March 1998, 6:30 in the morning.

A young woman walks to a bus stop in Oldm, England.

She’s heading to work.

It’s still dark.

She doesn’t know that someone is waiting for her in the shadows.

Someone who can’t accept that she ended their relationship 3 days ago.

Someone carrying a carving knife.

 

Within minutes, 21-year-old Janine Waterworth will be dead.

Stabbed 12 times in a frenzied attack so violent the blade snaps off.

Her killer will confess within hours.

He’ll serve 14 years in prison for murder and then he’ll be released and he’ll kill again.

This is the story of Paul O’Hara, a man who murdered two women in two different decades.

But more than that, it’s the story of how a system designed to protect the public failed catastrophically.

How warning signs were ignored.

How a second victim was, in her sister’s words, fed to the wolves by the very people supposed to protect her.

How two brave police officers tried to save a woman’s life and nearly died trying.

And how two families are still fighting to make sure this never happens to anyone else.

I’m your host at Cold Case Desk, and today we’re examining one of Britain’s most scrutinized double lifer cases, a tragedy that exposed fatal flaws in how released murderers are monitored and how domestic violence victims are protected.

Before we go any further, if you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please reach out for help.

Resources are available.

You are not alone.

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Now, let’s begin where this all started with a young woman named Janine Waterworth.

Janine Waterworth was just 21 years old in March of 1998.

She lived with her parents in High Crompton, a residential area of Oldm in Greater Manchester.

Oldm is a town with a rich industrial history.

Once a powerhouse of textile manufacturing during Britain’s industrial revolution, by the late 1990s, like many northern English towns, it was rebuilding its identity in a post-industrial landscape.

High Crompton itself was and remains a quiet working-class neighborhood.

The kind of place where people know their neighbors, where children play in the streets, where violence of any kind is shocking and rare.

It was the kind of community where Janine felt safe walking to catch her morning bus to work.

Janine had an older sister, Tracy Washington, born Tracy Waterworth, who was four years her senior and lived nearby in Shaw, another district of Oldm.

The two sisters were close, though their lives had taken different paths.

Tracy had married, had children of her own, and Janine doted on her nieces and nephews.

Though Janine never had children of her own, she was deeply attached to Tracy’s kids and was a beloved aunt.

Years later, after Janine’s death, Tracy would describe her younger sister in simple but powerful terms.

She certainly wasn’t a bad person.

Uh she definitely didn’t deserve what happened.

It’s the kind of statement that speaks volumes about the senselessness of Janine’s death.

The feeling that no explanation, no justification could ever make sense of why someone’s life was cut so brutally short.

Tracy also revealed the lasting impact on their mother.

Mom has never been the same person since we lost Janine.

This is a common thread in cases of homicide.

The ripple effects that extend far beyond the immediate victim.

When someone is murdered, they don’t just lose their own future.

Their family loses holidays, birthdays, weddings, grandchildren, phone calls, Sunday dinners.

The person their mother was before Janine’s death died a little bit that day, too.

But in 1998, Janine was alive, navigating the complexities of young adulthood, and as many young people do, making choices about relationships.

Janine had been in a relationship with a man named Paul O’Hara.

We don’t know extensive details about how they met or the early days of their relationship.

Those intimate details often remain private, known only to the people directly involved and perhaps their closest confidants.

What we do know is that at some point Janine and Paul O’Hara lived together.

They shared a flat.

They also stayed with one of O’Hara’s relatives for a period of time.

But something wasn’t right.

Whether it was O’Hara’s behavior, incompatibility, or Janine’s realization that this wasn’t the relationship she wanted for her future, we can’t say with certainty.

What we know is that Janine made the decision to move back to her parents’ home.

And this is often a significant step.

Returning to your childhood home as a young adult typically signals that something has gone wrong.

Perhaps the relationship was already showing signs of trouble.

Perhaps Janine needed space, safety, or simply the comfort of family.

Even after moving out, Janine and O’Hara continued to see each other intermittently.

This on-again, off-again dynamic is not uncommon in relationships, particularly when one or both parties are ambivalent about ending things completely.

There might have been good times mixed in with the bad.

