Life behind bars for murder of partner - The Solihull Observer

Life behind bars for murder of partner

Solihull Editorial 4th Sep, 2014 Updated: 21st Oct, 2016   0

“FROM the day it happened and for the rest of my life I am going to have to live in a world without my mom.

“I have no mom and no-one to call dad.

“How could the man I used to call dad do that to my mom knowing that she meant the world to me?”

Those were the words of heartbroken Katie Giles, read out in court after her ‘father’ was found guilty of her mum’s murder and before he was sentenced to life behind bars.




Clarke Dean repeatedly stabbed his long-suffering partner – Katie’s mum Michelle Giles – and slashed her throat as she desperately tried to fend him off and escape from their Solihull flat.

Although alcoholic Dean admitted killing Michelle, he had denied murdering her, and it was argued he was instead guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.


But after a trial lasting 12 days, a jury at Warwick Crown Court took just over three hours to find him guilty of murder by a unanimous verdict.

Dean (48) of Anchor Lane, Solihull, was jailed for life, with Judge Richard Griffith-Jones ordering that he should serve a minimum of 15 years.

Prosecutor Malcolm Morse had told the jury the issue was ‘whether or not at the time he was suffering from an abnormality of mental functioning with consequences which would limit his responsibility for what he did.’

He said 43-year-old Miss Giles, who worked at Starbucks in Solihull’s Touchwood Centre, had been in a relationship with Dean, who had a drink problem and had developed a condition known as alcohol dependent syndrome.

In the early hours of August 8 last year the couple’s 15-year-old daughter Katie was away from home when neighbours heard a terrifying scream as Dean launched his attack on Michelle.

Dean then rushed out onto the landing where he told one neighbour what he had done before going back inside, where Michelle was lying in a pool of blood just inside the door.

He then called 999, telling the operator: “Listen, I’ve cut her throat and stabbed her. I need the police. I’ve cut her throat and stabbed her.”

Dean was eventually talked through how to give CPR, which he could be heard doing until the police and paramedics arrived – too late to save Michelle, who died from her injuries despite their efforts to resuscitate her.

Mr Morse also read out statements from Katie and from Michelle’s brother Andrew Giles, whose family she is now living with.

David Aaronberg QC, defending, said Dean had broken down when he was read Katie’s statement in the cells.

He said: “I am deeply and truly sorry for my actions at that time. I love Katie very much and I think about her every day. I am sorry; so, so sorry.”

After Dean, who had sat slumped in the dock with his head in his hands, was led to the cells, Judge Griffith-Jones observed: “Just at a time when a young woman was reaching the age when she could be a friend of her mother, and at a time when she would value a role model, Katie lost her mother in those horrible circumstances.

“They are horrible because they are sudden, they are horrible because of the way in which she died, and they are horrible because of the fact that the perpetrator of her mother’s death was her father.”

Murdered Michelle Giles.

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