SO WHO KILLED MY GIRL THEN?

Kathy Taylor spoke out after London drug dealers Trevor Smith and Fergal Scollan, convicted and jailed for life at Lewes Crown Court in 1997, were cleared after a retrial at the Old Bailey.

She said: "I'm disgusted how this has turned out and it has destroyed my faith in the justice system and the police.

"My daughter was stabbed to death three years ago and no one has been made to pay.

"I want to know who killed my daughter, and I want them behind bars.

"I won't rest until they are."

Smith and Scollan's barrister successfully argued there was no case to answer.

Katrina had been stabbed to death in the graveyard of Brighton's parish church of St Nicholas in Dyke Road in a revenge attack for her part in a burglary.

But the defence argued there was no evidence of what happened in the churchyard and nothing to point to who was holding the murder weapon.

The Common Serjeant Judge Neil Denison QC agreed and directed the jury to acquit the pair.

The judge placed a reporting embargo on the case until now because there was still a prospect of the pair facing retrials on their other convictions of imprisoning Katrina.

Yesterday, the false imprisonment charge was dropped against Scollan while Smith admitted it.

He was jailed for 30 months, but walked free because of the time he has already spent on remand.

The court heard that one way or another Smith, 27, and Scollan, 25, had already served the equivalent of a five-year jail term.

Smith's girlfriend Neisha Williams, whose home in Bolney Road, Moulsecoomb, Brighton, Katrina had helped burgle and wreck, was cleared of murdering Katrina in 1997 but sentenced to two years for false imprisonment. Her brother Simon was cleared of the same charge and of murdering Katrina during the same trial.

The court heard during both trials how Katrina had stood look-out during the burglary as two others stripped Neisha's house.

Smith and Scollan were alleged to have held Katrina prisoner in Neisha's new home in Centurion Road, Brighton, until she was taken to the nearby St Nicholas churchyard and murdered.

Katrina, whose daughter Kyia celebrated her fourth birthday yesterday, was described in court as very slight and frail. She had been tracked down by a gang of violent vigilantes.

Today, Det Insp Steve Fowler, who helped lead the murder inquiry, said: "The police thoroughly investigated the tragic murder of Katrina Taylor.

"In 1997 four defendants stood trial for her murder for which two were convicted.

"Through no fault of the prosecution case, a retrial was ordered by the Court of Appeal.

"During the retrial it was ruled there was insufficient evidence to proceed with the case and both defendants were found not guilty.

"The last three-and-a-half years have been an extremely difficult time for the Taylor family and my feelings go out to them.

"The Katrina Taylor murder file remains open and if anyone has information about her murder who we haven't already spoken to, I would urge them to come forward and contact the police."

We tell Kyia her mummy's in heaven with Jesus Chris

LITTLE Kyia Taylor went to bed on her fourth birthday last night and blew a kiss to her murdered mother.

"Good night mummy," she said. "God bless.

"I love you and I hope Jesus is looking after you."

It is a ritual she performs every night at her home in Pankhurst Avenue, Brighton.

The four-year-old was just a baby when her mother was stabbed to death in a Brighton churchyard.

Kyia, now adopted by Katrina's mother, Kathy, talks to her mum when visiting her grave in Bear Road or the scene of the murder in the grounds of St Nicholas's Church.

She takes Katrina sweets or little teddy bears and leaves them alongside the wooden cross in Bear Road or the tree close to where she died at the church, a tree that is now a shrine.

Determined

Kathy says Kyia knows what happened and will learn more as she grows: "I've kept every cutting from the Argus to show her. I don't know how it will affect her later but I'm determined she sees everything.

"She talks a lot about Katrina. She tells her friends 'My mummy lives with Jesus'. She wants to be like her friends who have mummies at home."

Kathy is so angry and bitter that she stopped taking Kyia to school recently, frightened of people asking her about the trial and upsetting her.

She lashed out at a policeman at her home one night when she called them during one outburst of frustration.

"I kicked him in the groin. I'm really sorry about it now. It wasn't his fault but I get so angry.

"If police had acted differently when the whole thing started then Katrina would be here now."

Officers were called to her former home in Bolney Road when a gang burst in looking for Katrina in connection with the burglary across the road.

No charges were laid and two months later Katrina was murdered.

Kathy, 43, said: "I have lost my daughter and Kyia has lost her mummy. And the killer or killers are still out there."

Police fitted extra security to Kathy's home after a series of vandals attacks.

But she wants the security removed: "I hope whoever killed my daughter comes after me - I will attack them."

Described as lively, extrovert and sometimes loud, Katrina attended Falmer School where she did well in sport, especially netball. But she had a troubled youth, a time when she was sexually abused by one of her mother's ex-boyfriends.

Not surprisingly, she left school, where she crossed teachers and was below average academically, as soon as she could with few qualifications.

From there she started on a dangerous road of drugs, dabbling first in soft substances and then heroin.