There might have been promises to change.

There might have been genuine affection tangled up with dysfunction.

But by March of 1998, Janine had made her decision final.

She ended the relationship definitively.

No more on again.

Just off.

Done.

For many people, this would be painful but manageable.

You grieve.

You move on.

You respect the other person’s decision even if you don’t like it.

But Paul O’Hara Hara was not many people.

At the time of Janine’s murder, Paul O’Hara was 27 years old, 6 years older than Janine.

He lived at an address on Tennyson Street in Durker, another area of Oldm.

Durker was and in some ways still is one of the more economically deprived areas of Oldm with higher rates of unemployment and social challenges than some neighboring districts.

O’Hara’s background included a documented criminal history.

Before he ever killed Janine Waterworth, he had convictions for vehicle related crimes, burglary, robbery, and assault.

This wasn’t someone who had one bad day and made one terrible mistake.

This was someone with a pattern of criminal behavior, someone who had repeatedly crossed legal and moral boundaries.

Beyond his criminal record, O’Hara struggled with substance abuse, both alcohol and drugs.

These substances didn’t cause his violence, but they likely lowered his inhibitions and impaired his judgment, making his dangerous impulses harder to control.

Perhaps most significantly, O’Hara had a documented history of violence against women.

This is a critical detail and one that would become tragically relevant years later.

Violence against intimate partners is one of the strongest predictors of future violence, including homicide.

The man who will hit you is the same man who might one day kill you.

And the man who has hit one partner is likely to hit the next.

After O’Hara’s arrest for Janine’s murder, he would become the subject of academic study.

In a forensic psychologist named Sarah Simpson conducted extensive assessments of O’Hara, eventually making him the subject of her academic dissertation.

Her professional conclusion was damning.

O’Hara displayed traits of psychopathy.

He posed a serious risk to women.

Psychopathy is a specific personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits.

It’s not the Hollywood version, the genius serial killer with no emotions.

Real psychopaths are often charming on the surface, able to mimic normal social interactions, but fundamentally lacking in genuine emotional connection or concern for others.

They view other people as objects to be used, manipulated, or discarded.

Not all psychopaths are violent.

Yeah.

But when psychopathy is combined with a history of violence, substance abuse, and specifically violence against intimate partners, you have a profoundly dangerous individual.

This assessment that O’Hara displayed psychopathic traits and posed a serious risk to women would prove tragically prophetic.

But that assessment came after Janine’s death when it was too late to save her.

The exact date in March 1998 when Janine Waterworth was killed is not specified in the surviving public records.

What we know is that it was 3 days after she definitively ended her relationship with Paul O’Hara.

3 days 72 hours.

That’s how long Janine got to live in a world where she was free of him.

The morning began ordinarily enough.

Janine was at her parents’ home in High Crompton.

She was preparing to go to work.

At approximately 6:30 in the morning, while it was still dark outside, she left the house and began walking toward a bus stop.

This was routine, the same route she’d likely walked dozens or hundreds of times before.

The bus stop was located in an alleyway between Great Meadow and Trent Road in High Crompton, roughly 400 yards from her parents house.

Just a short walk, a few minutes, the kind of distance that should have been completely safe.

But Paulo Hara was waiting there.

He had been lying in wait in the darkened alleyway.

This wasn’t a chance encounter.

This wasn’t someone who happened to run into his ex-girlfriend and lost his temper in the moment.

This was premeditated.

He knew Janine’s routine.

He knew where she caught her bus.

He knew approximately what time she’d be there.

And he came prepared.

O’Hara was carrying a carving knife, a large kitchen knife with a long blade, the kind designed for cutting meat.

This also wasn’t something he happened to find at the scene.

He brought it with him from home, concealed on his person for the specific purpose of confronting Janine.

When Janine arrived at the bus stop, O’Hara ambushed her.

What happened next was an explosion of violence so extreme that it could only be described as ragefueled.

He attacked Janine with the knife, stabbing her 12 times, 12 separate wounds.

This wasn’t a single thrust in the heat of an argument.

This was sustained, repeated, deliberate violence.

