My 17-year-old daughter was murdered by her ex. I never want another mother to go through this

Telegraph

14 hours ago

Every May for the last six years, Carole Gould has laid flowers at a memorial in the courtyard of Hardenhuish School in Chippenham, Wiltshire. Often, she is accompanied by a group of young women, the best friends of her daughter Ellie. She would be 23 years old now had she not been murdered three months after her 17th birthday by her first boyfriend, Thomas Griffiths.
The day after she ended their short romance, on May 3, 2019, Griffiths 17, arrived at the house in Calne, Wiltshire, strangled her until she was unconscious and stabbed her in the kitchen using one of the family's steak knives. He left her in a pool of blood to be found four hours later by Gould's husband, Matt, when he returned home from work. Later that afternoon, Griffiths was picked up by the police as a suspect. It took him three months to admit to killing Ellie. In August 2019, he was sentenced to life at Bristol Crown Court, with a minimum term of 12.5 years, half of which he has now served.
Today, I am sitting on the sofa with Ellie's mother, Carole, 55, in that same family house in Calne, just two miles away from where Griffiths' family still live. It's a hot day and she is dressed for summer in white jeans and white trainers.
The Goulds, despite their grief, have their reasons for staying in Calne, 'even though you pull into every public car park thinking you might see [the Griffiths' family]. But we have our friends, we have our support network here. Why should it be us who have to move away? But if he is let out for weekends by the parole board in three years time, moving is something we will have to think about.'
On the first anniversary of Ellie's murder, May 2020, Carole actively sought out Thomas's family at their home. She was, she says, 'fuelled with emotion' in a fog of rage and grief. 'I shouted at them on the doorstep, 'All I have left of my precious daughter is a box of her ashes and a lock of her hair because of the monstrous act of your son',' she remembers. 'I wanted some acknowledgement from them, some remorse.'
The murder was prompted by rejection, much as it was in the teenage murder story depicted in the Netflix series Adolescence. Adolescence has brought toxic behaviour in young males to the forefront of public consciousness, especially after Keir Starmer talked about how it was 'really hard to watch' with his teenage children. However, his Government have been slow to bring in changes to domestic homicide sentencing – there is currently a 10-year sentencing disparity between when a weapon is carried to the scene (25 years minimum), for example a stabbing in the street, and when you pick up a knife in the home and murder someone (15 years).
'We had great hopes of a Labour government,' Gould says. 'The justice system doesn't take into account the devastation, the pain that we live with every single day.'
'We were happy once'
In March, Gould was awarded an OBE at Buckingham Palace by Princess Anne along with another bereaved mother, Julie Devey (whose daughter, Poppy was murdered in 2018 by her ex-boyfriend). Together, the mothers co-founded the campaign group Killed Women, which works to protect women from domestic violence through education and judicial change.
'When I told Princess Anne that Ellie's life was deemed worthy of only 12 years, there was a deep intake of breath. She was quite shocked and horrified.' In February, Carole and Matt Gould had a private meeting with the Queen at an event to combat violence against women and girls at Bowood in Wiltshire. 'Tell the Queen the whole story', she was told by one of the organisers. 'I could tell by the look on the Queen's face that she was horrified. Her eyes were getting bigger and bigger.
'She later addressed the group and talked about the need for education and changes in the justice system.' The Lord Chancellor has now ordered the Law Commission to conduct a review of homicide law and sentencing, with no clear time frame as yet: 'So we are starting all over again. The previous government had approved this by the end.'
In the month leading up to Ellie's murder, Carole explains, Griffiths' behaviour changed. He became possessive and Ellie had felt stifled. Another girl came forward after Ellie's murder to report that she had witnessed her friend experiencing Griffiths' need to control her too: 'She told me that Griffiths was always wanting to know where her friend was,' says Gould, 'and sent this girlfriend a picture with the message 'I can see you'. 'He's stalking you', said the friend. 'Stop going out with him.'
'So he had these controlling tendencies previously,' Gould says. 'And what we know now [from experts] is that the need for control gets worse and worse. Sadly, Ellie was girlfriend number two. She was the one he murdered.'
Pictures of Ellie fill the sitting room, such as one of her leading her first ever pony when she was 10; clearing a cross country hedge on Blackjack, the beloved pony she so frequently rode around the time of her death. There is a formal studio photograph of her on the wall, her hands cupped in her lap and her brown ringlets clipped back. Her brother, two years older, now 25, similarly smart, sits in the frame above.
There is a framed original drawing on the wall too by Charlie Mackesy, bestselling author of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse. He responded to a request from a friend of the Gould's to create something beautiful in Ellie's memory. In the image, The Boy is – fittingly – on a horse. The Mole sits behind him. The Fox is by the horse's legs. 'What lifts you and gives you hope?' asks The Boy. 'The thought of Ellie,' says the horse.