Before her death, she was taking three "shots" a day, costing nearly £200 a week.

Katrina sometimes financed her habit through crime, mainly thefts and burglaries. She stole for a quick fix, taking risks just to pay for the next hit in a community dogged by widespread drug-taking.

And it was by taking part in one burglary that she paved the way for her brutal killing.

A house across the street from her family home in Bolney Road was ransacked on May 9, 1996.

The 1997 trial at Lewes Crown Court heard how the house was the home of Neisha Williams, a former partner of mechanic Trevor Smith, who sold drugs from the house, drugs Katrina went looking for on the night of the ill-fated break-in.

Smith, a Londoner who loved everything black and who adopted a Caribbean patois, dated Williams, a black Brighton woman. They had a turbulent relationship.

Split

The jury heard how they lived at 10, Bolney Road, Moulescoomb, but split up in 1995. They kept in touch and Smith also made contact with Williams' brother Simon, who was growing cannabis from his house in Centurion Road.

With information supplied by Williams, Smith and close friend Fergus Scollan set up their own "skunk" growing concern at their home in Cricklewood, London. They soon had big ideas and expected to earn £120,000 from their operation.

But when thieves smashed their way into Neshia Williams' house, they were hell-bent on revenge, Lewes Crown Court was told.

The thieves, of which Katrina was one, were especially vindictive. Besides stealing valuables, the offenders smashed up furniture, piled clothes in a room and set fire to them and pulled a washing machine out from the wall, leaving the house to flood. Katrina, who stood as watch during the break-in, later sold some of the haul of jewellery, for a paltry £20 heroin fix.

A month later, Katrina was charged with the burglary and, as the police continued their investigation, so-called "heavies" launched their own probe into the raid on one of their own. The heavies were Smith and his henchman Scollan, the first trial was told.

A gang carried out house-to-house inquiries the find the culprits and were ruthless with anyone who refused to co-operate, beating and stabbing anyone reluctant to talk.

Katrina's aunt, Susan Tully, said men from London were looking for Katrina. She said: "They banged on the door and told her mum Kathy they wanted to get her. They said they were going to kill her."

Police wanted Katrina remanded in custody for her own safety but magistrates granted her application for bail. She had an eight-month-old daughter and wanted to see her.

Katrina lived at a Brighton hostel, constantly in fear of the hounds who terrorised a whole neighbourhood in their search for her. Two months after the burglary, she was spotted at the Sheridan Hotel in King's Road by Neisha's brother Simon.

Katrina pleaded with him not to hurt her as she was driven to his house in Centurion Road. It was there, for the first time, that she stood, facing Neisha, the woman whose home she helped trash. The same "heavies" who marched through Katrina's neighbourhood were summoned to the house.

Katrina was terrorised as she sat on a couch in the lounge. Scollan sat one side of her while Smith held a large serrated knife to her throat, it was alleged in court. She wept, offering to pay back money from her dole money.

Neighbours heard no sound as Katrina took the short walk late at night to the nearby graveyard at St Nicholas Church.

The route took her through a dark, tree-lined narrow twitten past St Paul's Primary School, across Church Street and into the cemetery of Brighton's parish church.

There she was stabbed six times, once through an arm and five times in the chest.

The Lewes trial heard how it was Scollan and Smith who committed the murder, a charge they always denied.

Katrina's body was left slumped by a tree near a tombstone.

The next day, dog walkers made the grim discovery which prompted Operation Rambler, a top-level murder inquiry led by Det Chief Insp George Smith.

They quickly began the task of slotting pieces of the jigsaw together, battling against a frightened community too scared to talk.

The Argus was later praised for helping police in their investigation by publishing Katrina's description just hours after her killing, prompting vital witnesses to come forward.

Staff at the Sheridan Hotel remember her getting into a white Renault. Police checks later revealed Simon Williams drove a white Renault and officers were on the trail.

Katrina's death was as ironic as it was savage.

Reconstruction

Soon after her stabbed body was found in a Brighton cemetery it emerged she had taken part in a police reconstruction to find the killer of "Babes in the Wood" Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway.

As a nine-year-old, she appeared in the Wild Park reconstruction to help police retrace the girls' last steps. They were found strangled in woods in 1986, ten years before Katrina's own body was discovered in St Nicholas's churchyard in Dyke Road in July 1996.

No one could have predicted that Katrina would also become a murder victim.

But soon after she was found dead, Lianne Martin, who starred with Katrina in the unsuccessful reconstruction, told how she was left devastated when she heard what had happened.

Most of the evidence from the first trial was heard by the Old Bail jury but there one important difference.

For legal reasons, neither Neisha or Simon Williams gave evidence at the retrial, taking out pieces of what was a prosecution puzzle built on circumstancial evidence.

In the end, the judge decided there was insufficient evidence to continue. Smith and Scollan were innocent of murder.

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