Even after the first stab wound and the second and the third, O’Hara continued stabbing.

Even as Janine was undoubtedly crying out, even as she tried to defend herself or escape, he kept attacking.

Yet, the assault was so ferocious, so violent that at some point during the attack, the blade of the carving knife snapped off.

The force required to break a knife blade against a human body is substantial.

It speaks to the savagery of the attack.

The sheer physical force O’Hara was using.

Janine was left lying in the alleyway in a pool of her own blood.

The attack had been so violent, and Janine’s screams had been so loud that neighbors heard her.

In the early morning quiet, her cries for help pierced the darkness.

Someone called the police.

But for Janine, help would come too late.

Paul O’Hara did not flee far.

In fact, he didn’t really flee at all in the traditional sense.

Disappearing, going on the run, attempting to evade capture.

Instead, within hours of killing Janine, he went to family members and confessed.

His exact words, as later reported, were, “I think I have killed Janine.” I can’t believe I’ve done it.

I just lost it.

There’s something revealing in that phrasing.

I think I have killed Janine.

Not I killed Janine, but I think I have.

There’s a distance there, almost a dissociation from the reality of what he’d done.

As if he couldn’t quite process or accept it.

I can’t believe I’ve done it.

An expression of shock at his own actions.

I just lost it.

A phrase that attempts to explain, perhaps even excuse by suggesting loss of control.

But this wasn’t loss of control.

Loss of control is when you yell at someone in traffic.

Loss of control is when you slam a door too hard.

Bringing a knife to a location where you know your ex-girlfriend will be waiting in the dark and stabbing her 12 times until the blade breaks.

That’s not loss of control and that’s controlled deliberate sustained violence.

Nevertheless, O’Hara’s confession to family meant that when police arrived, they had a named suspect immediately.

He was arrested the same day.

There was no manhunt, no mystery about the perpetrator’s identity.

No forensic puzzle to solve.

In formal police interviews, O’Hara admitted to killing Janine.

He told investigators that he had lost his temper because he believed in a jealous rage that Janine was seeing someone else.

Again, notice the language.

Lost his temper.

As if anger is a natural force, like a storm rather than something a person is responsible for controlling.

As if jealousy justifies violence.

This is a pattern we see repeatedly in intimate partner homicides.

The killer frames his violence as something that happened to him rather than something he chose to do.

Yeah, she made me angry.

I couldn’t help myself.

I just snapped.

These phrases attempt to shift responsibility from the perpetrator to the victim or to abstract forces beyond anyone’s control.

But here’s the reality.

Most people who feel angry don’t kill.

Most people who feel jealous don’t kill.

Most people who experience heartbreak and rejection don’t kill.

The vast majority of people whose relationships end, even relationships that end badly, that end with betrayal or lies or heartbreak, do not respond with violence.

They feel pain.

Certainly, they grieve.

They’re angry, but they don’t bring a knife to a bus stop at dawn and stab their ex-girlfriend 12 times.

The decision to kill is always a choice.

Paul O’Hara chose to kill Janine Waterworth because O’Hara confessed so quickly, first to family and then to police.

Uh there wasn’t a complex investigation in the traditional sense.

This wasn’t a case where detectives had to painstakingly piece together evidence to identify a suspect.

They had their suspect immediately.

They had his confession.

They had witnesses who heard Janine’s screams.

They had the physical evidence.

Janine’s body, the murder weapon, or what was left of it, the crime scene.

There’s no publicly available record of the specific forensic analysis conducted.

We can assume standard procedures were followed.

The crime scene was photographed and documented.

Janine’s body was examined by a forensic pathologist who would have documented each of the 12 stab wounds, their depth, angle, and location to establish cause of death and the nature of the attack.

The broken knife would have been collected and examined that any blood evidence would have been documented.

But forensic evidence, while important for building a complete picture, wasn’t needed to establish O’Hara’s guilt.

He admitted to the killing.

The case was never about did Paul O’Hara kill Janine Waterworth.

It was only about the circumstances, the why, and what consequences he would face.

From a victim’s family perspective, there might be a small mercy in the swiftness of the identification and arrest.

