The case of Wendy Huggy

“As a result of new information received late last night.”

“The information suggested that Becky’s body had been cut up, and a search at the new location resulted in the discovery of body parts.”

In the early evening of March 3rd, 2015, officers acting on a confession arrived at a shed in Barton Court, Barton Hill, Bristol. What they found inside that outbuilding were bags and boxes sealed, stacked, and arranged. No sign of a struggle in that shed, no disturbance at all. In fact, the contents had been placed with what investigators would later describe as deliberate care. Inside were the dismembered remains of a 16-year-old girl. Her name was Rebecca Marie Watts. Everyone who loved her called her Becky. She had been missing for 12 days.

Becky Watts was born on the 3rd of June, 1998, in Bristol, England. She was the youngest child of Darren Galsworthy and Tanya Watts. Small, slight, and instinctively shy, Becky was the kind of person who saved her love for the people she trusted. Her family described her as someone who was, in their words, “like a tornado, hurricane, and sunbeam all at once.” But that openness, that warmth, wasn’t something she handed out easily. It was earned, and the people who earned it knew exactly how lucky they were.

When Becky was 3 years old, she was placed into foster care. The precise circumstances were painful and complicated, but the outcome was that her father, Darren, fought for custody of his daughter and won. She came to live with him in St. George, Bristol, a working-class neighborhood of red brick terrace houses and long, quiet streets, and it was there that she grew up. Darren, by his own account, loved her ferociously. He would describe losing her years later as “ripping your heart out and stamping on it.”

Darren eventually began a relationship and got married to a woman named Angie. Angie had a son of her own, a boy named Nathan, who was 12 years older than Becky. The two families blended. On weekends, Darren would recall they were out every weekend without fail. He would come to love Nathan, he said, as if he were his own. But that blending of those two families and what it produced is a story that would take years to fully surface.

Becky attended Summer Hill Junior School, and her teachers remember her as a quiet and gentle child. “Incredibly shy and incredibly quiet,” one teacher said. But by the end of year 5, she had started to come out of herself. The difficulties that came in her adolescence were serious. After starting secondary school, Becky was bullied about her weight. The bullying was severe and sustained. By the time she was referred to the child and adolescent mental health services in 2011, she had developed anorexia nervosa. At her lowest point, Becky weighed just six stone. She couldn’t attend school. Being in groups caused her such acute anxiety that she was for a period schooled in a hospital setting.

And yet she fought quietly, determinately in the way she did everything. By March of 2013, Becky was back to a healthy weight. A doctor who discharged her from CAMHS noted in the records that she was happy and joyful. During her time in that hospital setting, she had made friends, including a girl named Courtney Bicker, who would become her best friend and whom the family nicknamed the “Three Amigos.”

By late 2014, Becky was getting there. She had enrolled at KTS Training in Bristol to complete her GCSEs. She was becoming, in her stepmother Angie’s words, “really fashion conscious,” developing her own style and always looking immaculate. She had a boyfriend at this point. His name was Luke Oberhanssley, and they had been together since November 2014. Luke would later say he was not aware Becky had ever had any anxieties. To him, she always seemed happy. Angie, who had raised Becky as her own daughter, described her as two different people: shy on the outside, exuberant with the people she loved. “We were inseparable,” she said.

On the evening of the 18th of February, 2015, Becky went to a Skittles night at Barton Hill Rugby Club. She stayed overnight with a friend. By all accounts, she was relaxed and cheerful. Her friend, Adam Dancy, 17 years old, would later describe her last hours as really happy. He said, “We were just messing about, really laughing.”

The following morning, the 19th of February, Becky was dropped home at Crown Hill at around 8:00 AM. She was planning to catch up on some sleep. There is no way she could have known what was waiting. At approximately 11:00 AM that same morning, Angie Galsworthy, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, left the family home on Crown Hill for a hospital appointment. She had arranged for a key to be left outside for someone who planned to visit. That someone was her son, Nathan Matthews.

Just 3 minutes after Angie left at 11:03 AM, Becky sent a text message to a friend. It was routine, unremarkable. It was the last time anyone heard from her. Matthews and his girlfriend, Shauna Hoare, arrived at Crown Hill shortly after. What happened inside that house on Crown Hill was established through forensic evidence, phone records, CCTV, and Matthews’ own admissions under questioning. Becky was suffocated in her bedroom. According to the prosecution, she fought for her life. She was then stabbed 15 times.

Matthews had told investigators that he brought with him a large bag. Inside it, a stun gun, handcuffs, tape, and a mask. He had called Angie earlier that day, he would later claim, because he was angry about what he described as Becky’s treatment of her stepmother, that she was treating her like dirt, that she was endangering Angie’s health. His stated intention, he would tell the court, was to frighten her, to teach her a lesson.

The prosecution at Bristol Crown Court would describe it from the outset as a sexually motivated killing. Evidence recovered from phones and computers belonging to both Matthews and Hoare confirmed, in the prosecution’s words, a shared sexual interest in teenage and petite girls.

