
Jury retires to consider verdicts in Christmas Day stabbing murder trial
Prosecutors allege Carless, of Haling Way in Cannock, Staffordshire, took a kitchen knife in a taxi from her home to Mr Price's parents' address in Elm Road, Norton Canes, where she expected to find him with a woman.
CCTV showed Carless running up the front path into the house and then 'stalking' him around the garden before he was later found with a single stab wound to the chest on the conservatory floor.
The court was told Carless had called Mr Price 45 times between 2.15am and 2.44am while she waited for the taxi to take her to his address and called the cab company two more times during that time to find out where it was.
She is said to have asked the taxi driver to wait outside while she went in the property to stab Mr Price at around 3am, before fleeing minutes later in the cab to her parents' address, where she was arrested.
Father-of-six Mr Price had been considered by police to be 'at very high risk of domestic abuse' and Carless was on police bail at the time of the fatal stabbing after allegedly strangling Mr Price on November 11 2024.
In her evidence to the trial, Carless said she had no recollection of stabbing him, was 'not a violent person' and had only gone to Mr Price's address as she believed he had taken money from inside a card she had in her home.
She said she picked up a knife with intent to destroy the caravan he was staying in in his parents' back garden and had 'panicked' after Mr Price was stabbed and fled.
She denies murder and possession of an offensive weapon in a public place in relation to the fatal stabbing, and intentional strangling and assault occasioning actual bodily harm in relation to the incident in November.
The jury were sent out to start their deliberations by judge Mr Justice Choudhury at 11.41am on Monday.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Scottish Sun
20 minutes ago
- Scottish Sun
I'm still traumatised & needed antidepressants – Tinder Swindler's victims reveal how life is now 10 years on
TO DATE I'm still traumatised & needed antidepressants – Tinder Swindler's victims reveal how life is now 10 years on Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A DECADE has passed since Cecilie Fjellhoy and Pernilla Sjoholm's lives were turned around by a man they knew as Simon Leviev. Posing as a billionaire diamond heir, he conned them and countless others out of millions. 8 Simon Leviev used Tinder to seduce and con women out of an estimated £7.4 million Credit: Instagram 8 Pernilla Sjoholm and Cecilie Fjellhoy – victims of tinder swindler Simon Leviev Credit: Pernilla Sjoholm Instagram 8 Tinder Swindler boasts luxury lifestyle with flash vehicles Credit: While the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler brought their story to the world, the women he affected say the aftermath and the long road to recovery were far more difficult than anyone could have imagined. "I'm still traumatised," Cecilie, 36, tells The Times. She reveals that 'no victim' should be placed into a courtroom and be forced to defend themselves. Between 2017 and 2019, he posed as Simon, a 31-year-old and the fictional son of billionaire Lev Leviev, to swindle women all over Europe. READ MORE ON TINDLER SWINDLE 'SAY MY NAME' Tinder Swindler breaks silence to attack victims & vows to expose 'truth' After changing his name from Shimon Hayut, Simon Leviev used Tinder to seduce and con women out of an estimated £7.4 million. He falsely claimed to be the son of "King of Diamonds," Lev Leviev, and spun stories about his enemies freezing his bank accounts or attacking his bodyguard, Piotr, to persuade the women to give him their savings or take out loans. Leviev was a wanted man in several European countries, having fled Israel in 2011 to avoid fraud charges. In 2019, he was arrested in Greece for using a fake passport and extradited to Israel. He faced charges for fraud, theft, and forgery, but none of these charges were related to his Tinder scheme or his other alleged crimes abroad. After fleeing Israel to avoid fraud charges from his early 20s, Leviev moved to Finland where he began the Tinder scheme. High-flying businesswoman targeted by The Tinder Swindler after he resurfaced on Instagram He had previously served two years in a Finnish prison for defrauding three women and was released in 2017. He briefly returned to Israel but escaped before he could be captured again. When he was finally arrested in 2019, it was for the forgery, theft, and fraud charges he had previously faced. