMS: I think a lot of Georgia runs through what we do with the Trust,
and we always try and portray that to the students that we go and give out grants to, and things like that.
So the list is endless. We don't just sort of pick one or two bits. It's if you're struggling, or you need financial help,
then we'll help you out. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I think the most concerning thing for me
is that we live in a culture that to some extent, encourages this kind of behavior.
There are places that people like Reynolds can go online where-- where there are individuals who--
who share similar interests. And whilst we have any kind of acceptance of this misogyny,
of this hatred of women, there is always the risk that this is going to fuel these individuals.
STEPHEN WILLIAMS: Georgia-- Georgia's end was terrified. And she didn't deserve that at all.
And he probably murdered probably the best friend he would ever have. And I'm talking about Reynolds now.
Of course, she went there because she promised him and didn't want to let him down.
[music playing] NARRATOR: Jamie Reynolds was a narcissist and a sadist who had a fixation with a sexually-motivated murder
of young women. He wasn't mad, he was bad. And he took the life of a brilliant young woman
in the most brutal, depraved way possible to fulfill his own sick fantasies. He robbed Georgia Williams of her future,
ripped a shining star from the community of Wellington, and destroyed her family, making Jamie Reynolds
one of the world's most evil killers. [theme music]

The story of the 23-year-old killer who murdered 17-year-old former head girl Georgia Williams in 2013.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers. New episodes including Lee Ford, Pawel Relowicz, John Shaw, John Allen Muhammad, Derrick Todd Lee and more.

Brief Summary

Jamie Reynolds murdered Georgia Williams in 2013, driven by sadistic fantasies and a history of violence against women.

Key points

The Twisted Fantasy of Jamie Reynolds. Jamie Reynolds had a dark obsession with sadistic pornography, which foreshadowed his horrific actions.
The Murder of Georgia Williams. In less than an hour after arriving at Reynolds' home, Georgia was dead.
The Impact on the Community. The community of Wellington came together to remember Georgia and support her family.
The Discovery of Georgia's Body. Five days after her murder, Georgia's body was found, leading to Jamie Reynolds' arrest.
Reynolds' Guilty Plea. Jamie Reynolds changed his plea to guilty just before his trial, avoiding a public trial.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

We never saw her alive again.

Stephen Williams reflecting on Georgia's last moments.

0:24WatchAug 10, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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