Angie returned home at around 12:45 PM. Matthews and Hoare remained in the house for the rest of that afternoon. They stayed even as other family members came home. Even as Becky’s boyfriend, Luke, arrived that evening asking after her and was told they didn’t think she was in. Just after 8:00 PM, Matthews and Hoare left Crown Hill. They drove back to their home on Cotton Mill Lane, Barton Hill. Becky’s body was in the boot of the car. That night, they ordered a takeaway. They made phone calls. They watched television. All normal behavior other than they had a dead body on their hands.

What followed over the next several days was methodical. On the 20th of February, the day after Becky was killed, Matthews was captured on CCTV at 12:51 PM at a B&Q store in Horfield purchasing a circular power saw, a face mask, goggles, and gloves. Earlier that day, he had been seen buying drain cleaner at a local supermarket. Between the 20th and 22nd of February, he and Hoare were captured on further CCTV footage shopping for cleaning products. They were preparing.

The dismemberment took place in the bathroom of the Cotton Mill Lane property. The remains were then placed into bags and boxes, loaded into the car, and transported to a shed at 9 Barton Court, the home of a neighbor. Carl Demetrius and his girlfriend, Jaydene Parsons, would later admit to having allowed the packages to be stored there, though both insisted they did not know the true contents.

Meanwhile, on Crown Hill, Becky Watts was nowhere to be seen. When Darren Galsworthy arrived home from work on the afternoon of the 19th of February and found no sign of his daughter, it was assumed initially that she had gone out. But Becky’s phone, her laptop, and her tablet computer were still in the house. She had not taken any money. She had not packed any clothes. She had told no one she was going anywhere.

At approximately 4:00 PM on the 20th of February, Becky was formally reported missing. Avon and Somerset Police made their first public appeal for information on the 22nd of February. The following day, Darren Galsworthy and Becky’s grandmother, Pat Watts, appeared before cameras in an emotional press conference.

“Beex, if you’re watching this, please come home,” Darren said, his voice barely holding. “We love you so much. And whatever you think, we can sort anything out. Don’t matter. Just come home. Sorry, I can’t.”

Pat Watts took over when Darren could no longer continue:

“Hi, Beex. It’s now you can see your dad. It’s a broken man. Just let someone else ring or text someone. And if you want, if you’re a bit worried about coming back because of all this hullabaloo, come and stay with me for a few days.”

Across Bristol, the search organized itself. More than a hundred volunteers turned out to comb the city’s parks, open spaces, and riverbanks. Officers from Avon and Somerset Police ran six specialist search teams daily. Experts from the National Crime Agency, the College of Policing, and National Missing Persons organizations were brought in.

Detective Inspector Richard Ocone made a direct video appeal, speaking not to the family, but to Becky herself:

“You are in no trouble. We are all just worried about you and we want to make sure you are okay. If you can just call home, one of your friends, or call us on 101, we can work with you to help work through any issues you are facing.”

The appeal was genuine, but by the time it was recorded, Becky had already been gone for days. Throughout the search, Nathan Matthews and Shauna Hoare were present. They joined the family. They appeared concerned. They gave statements to police in the early days of the investigation, saying that when they visited Crown Hill on the 19th of February, they had not seen Becky, but had heard the door slam and assumed she had gone out:

“Then we came back up. I went into the kitchen to get a drink. I think I was washing my hands. Then I heard the front door slam. Carried on washing my hands, went into the living room, and then I think it wasn’t until a lot later on that Angie asked me if Becky had gone out and I said, ‘Yeah, I heard the door go. She must have gone out earlier.'”

It was a detail investigators initially accepted. Police made a public appeal for the movements of a black Vauxhall Zafira between the 19th and 23rd of February. That vehicle belonged to Matthews. On the 28th of February, 9 days after Becky went missing, Matthews and Hoare were arrested in connection with her disappearance. On the 2nd of March, they were rearrested on suspicion of murder. The following day, the 3rd of March, 2015, police searched the shed at 9 Barton Court, Barton Hill, following a confession from Matthews. And that is where this story began.

There is something specific that needs to be said about the timeline between Becky’s disappearance and the arrests. For 9 days, Nathan Matthews sat inside the investigation as a witness. He gave statements. He was interviewed on one occasion and repeated again that he had heard the door slam and assumed Becky had left. He watched his mother grieve. He sat through a press conference where his stepfather appealed for his daughter’s return.

Not a single one of those behaviors is what broke the case. What broke the case was CCTV. His face on a camera buying a circular saw the morning after Becky died. His face again buying cleaning products. His face on footage from a Tesco on the 19th of February before they arrived at Crown Hill purchasing batteries for the stun guns they intended to use. The camera caught what the performance concealed.

This is not a commentary on police failure. The investigation, once rearrest happened, moved quickly and decisively, but it is worth holding the image: a man who had just killed his stepsister sitting in a room with her father performing grief and being believed, not because investigators were negligent, but because the performance was sustained and premeditated in the same way the killing itself was.