It is the beauty of Ellie's life, rather than the brutality of the way it ended, which makes her mother cry now as we sit together.
There is a plaque bearing the name Eleanor Rose Gould at the school's entrance, commemorating this life; her dedication to her three A-levels. She was getting high marks even in the Lower Sixth; her devotion to Blackjack; her place on the school equestrian team; her determination to get to university to study psychology; the way she loved watching a film with her best friend Tilda, eating a korma, both of them in their pyjamas.
'She was caring, kind and great fun to be around. Even at the start we thought Griffiths was punching above his weight with her because she was just so very popular. She was the social glue.'
Days before Ellie Gould was murdered, she received an A* in her Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) which asked the question 'Should Child Killers be Punished?' It was to be devastatingly prophetic.
'We were happy once, a happy family. Six years on we are plodding along, trying to put a smile on, but we're all broken inside. We are just so sad.'
The reason Carole Gould tells the story of Ellie's murder – 'I've told it so many times since' – is that she hopes it will bring about the much-needed change referred to by the Queen.
'I am Ellie's voice now. The conclusion of her EPQ was that Jamie Bulger and his child killers were all let down. What about the parents, the school, the social services? '
Gould's point is that everybody needs to look out for signs of potential danger; parents of boys and girls, friends who spot behaviours in their peers, teachers, club leaders. After the Domestic Homicide Review, an independent, multi-agency report into Ellie's death was closed, a coach from Chippenham rugby club came forward to say he'd witnessed Thomas Griffiths' explosive anger. 'And what about children who are bullies in primary school? Maybe something is going on at home?,' Gould says.
Thomas Griffiths had seemed innocuous at first: 'Some of Ellie's friends had been at primary school with him,' says Gould. 'Ellie had been at the same senior school since Year Seven, but had only really got to know him in the sixth form. He lived in a village up the road. He had asked her out three months before and of course, it was her first boyfriend so I wanted to know the details, but he sounded a safe bet.'
'We know now there were many red flags with Griffiths. He loved bombed Ellie, wanted to buy her expensive gifts, he started to resent her seeing her friends and then started talking about marriage and children. She was going to university. I've since learnt this is called 'educational sabotage'.'
Gould remembers how Griffiths gaslit Ellie about an arrangement he said he'd made with her when she wanted to see a friend, saying 'But my mum has bought food for you'. 'When I said 'Ellie, is there a chance you might have forgotten the arrangement', she said 'no mum, absolutely not.'' When Ellie chose to spend a Saturday night with her mother, Griffiths bombarded Ellie with texts throughout the evening. 'Oh Ellie,' I said to her, 'You don't want to be going out with him.'
'My husband didn't like him much from the start as he didn't have much to say for himself, but I thought 'it's a first relationship, it's not going to last.' '
'I kept saying to her 'well, what are you going to do?' and she said 'mum, it's fine, I'll sort it. Don't be a helicopter mum, leave it to me.''
What mother of a teen in a first relationship isn't treading a line between motherly responsible concern and over-involvement?
'I didn't know enough about coercive control in teenagers then to know that this [moment of ending it with him] would be a really dangerous point for her.'
'The actions of a psychopath'
On Thursday May 2, 2019, Ellie did as she had intended, and broke up with him. The last time Gould saw her was that Friday morning when she left for work. Ellie was revising for her mock A-Levels at home until midday and then getting picked up by a friend to go into school.
'I thought we would have a good long chat at the stables after school. I knew he didn't have lessons after lunch and remember thinking 'by the time she gets there, he'll have gone home'. It was a bank holiday weekend, and I knew there might be a bit of awkwardness on Tuesday, but at 17, [life] moves on.'
Griffiths knocked on the door at around 10.45am. A neighbour working from home saw him on the doorstep, dressed all in black with his sweatshirt hood over his head.
'My biggest regret is not saying to her 'Don't let him in the house'. Maybe if she'd learnt self-defence, could she have got free and run outside? I don't know….' She pauses.
'I know she was perfectly entitled to end that relationship. He is the only one to blame. We have no doubt he turned up to take his revenge. In the court of law, it is not [seen] as premeditated because he didn't have the weapon with him but look at how calculated he was before and afterwards?'
Griffiths had been driven into school but had then messaged his teachers saying he wasn't well. He got the bus back to his house, where he changed into black. While he was changing, his mother came home. He hid in the wardrobe to avoid inviting questions about why he was back there (a detail which came out in court). Sensing that time was running out, Griffiths took a family car and drove it (illegally, with no full driving licence) to Ellie's house.
He strangled Ellie until she passed out and then grabbed a kitchen knife from the block and stabbed her thirteen times. It is known from the scratch marks covering his face that she tried to fight him off. When he knew she was dead, he wiped down the bloody surfaces and the knife, put it in her hand and reinserted the knife into a wound in her neck, in an attempt to make the wounds appear self-inflicted. He then used her finger to unlock her phone, and pretending to be her, texted the friend due to pick her up and told her not to come over.
