MAN CONVICTED OF GRUESOME 1996 MURDER OF TEENAGER KELLY BATES IN MANCHESTER
In one of the most horrific murders ever documented in the UK, a 17-year-old girl was subjected to weeks of torture by her abusive partner, James Patterson Smith, who gouged out her eyes and partially scalped her.On 16 April 1996, Greater Manchester Police received a call from a man claiming that his girlfriend, Kelly Anne Bates, had accidentally drowned in the bath, marking the beginning of a series of shocking revelations for the police team.
James Patterson Smith, then in his late 40s, concocted a tale about attempting and failing to resuscitate Kelly, but this story was quickly dismissed when officers found her lifeless body drenched in blood at his home.
Investigators concluded Kelly had sustained dozens of heinous injuries inflicted by Smith, who had manipulated her.
A pathologist reported that Kelly's injuries were so extensive that he had examined almost 600 victims of homicide but never encountered injuries as severe, with over 150 recorded injuries inflicted over approximately a month.
Kelly, who was just 16 when she was brought into the relationship and only 17 at her death, had been starved, tied to a radiator by her hair, burned with an iron, stabbed numerous times, and disfigured, including her eyes being gouged out and her scalp partially removed.
Her eyes had been removed 'not less than five days and not more than three weeks before her death,' which was ultimately caused by drowning.
Smith was convicted of her murder and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison.
During his trial, the prosecutor, Peter Openshaw, described the act as deliberate disfigurement and torture, noting it was systematic rather than a sudden eruption of violence: '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.' Smith also claimed he was the victim, alleging provocation and that Kelly inflicted injuries upon herself to frame him, but these claims were dismissed by the jury.
Smith was found guilty of Kelly Bates's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 20 years; his first parole hearing was in 2023, which was denied.