The murder trial opened at Bristol Crown Court on the 6th of October, 2015. Nathan Matthews, 28 years old at the time of the trial, admitted killing Becky. He admitted to storing her remains, but he denied murder, entering a plea of manslaughter. His account, the account he offered to the jury, was that he had intended only to kidnap and frighten his stepsister, that he had brought restraints and a stun gun as tools of intimidation, that the killing had been accidental. Shauna Hoare, 21 years old at the time of the trial, denied all charges.

Opening the prosecution case, William Mousley QC described to the court what the evidence showed had happened in that bedroom on Crown Hill:

“She was suffocated despite her fighting for her life. There followed a deliberate, carefully planned, and grotesquely executed plan to cover up her killing.”

Becky’s mother, Tanya Watts, left the courtroom in tears as Mousley detailed what the prosecution alleged had taken place. The prosecution came at the case with four main types of evidence. The biggest one: CCTV footage. Matthews and Hoare bought a saw, cleaning products, batteries—stuff that clearly linked them to the crime—and the timing was right around the killing. Then there’s DNA. Both their profiles showed up on things found in the shed right next to the remains. Next, digital proof. The investigators dug into their phones and computers and said the data showed both of them had a sexual interest in teenage girls. And finally, forensic experts testified that the level of dismemberment suggested two people. It would have been way harder for one person alone.

Matthews’s defense pushed for manslaughter, but the jury wasn’t buying it. In just 3 hours and 27 minutes, they threw that idea out. On November 11th, 2015, Matthews was found guilty of murder. Hoare was found guilty of manslaughter. Both of them racked up more charges: conspiracy to kidnap, perverting the course of justice, stopping a lawful burial, plus possession of illegal stun guns.

Sentencing happened two days later on November 13th. Justice Dingemans, weeping as he finished his remarks, spoke directly to Matthews:

“The evidence made it clear the planned kidnapping was sexually motivated and fixated on petite teenage girls.”

Dingemans also said Hoare was convinced to join in. He ended with a nod to Becky’s family, saying they’d handled themselves with dignity through terrible circumstances. He acknowledged how hard it was for everyone, but especially for Becky’s loved ones.

Matthews got life. He can’t even think about parole for 33 years. Hoare got 17 years. Both appealed in June 2016, but the Court of Appeals shut them down. The judges said there wasn’t any reasonable argument the convictions were unsafe or the sentences too harsh. James Ireland and Donovan Demetrius were cleared. They didn’t help the offenders after all. Carl Demetrius, who kept the packages in his shed, got two years. His girlfriend, Jaydene Parsons, who owned the shed, was sentenced to 16 months.

There’s a detail buried in the sentencing that really ought to have gotten more attention when the case hit the news. Justice Dingemans said Matthews got a minimum term of 33 years, partly because he was of “previous good character.” That’s just legal speak for no prior convictions. Sentencing guidelines required judges to treat a clean record like a mitigating factor, even in murder cases. But the trial laid out evidence showing Matthews and Hoare had a disturbing obsession with teenage and petite girls. The prosecution found plenty of material on their devices, and it wasn’t just a one-off. It had built up over time and everything about the crime itself—the prep, the bag, the restraints, the stun gun, the battery spot on the morning of the killing—made it obvious this wasn’t sudden. It was planned.

So, “previous good character” in this context basically meant hadn’t been caught yet. That 33-year minimum is among the toughest sentences handed out for murder in England. It’s not lenient. But no prior convictions just means nobody had charged him before. It’s not the same thing as no prior harm. The system doesn’t always recognize that difference.

In April 2015, before the trial even began, Becky’s family said their final goodbyes. Her funeral happened on April 17th at St. Ambrose’s Church in Whitehall, Bristol. That’s the same church where Darren and Angie got married and the same place where Becky, dressed in blue as a bridesmaid, was caught smiling in a photo on her dad’s wedding day. Her father called the service an occasion to celebrate Becky’s life. Afterward, close family and friends gathered for a private burial at Avon View Cemetery. During his tribute, Darren remembered:

“She started to go out more and more and became really fashion conscious, developing her own style and always looked immaculate.”

He added:

“Becky has left a huge void in our lives and the nation. We love you so much.”

A year later, in February 2016, people put a wooden bench in Goat’s Field near her home on Crown Hill. It’s a spot for anyone passing by to sit and maybe remember the girl who grew up there. In March 2016, Darren released a memoir about Becky. It was first called “Becky,” then later reissued as “The Evil Within.” He explained it was his way of giving her back something the headlines had stolen, a focus on her life, not just her death.

After the verdict, Becky’s mother, Tanya, her grandmother, Pat, and her brother, Daniel, stood outside Bristol Crown Court and shared a message. They wanted everyone to remember one thing:

“We loved Becky. She was a beautiful, happy, funny, fiery, caring, loyal, and witty girl. She came into your life and made you feel alive.”

They urged parents:

“Listen to your kids. Don’t ignore or dismiss what they’re trying to say. If they’re worried about something, take time to listen.”