Murdered transgender teenager Brianna Ghey helps to dye her killer’s hair in a previously unseen social media video.
The chilling film was recorded just weeks before Scarlett Jenkinson lured the 16-year-old schoolgirl to a park, where she was stabbed 28 times with a hunting knife in a sadistic and frenzied attack.
Together with 15-year-old accomplice Eddie Ratcliffe, Jenkinson was convicted of Brianna’s murder in December 2023, following a three-week trial at Manchester Crown Court.
The trial heard Jenkinson, also 15, befriended and became besotted with Brianna after she was placed in her class at Birchwood High School, in Warrington, in October 2022.
Jenkinson had a fascination with serial killers and was watching real-life murder and torture on the dark web when she and Ratcliffe plotted, in a series of upsetting Snapchat messages, to kill Brianna.
In the video, which will be screened for the first time on a new ITV documentary tomorrow night, Jenkinson is seen reading the instructions of the hair dye while sat on the floor in a supermarket toilet.
Brianna, wearing trademark pink bows in her hair, pink lipstick and long pink false nails, films as she helps wash the bright red dye into her killer’s brown hair over the sink, before turning to pose for the camera.
Just weeks later, on February 11 2023, Jenkinson persuaded her new friend, who suffered from anxiety, to get on a bus on her own for the first time and meet her in Culcheth, a village near to Warrington.
Following the brutal murder of Brianna Ghey (left), her mother said to police: ‘I knew this was going to happen’
Eddie Ratcliffe (left) and Scarlett Jenkinson (right) were convicted of the murder of Brianna Ghey in what has been described as an ‘exceptionally brutal’ crime
Brianna, wearing trademark pink bows in her hair, pink lipstick and long pink false nails, films as she helps wash the bright red dye into her killer’s brown hair over the sink, before turning to pose for the camera
In the video, which will be screened for the first time on a new ITV documentary tomorrow night, Jenkinson is seen reading the instructions of the hair dye while sat on the floor in a supermarket toilet
Soon afterwards, she and Ratcliffe stabbed Brianna to death in a wooded area in nearby Culcheth Linear Park. Her body was found moments later by a couple walking their dog, who saw Jenkinson and Ratcliffe running away across a nearby field.
Other footage, also due to be screened for the first time as part of the programme, shows the killer pair casually buying bottles of pop and sandwich ‘meal deals’ in Sainsbury’s shortly before meeting Brianna and launching the fatal attack.
The 75-minute film, entitled Brianna: A Mother’s Story, celebrates the schoolgirl’s life and features interviews with her mother, Esther, 38, step-father, Wes Powell, 31, and several of her close friends.
Ms Ghey, a former food technologist, tells the programme that what Jenkinson did to Brianna, who had thousands of followers on TikTok, was ‘the worst possible betrayal.’
She said: ‘I didn’t want to believe it was Scarlett because she was a friend who Brianna obviously trusted and I trusted, I think it’s the worst possible betrayal.’
Pictures of Brianna as a baby and a cute, ginger-haired toddler before she transitioned, aged 14, are also included in the documentary.
It explores her death and issues around online safety, including Ms Ghey’s campaigns to ban social media for under 16s and to introduce mindfulness teachers into schools, which she established in the wake of her daughter’s murder.
She and Brianna argued about her mobile phone use and interaction with strangers online before her death. Brianna was also briefly hospitalised with an eating disorder which, Ms Ghey later discovered, was likely exacerbated by pro-anorexia sites she was viewing online.
Ms Ghey has previously described social media as a ‘cess pit’ and wants the Government to do more to protect children, saying the new Online Safety Act does not go far enough.
The chilling film was recorded just weeks before Scarlett Jenkinson lured the 16-year-old schoolgirl to a park, where she was stabbed 28 times with a hunting knife in a sadistic and frenzied attack
Brianna Ghey was stabbed 28 times with a hunting knife in Cheshire in February 2023
Brianna’s mother says she can never visit Culcheth Linear Park, where Brianna was killed by Jenkinson (pictured), and has refused the local council’s request for a memorial bench in the spot she died
She also travels for New York for the film, where she meets a father whose 17-year-old daughter was also stabbed to death by a teenage friend who sent her threatening messages on social media.
Mr Powell tells the documentary: ‘We spent a lot of time worrying about who Brianna was talking to online and the strangers that she could potentially be meeting up with (but) the fact that Brianna’s friend was involved is unbelievable and devastating.’
Jenkinson and Ratcliffe were jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum 22 and 20 years, respectively, before being considered for parole in February last year. (2024)
Trial judge, Mrs Justice Yip, told Jenkinson ‘(you) knew (Brianna) was vulnerable and needed friendship and you abused that.’
She concluded that, while Jenkinson was motivated by her ‘deep desire’ to kill, Ratcliffe was driven ‘in part by hostility towards Brianna because she was transgender’.
‘You both took part in a brutal and planned murder which was sadistic in nature and a secondary motivation was hostility to Brianna because of her transgender identity,’ the judge said.
Brianna: A Mother’s Story will air at 9pm tomorrow, Thursday March 27, on ITV1, ITVX, STV and STV Player.