They didn’t have to endure weeks or months of uncertainty wondering if the killer would be caught.

They didn’t have to see Janine’s case go cold.

File boxes gathering dust in a police storage facility.

They had answers at least about who took Janine from them almost immediately.

But that’s cold comfort when the person you love is gone.

When Tracy had to tell her children that their beloved aunt Janine was dead.

When their mother had to identify her daughter’s body.

when they had to plan a funeral for a 21-year-old.

The case moved forward to prosecution.

The Crown Prosecution Service reviewed the evidence and determined that charges would be filed.

Paul O’Hara was charged with murder, the most serious charge in English criminal law.

In England and Wales, murder is defined as unlawfully killing another person with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm.

It carries a mandatory life sentence.

Life doesn’t necessarily mean the person will die in prison.

We’ll talk more about that shortly, but it means the sentence is indeterminate with a minimum term to be served and potential release only under strict license conditions with lifelong supervision.

The trial was scheduled for November of 1998 at Manchester Crown Court.

Manchester Crown Court is one of the major criminal courts in England, handling the most serious criminal cases from across Greater Manchester and sometimes from neighboring areas as well.

The case would be heard by Judge Simon Faulus, an experienced Crown Court judge.

But as the trial approached, there was a development that would spare Janine’s family the ordeal of a full trial.

With all the painful details being aired in open court, witnesses being called, the defense attempting to poke holes in the prosecution’s case.

Paul O’Hara decided to enter a guilty plea.

In November of 1998, eight months after Janine’s murder, Paul O’Hara appeared before Judge Simon Faulus at Manchester Crown Court.

By pleading guilty, O’Hara admitted legal responsibility for Janine’s death.

There would be no trial in the traditional sense, no jury, no prosecution witnesses, no cross-examination.

Instead, there would be a sentencing hearing.

At a sentencing hearing following a guilty plea, the prosecution typically provides a summary of the facts of the case for the record.

The defense presents mitigation.

Anything that might make the defendant’s actions more understandable or suggest a lower sentence is appropriate.

The judge then considers the law, the facts, the guidelines, and any mitigating and aggravating factors before imposing sentence.

The court heard details about O’Hara’s background that the defense presented as relevant to sentencing.

O’Hara had a personality disorder.

This is a broad category that can include various conditions or from borderline personality disorder to antisocial personality disorder to narcissistic personality disorder.

The specific diagnosis isn’t detailed in the public record, but the mention of it suggests the defense was arguing this was a factor the court should consider.

Additionally, the court heard that at the time of Janine’s death, O’Hara was affected by drink, drugs, and sleep deprivation.

Again, these were presented as mitigating factors, things that might have impaired his judgment or contributed to his loss of control.

Here’s the thing about mitigation, though.

It’s not the same as excuse.

The law recognizes that people are complex, that mental health issues and substance abuse are real problems that affect behavior.

But particularly in murder cases, there’s a very high bar for these factors to significantly reduce culpability.

Yeah.

And if every person who had a personality disorder or who was drunk or high or who hadn’t slept well went out and killed someone, our streets would be rivers of blood.

They don’t.

The vast vast majority of people dealing with mental health issues or substance abuse never harm anyone but themselves.

So while the court heard these factors and no doubt considered them, they didn’t fundamentally change the nature of what O’Hara had done.

He had brought a knife to an alleyway.

He had waited for his ex-girlfriend.

He had stabbed her 12 times until the blade snapped.

Those are the actions of someone who intended to kill, regardless of what substances were in his system or how much sleep he’d had.

Judge Faulus addressed O’Hara directly before imposing sentence and his words were measured but clear.

This was a tragic and brutal killing, an absolute waste of a young life.

The motive seems to be the oldest in the world.

Jealousy.

Jealousy.

The oldest motive in the world.

Judge Faulus was right.

From the earliest stories humans have told, from the Bible to Greek mythology to Shakespeare, jealousy has driven people to violence.

Cain and Abel, Media, Oll, and countless, countless real people whose names we know and whose names we don’t.

But understanding the motive doesn’t make it excusable.

Jealousy might explain why O’Hara killed Janine, but it doesn’t justify it.