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison but was released after just five months due to good behavior. Cecilie was conned into taking out nine loans totaling $250,000 (£190,000), and was hounded by creditors to the point where she contemplated suicide. Suicide She eventually sought help at a psychiatric unit and has spent the last seven years in therapy. She 'never wanted to be on' antidepressants but explains that she 'needed them.' Due to being hit with a lawsuit by creditors and police barging into her home, Cecilie needed to be on antidepressants. Pernilla, 38, also contemplated suicide after learning the truth about the man she considered a friend. He's really angry with all the successes that we have had Cecilie Fjellhoy She lost the $45,000 (£33,840) she had saved for a home deposit and then doubled that amount in legal fees when she tried to take her bank to court. The fallout from the exposé in a Norwegian newspaper led to death threats from Leviev, leaving her questioning not only "what I would do to myself; I didn't know what Simon might try to do to me." But today, the women are finally reclaiming their power. The enormous reach of the Netflix documentary made Leviev a recognisable figure, effectively ending his con. 8 He falsely claimed to be the son of "King of Diamonds," Lev Leviev Credit: 8 Pernilla Sjőholm, a Tinder Swindler victim Credit: Jam Press/Pernilla Sj�holm "He's really angry with all the successes that we have had," Cecilie says. "I think he really wanted us to be miserable for the rest of our lives." Instead, they've become fierce advocates for victims of romance fraud. They now travel the world giving talks about online safety, and Pernilla has even co-founded an identity verification platform. The goal Their new book, Swindled Never After: How We Survived (and You Can Spot) a Relationship Scammer, is an unflinching look at their journey, complete with online safety tips and expert insights. The goal, they say, is to change the laws and fight the victim-shaming that so often follows these crimes. Pernilla is now a mother to two-year-old twins and has moved on, refusing to let Leviev "continue to defraud me" by consuming her life with anger. Cecilie, who says she still "loves love," has also returned to dating, albeit with a new sense of caution. 8 Leviev had previously served two years in a Finnish prison for defrauding three women and was released in 2017 Credit: 8 Tinder has stated that they have banned Leviev from their app and that he is not on it under any known alias Credit: 8 Leviev has even reinvented himself as a real estate mogul and offers classes in business education Credit: Instagram She's not worried about being financially duped again, as, "There's nothing left. I'm bankrupt. I can't even get a credit card." While his victims continue to pay off the massive debts he left them with, Leviev is living as a free man in Israel, seemingly without any financial issues. He is rumoured to be dating an Israeli model, Kate Konlin, and his private Instagram account, with over 284,000 followers, is filled with photos of a lavish lifestyle, including helicopters and expensive dinners. Leviev has even reinvented himself as a real estate mogul and offers classes in business education. Tinder has stated that they have banned Leviev from their app and that he is not on it under any known alias.


Daily Mirror
3 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Woman smashed into ground from 4,000ft and survived – then terrifying truth emerged
A woman who miraculously escaped death after her parachute failed discovered that her horrific fall was no accident – and that her husband had tried to kill her twice After seeing a woman jump from an aircraft 4,000 feet up, onlookers could only watch in horror as her body slammed into the ground. In what at first appeared to be a freak accident, both the main and reserve chutes that keen skydiver Victoria Cilliers had been using that day failed to open. Speaking on the documentary SkyDive Murder Plot, Rob Camps, secretary of the parachuting club at Nertheravon Airfield in Witfield, said that it looked almost as if a 'bag of washing' had been thrown out of the plane. He added that it was 'sickening' to watch as Victoria fell for around 25 seconds. He had assumed that her fall would be fatal, and had even grabbed a body-bag before running to the field where she had landed. But what Paul discovered in the days following the horrific incident revealed that Victoria's fall had been no accident – but attempted murder. Victoria was an experienced skydiver, an accredited accelerated freefall (AFF) instructor with 2,654 jumps to her name, but nothing she could do during that terrifying 25-second fall could have prevented that bone-crushing impact. But miraculously, Victoria survived. She had suffered severe spinal and internal injuries, as well as a broken pelvis and five broken ribs, but was well enough to be interviewed by police a few days later. Police took an interest in Victoria's accident after an examination of her parachutes had revealed that the soft links – important components known to insiders as 'slinks' – seemed to be missing from both of parachutes. Without them, jumping out of an aircraft from 4,000 feet would mean almost certain death. Rob Camps had called in the police after he checked her parachute and realised what had happened. Investigators' suspicions