'They are the actions of a psychopath,' Gould says. 'He left her on the kitchen floor knowing that Matt or I were going to come home and find her. And he calmly drove home. When he was confronted by his neighbours about scratches on his face, he said he'd been depressed and self-harming, they asked him why he was driving without a licence, he said he'd been practising reversing round a bend. And then he walked 10 minutes from his house to dispose of the bloodied cloths in the woods.'
Matt Gould came home from work around 3pm and found her, her hand still on the knife where Griffiths had put it. Carole Gould remembers taking his call. He did not tell her then that Ellie was dead, but that 'Ellie has had a terrible accident. Come home, please drive carefully.'
'I was wracking my brains, asking myself what sort of accident could she have had in the home?'. She turned into their road, full of modern houses and neat lawns, and saw police cars strewn everywhere and an ambulance: 'Matt was sobbing at the end of the drive.'
'It wasn't until later on in the police station, in the family suite, when they told us they'd arrested a young man that the penny dropped. I said 'It's the boyfriend isn't it?''
At the time of his arrest, Thomas Griffiths was still under 18, so classed as a juvenile. His sentence was reduced, taking into consideration; his age, the fact that he hadn't carried a weapon to the scene (the source of ongoing Killed Women campaigning), and a letter he wrote to the judge expressing remorse ('although we have seen no remorse' Gould says). 'I kept saying to our barrister 'how long will he get, how long will he get?' When I heard 12 years, I thought 'I can't cope. That's not justice.' He should be in prison for 20 or 30 years minimum.'
At the sentencing, the judge, Justice Garnham said: 'There can be no more dreadful scene for any parent to contemplate than that which confronted Ellie's father when he came home that day from work… The effect of your actions has not only been to snuff out the life of this bright, intelligent, talented and vivacious young woman… but also to wreak misery and heartbreak on her family and friends.'
'I don't want to have to keep fighting forever'
In the last six years of Gould's campaigning – 'every afternoon and evening after I get in from the estate agents where I work part-time. It's another full time job really ' – there has been a major win.
In 2021, 'Ellie's Law' was passed, bringing in a change in sentencing guidelines. This means that sentencing for teenagers is now more aligned with adult sentencing. So for example, a juvenile who commits domestic homicide will receive a minimum 14-year jail term.
It was too late to get justice for Ellie, but 'Ellie's Law' meant that Axel Rudakubana, 17 when he killed three girls in Southport last year, started a minimum term of 27 years as opposed to 12. He was jailed for at least 52 years.
Together with Julie Devey, Gould has successfully campaigned for aggravating factors such as the use of disproportionate force in murder to contribute to sentencing.
A few days after we meet, Gould will be at Number 10, part of a group presenting a 105,000-strong petition calling on the compulsory education of healthy relationships in school for 16-18-year-olds. Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) is taught in all schools but, she says, 'part of this [new] education could be 'where do you go if you find yourself in a toxic relationship. Who can give you guidance? We want these red flags to be talked about in schools and with parents.'
At a recent event held by Beira's Place, an Edinburgh-based female support service set up by JK Rowling, accounts were given of schoolgirls between 13 and 17 being tracked on their phones by their boyfriends, of girls being told to 'check in' with their boyfriends between lessons and of having to send pictures of who they were sitting next to in class, with other boys being banned.
'I'd like Ellie's story to be told in every school,' Gould says. 'It's a societal problem. Let's ask males to call out male behaviour. Let's talk about it in schools. It's a male problem. Parents, parent your children. Fathers, be a good role model to your boys. Teach them respect, teach them how they should be treating women. Ask your children 'what have you been watching on the internet. How do you feel about your girlfriend?' Talk to them! I think that is where we are going wrong. Parents have no idea what their children are accessing.'
There have been two politicians along the way whose commitment and compassion, Gould feels, have been impeccable: Labour's Jess Phillips, first in opposition and now as Safeguarding Minister, and the Tory's Sir Robert Buckland who served as lord chancellor and justice secretary from 2019-2021. He has never stopped supporting the Killed Women campaign, despite his party no longer being in power.
Ellie Gould's murder continues to shape the lives of those who loved her. 'Her death is affecting the choices her friends are making now about their lives. One friend wants to go into the police. Another has gone on to do a Masters in Forensic Psychology. She's been working in a prison. They all want to make a difference.
'The family had therapy at the beginning and it probably helped but I couldn't continue. It opens up a very painful wound.
'With Killed Women, we are a voice of people who have had lived experience and who want different laws. I never want another mother to go through this. I thought this sentencing change would be over the line now. I don't want to have to keep fighting forever.'