Nothing justifies it.

Judge Fauus imposed the only sentence available for murder, life imprisonment.

Now, this is a point that confuses a lot of people, particularly those not familiar with the British criminal justice system.

When we say life imprisonment, most people assume that means the person will spend the rest of their natural life in prison.

They’ll die behind bars.

That’s what life means, right? But in practice, in the British system, as it operated in the late 1990s, life imprisonment meant something different.

Yes, the sentence was technically for life.

O’Hara would remain under sentence for the rest of his life, but he would not necessarily spend his entire life in prison.

Instead, he would serve a minimum term, sometimes called the tariff, determined by the judge.

This is the minimum period he must spend in custody before he can be considered for parole.

After serving the minimum term O’Hara could apply to the parole board for release, the parole board would assess whether he was safe to release back into the community.

Then if they determined he was no longer a risk to public safety, he could be released on life license, meaning he’d be free but under strict conditions and lifelong supervision.

He’d have to meet regularly with a probation officer.

He’d have to inform authorities of changes in his address or employment.

He’d have restrictions on his activities.

And critically, if he breached any condition of his license or was seen to pose a renewed risk, he could be immediately recalled to prison without trial.

That’s the theory anyway.

Life license is supposed to mean that even though a convicted murderer is physically outside prison walls, the system still has its eyes on them, still has the power to pull them back in at the first sign of trouble.

This system is based on a belief or perhaps a hope in rehabilitation.

The idea that people can change, that someone who committed murder at 27 might, after years of reflection, education, therapy, and supervision become safe to reintegrate into society.

That prison isn’t just about punishment, but also about transformation.

It’s a philosophically generous idea.

And sometimes maybe it works.

There are probably people who were released after serving life sentences, who never reaffended, who spent the rest of their lives as law- abiding citizens, who found ways to atone for their crimes and contribute positively to society.

But sometimes, too often, it doesn’t work.

Sometimes the system releases people who aren’t safe.

Sometimes supervision is inadequate.

Sometimes warning signs are missed or ignored.

Sometimes people don’t change.

They just get better at hiding who they really are.

And sometimes people kill again.

And for Janine’s family, the guilty plea and life sentence must have been bittersweet at best.

On one hand, there was justice.

O’Hara was held accountable.

He admitted his guilt.

He would go to prison.

They wouldn’t have to endure a trial where his defense lawyers tried to argue he was somehow less culpable.

They wouldn’t have to sit through the prosecution describing in clinical detail exactly how Janine died.

But on the other hand, life would never be normal again.

Birthdays, Christmas, family gatherings, there would always be someone missing.

Their mother would never be the same.

And somewhere in the back of their minds must have been a terrible knowledge.

Someday perhaps Paul O’Hara would be released.

And when that day came, where would justice be for Janine? and Tracy Washington, Janine’s sister, LA would later speak publicly about her feelings about the release system.

In 2018, she told the Oldm Chronicle, “The parole officers are supposed to be watching these people and how they’re rehabilitating properly, but they don’t.

They haven’t got the powers or the people to do that properly.” She also said something even more chilling.

If you can kill somebody once, it must be far easier to do it a second time.

At the time she said that, she was speaking from experience because by 2018, Paul O’Hara had been released from prison and he had indeed killed again.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Let’s return to November 1998.

Paul O’Hara was sentenced to life imprisonment.

He was taken into custody to begin serving his sentence.

And Janine Waterworth was laid to rest by her grieving family.

And for the next 14 years, O’Hara would be behind bars.

14 years is a long time.

It’s time enough for children to be born and reach adolescence.

Time enough for someone to complete multiple university degrees.

Time enough supposedly for someone to reflect on what they’d done, to change, to rehabilitate.

But as we’ll see in part two, 14 years in prison didn’t change Paul O’Hara.

It didn’t make him less dangerous.

And when the system decided he was safe to release, when they sent him back out into the world on life license, he would find another woman, another relationship, and the pattern would repeat.

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After serving approximately 14 years for the murder of Janine Waterworth, Paul O’Hara was released from prison in April of 2012.

He was now 41 years old.