quickly fell upon Emile Cilliers, Victoria' husband and the father of her two children. He had been with her the previous day, when a planned parachute jump had been called off due to bad weather, and had inexplicably carried her parachute with him into the loos when one of their children said she needed to use the toilet. Study of the 38-year-old army officer's phone records indicated that he had not only been cheating on his wife with another woman, an Austrian skydiving instructor he'd met on Tinder, but had also amassed significant debts due to his regular use of sex workers. But the problem for detectives investigating the case was that Victoria was unable to accept that the father of her two children could ever want to kill her. She remained under the charismatic South African's spell even after evidence emerged that the sabotage of Victoria's parachute was not Emile's first attempt on her life. Six days before that fateful parachute jump, Victoria had noticed a strong smell of gas in her kitchen. Emile had not been at home, telling his wife he was staying at the army barracks so he could get an early start in the morning. Examination of the gas pipes leading into the house showed irrefutable evidence that Emile had tampered with the valve – and that he had been perfectly willing to kill his children, as well as his wife. A check of his internet search history showed that he had been researching the availability of wet-nurses to feed their newborn baby before his wife's expected death. Still, Victoria found it hard to accept the truth, even after police presented her with the irrefutable evidence of her husband's guilt. She did eventually agree to testify against him, but in a huge twist changed her evidence on the witness stand, raising the possibility that she might somehow have been responsible for the accident. She testified that she had misled police in her initial interviews, and had exaggerated the time that he had been in the ops with her parachute: 'I made it sound worse than it was because I was humiliated. I wanted him to suffer." Emile consistently denied attempting to kill his wife throughout a seven-week trial at Winchester Crown Court and the jury eventually sent a note to the judge stating they would be unable to reach a verdict. With the prospect of a retrial, DI Paul Franklin and DC Maddy Hennah were sent back to the drawing-board. They doggedly assembled more evidence, interviewing Emile's ex-wife, Carly Cilliers, mother to two of his older children. They discovered that he had also rekindled his relationship with her. DI Franklin said that Emile's ability to lie so smoothly to all of the women in his life was the hallmark of a psychopath. He continued: 'He can have a conversation with his wife about picking up the children or a bit of shopping at the same time as arranging to meet someone he knows from Fabswingers for some weekend fun, and ringing someone from Adultwork to see if they are available. 'Three totally separate conversations at the same time, managed in such a way that there was never a wrong phone call to the wrong person. When you see that repeated constantly for years, you see what kind of person he was.' Even after Victoria's near-fatal fall, Emile was texting sex workers from her hospital bedside and arranging to meet them nearby. But Emile's lies began to unravel at his retrial and he was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder, as well as a third charge of recklessly endangering life. He received a minimum 18-year sentence. Meanwhile – at the same parachute club where she so narrowly escaped death – Victoria met former Royal Marine Simon Goodman and the two were married in October 2024.


Daily Mirror
4 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Two minutes of horror played out in chilling images as woman butchers ex on Christmas Day
In the early hours of Christmas Day morning, a "manipulative, emotionally volatile and jealous" woman brutally murdered her ex boyfriend after seeing him on Tinder. Kirsty Carless, 33, drove a knife i nto 31-year-old Louis Price's heart on December 25, 2024, in an attack "motivated by anger and jealousy and fuelled by cocaine and alcohol". She was on police bail for strangling Mr Price the month before when she carried out the murder. On Wednesday, after around a day of deliberation, a jury of seven men and five women found Carless guilty of murder and possession of an offensive weapon by unanimous verdicts in relation to the fatal stabbing. She was also found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm by a majority of 11 to one in connection with an incident in November 2024. She was cleared of intentional strangulation in relation to the same incident. And today, the killer was jailed for life and told she will serve a minimum of 25 years behind bars. Harrowing details of the murder, including chilling CCTV footage, have emerged, revealing the two minutes of brutality that played out on that tragic Christmas Day.