An obsessed and jealous teenager who stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death in an alleyway has been detained for life and told he will serve a minimum of 17 years.
Logan MacPhail murdered 15-year-old Holly Newton in Hexham, Northumberland, in January 2023.
He stabbed her 36 times after he stalked her for an hour as she walked with friends after school.
On Friday, Mr Justice Hilliard described the attack on Holly as “vicious and brutal”.
Newcastle crown court heard that MacPhail, who was 16 at the time of the murder and is now 17, had been Holly’s first and only boyfriend and at the start it was “a typical teenage relationship”.
But MacPhail became obsessed with Holly, wanting to know where she was and who she was going out with. Holly’s mother, Micala Trussler, said her daughter was a victim of domestic abuse.
He killed Holly, from Haltwhistle, Northumberland, after she tried to break up with him.
The judge said the relationship between MacPhail and Holly had “its ups and downs” but was nothing out of the ordinary.When Holly indicated the relationship was over “you were not able to accept that. You were obsessed by Holly”, he said.
MacPhail lured Holly into an alleyway with the specific aim of attacking her where other people could not intervene, he said. “You were filled with resentment and jealousy but still able to calculate where you could best attack her and able to wait until you got that opportunity.”
Hilliard said the attack had lasted a minute or so and included stab wounds to her head. It meant Holly’s mother was prevented from seeing her daughter because of the “horrifying condition she was in”.
Trussler spoke at the sentencing hearing of being unable to hug, kiss or even touch her daughter because she was “a crime scene, she was evidence”.
Hilliard said: “The stark facts are that you made a conscious decision to stab a 15-year-old girl to death with a knife that you were carrying unlawfully in a public place having followed her secretly around town for an hour, all because your relationship with her had ended.
“You were jealous of the fact she might see someone else.
“What happened in this case should not happen to any child or any parent.”
Speaking of the family’s loss, the judge said: “All those years ahead for a 15-year-old girl that she and they will never see.”
MacPhail also stabbed a boy who tried to intervene to help Holly. The boy stood up in court to deliver a victim impact statement in which he said he was struggling with his mental health and found it difficult to concentrate.
The court heard that the night before he murdered Holly, MacPhail had travelled 40 miles from his home to hers and hung around for hours.
He was eventually taken home by police who had been alerted by his mother that he was missing.
MacPhail, from Gateshead, has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and has learning difficulties, but the judge said he was sure he knew what he was doing.
Nigel Edwards KC, defending, said MacPhail’s progress since being in secure accommodation has been “meteoric”.
The judge told MacPhail: “I am sure you can make further progress if you continue to try whilst you are in custody, you can definitely do better than you sometimes think.”
Holly’s family believe she was a victim of MacPhail’s controlling behaviour and domestic abuse, but she is too young for it to be categorised that way.
Trussler told the court: “I do not agree that only those over the age of 16 can be victims of domestic abuse and I will use Holly’s experience to petition for change.
“I firmly believe that Logan thought if he couldn’t have Holly, then no one else could.”
Susan Dungworth, the police and crime commissioner for Northumbria, backed the family’s call for a law change. “We need an urgent review of current legislation and how the system can better protect young victims in coercive, controlling and abusive relationships,” she said.
MacPhail claimed he never planned to attack Holly but wanted to use the knife to kill himself. He denied murder but admitted manslaughter, claiming he blacked out, but a jury rejected his story after a six-week trial.
