The Horrific Torture Killing of Kelly Anne Bates (GRAPHIC)

The Horrific Torture Killing of Kelly Anne Bates (GRAPHIC)

Kelly Anne Bates was born on May 18, 1978, in Hattersley, a small town in Tameside, which is 10 miles east of Manchester City Center. Her parents were Margaret and Tommy, and they were thrilled to be gifted with a beautiful child who would later grow into a confident and independent 14-year-old girl.

Kelly was a kind and thoughtful teenager who had a strong relationship with both her mom and her dad. But the blissful family dynamic would soon fade away when Kelly began dating a boy in 1992. This relationship would not only drive Kelly away from her family, but it would also lead her into the void. James Patterson Smith was an unemployed divorcee living in the Gorton area of Manchester.

Described by acquaintances as house-proud and well-groomed, he was a teetotaler and non-smoker. His first marriage had ended in 1980 after 10 years because he had been violent towards his wife. His next relationship was with 20-year-old Tina Watson, whom he used as a punching bag between 1980 and 1982, even subjecting her to severe beatings while she was pregnant with his child.

She said, “At first it was now and again, just a little tap, but in the end, it was every day. He would smack me in the face or hit me over the head with an ashtray. He would kick me in the legs or between the legs.” Watson managed to escape from the relationship, during which Smith had also attempted to drown her while she was bathing.

When that relationship came to an end in 1982, Smith then started seeing 15-year-old Wendy Whitehead, whom he had also abused. In one attack, he held her underwater in the kitchen sink in an attempt to drown her.

In 1993, Smith began grooming Kelly Anne Bates when she was only 14 years old, having met her while she was babysitting for friends. Approximately two years later, when she had left school, Bates moved in with Smith; she was concealing the age difference between them from her parents, Tommy and Margaret Bates. Bates’s mother said of her first meeting with Smith after the two had started living together: “As soon as I saw Smith, the hairs on the back of my neck went up. I tried everything I could to get Kelly Anne away from him.”

Kelly actually told her parents she was dating a boy called Dave Smith, whom her parents assumed was a boy from her school at first. However, her parents were shocked when they discovered that “Dave” was really a 32-year-old man. Furthermore, when her boyfriend became more possessive of Kelly Anne, Margaret found out that Dave was really James Patterson Smith and he was, in fact, 48 years old.

Although she had left Smith briefly because of arguments with him, she was once more living with him at Fernclough Road by the end of November 1995. Her parents noticed bruises on her, which she explained away as being the result of accidents. She became increasingly withdrawn and, in December 1995, resigned from her part-time job. In March 1996, her parents received cards purportedly from her for their anniversary and birthdays, but only Smith had written in them. When Bates’s brother tried to see her at her house, Smith said that she wasn’t home. When a concerned neighbor asked to see her, she was briefly shown Kelly Anne from an upstairs window in the home.

On April 16, 1996, Smith reported to the authorities that he had accidentally killed his girlfriend during an argument in a bathtub, claiming that she had inhaled water and died following his attempts at resuscitation. He also claimed that she often pretended to be unconscious. Police went to Smith’s address and found Bates’s naked body in a bedroom.

Her blood was found throughout the house, and a post-mortem examination revealed over 150 separate injuries on her body. During the last month of her life, she had been kept bound—sometimes tied by her hair to a radiator or furniture, or by her neck via a ligature. The murder inquiry was headed by Detective Sergeant Joseph Monahan of the Greater Manchester Police, who said, “I have been in the police force for 15 years and I have never seen a case as horrific as this.”

William Lawler, the Home Office pathologist who examined her body, said, “In my career, I have examined almost 600 victims of homicide. I have never come across injuries so extensive.” The following injuries were found on Bates’s body: scalding to her buttocks and legs; burns on her thigh caused by the application of a hot iron; a fractured arm; multiple stab wounds caused by knives, forks, and scissors; stab wounds inside her mouth; crush injuries to both hands; mutilation of her ears, nose, eyebrows, mouth, lips, and genitals; and wounds caused by a spade and pruning shears. Both eyes had been gouged out by his hands, followed by stab wounds to the empty sockets.

The pathologist determined that her eyes had been removed not less than five days and not more than three weeks before her death. Additionally, she had been starved, having lost around 45 pounds in weight, and had not received water in several days before her death.

Peter Openshaw, the prosecutor in Smith’s trial, said, “It was as if he deliberately disfigured her, causing her the utmost pain, distress, and degradation. The injuries were not the result of one sudden eruption of violence. They must have been caused over a long period and were so extensive and so terrible that the defendant must have deliberately and systematically tortured the girl.” The cause of death was drowning, immediately prior to which she had been beaten about the head with a shower head. Openshaw said that “her death must have been a merciful end to her torment.”

Smith denied the murder, claiming Bates “would put me through hell, winding me up.” He also claimed that Bates had taunted him about his dead mother and had a bad habit of hurting herself. When asked to explain why he had blinded, stabbed, and battered Bates, he said she had dared him to do it, challenging him to do her harm.

A consultant psychiatrist told the court that Smith had “a severe paranoid disorder with morbid jealousy and lived in a distorted reality.” The jury at Manchester Crown Court took one hour to find 49-year-old Smith guilty of Bates’s murder. Sentencing him to life imprisonment, the judge, Mr. Justice Sachs, recommended that Smith serve a minimum term of 20 years. He stated, “This has been a terrible case. A catalog of depravity by one human being upon another. You are a highly dangerous person. You are an abuser of women, and I intend, so far as it is in my power, that you will abuse no more.”