He’d spent from age 27 to age 41 behind bars, arguably some of what might have been the prime years of his life.

The parole board after reviewing his case determined that he was suitable for release on life license.

We don’t have access to the specific details of the parole board’s deliberations.

Those proceedings are confidential.

But we know they would have considered several factors.

his behavior in prison, any educational or therapeutic programs he’d completed, assessments from prison psychologists, and other experts about his risk level, and whether he had a release plan, including housing and employment prospects.

The fact that he was released suggests the parole board believed O’Hara had made progress, that he demonstrated insight into his offense, that he presented a manageable level of risk to the community.

They believed he could be safely supervised in the community under life conditions.

But here’s a crucial detail.

Despite the pre-existing assessment by forensic psychologist Sarah Simpson that O’Hara displayed traits of psychopathy and posed a serious risk to women, an assessment that was part of his case file.

O’Hara was not placed under multi- agency public protection arrangements known as MAPA after his release.

Let me explain MAPA because it’s important to understand what went wrong here.

MAPA was introduced in England and Wales in 2001 by the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act.

It’s a framework for managing offenders who pose a significant risk of causing serious harm to the public.

It requires police, probation, and prison services to work together to assess and manage the risks posed by violent and sexual offenders in the community.

There are three MAPA categories.

Category one is registered sexual offenders.

Category two is violent offenders and other sexual offenders who haven’t triggered registration.

And category three is other dangerous offenders whose crimes didn’t fit the first two categories, but who still pose a risk of serious harm.

O’Hara absolutely should have been a Mappa case.

He was a convicted murderer, sir.

He’d killed an intimate partner in a jealous rage.

He’d been assessed as having psychopathic traits and posing a serious risk to women.

These are textbook indicators for MAPA management.

The exact kind of case MAPA was designed to handle.

But he wasn’t managed under MAPA.

Why not? The public record doesn’t give us a clear answer.

It might have been a bureaucratic error, a tick box not ticked on the right form.

It might have been a failure of communication between agencies.

It might have been a subjective assessment by someone that O’Hara didn’t quite meet the threshold.

Whatever the reason, it was a catastrophic failure.

Without MAPA oversight, there was no multi- agency coordination.

Probation would supervise him, yes, but police might not be regularly updated about his situation.

Social services might not be in the loop.

Health care providers might not have relevant information.

Most critically, there was no enhanced sharing of information.

No regular multi- agency meetings to discuss his case.

No coordinated risk management plan.

O’Hara was released with standard life license conditions.

Report regularly to a probation officer.

Inform them of any changes in address or employment.

Avoid certain behaviors or locations as stipulated.

But these conditions are only as good as the supervision that enforces them.

And without MAPA, that supervision was nowhere near robust enough for someone like Paul O’Hara.

After release, O’Hara settled in Haywood, a town in Greater Manchester, about 10 miles from Oldm where he’d killed Janine.

His address was Honetan Close.

And sometime after his release, he began a relationship with a woman named Cheryl Shenan.

To Cheryl Shannon was 40 years old at the time she met Paul O’Hara, one year younger than him.

She was originally from Rottenstall, a town in Lancaster’s Rosendale Valley, about 15 mi north of Manchester.

Rotten stall is a former mil town like so many in this part of England with a rich industrial heritage and a tight-knit community feel.

Sherley was a mother.

She had a daughter named Lucia who was at the time of Shirley’s death 13 years old.

A young teenager navigating the already complicated waters of adolescence about to lose her mother in the most traumatic way imaginable.

Lucia was Sheri’s world as daughters often are for their mothers.

Cheryl was also a businesswoman and an entrepreneur.

She’d owned a beauty salon at one point.

Running your own business in the beauty industry requires not just technical skill, but people skills, financial acumen, and the ability to create a welcoming environment that keeps customers coming back.

She’d also run a furniture store.

These weren’t jobs.

These were businesses she’d built.

She was someone who took initiative, who took risks, who worked hard to provide for herself and her daughter.

At the time of her death, Shirley was working as a carer.

This is demanding, emotionally, and physically taxing work, often undervalued and underpaid.

Carers help people who can’t fully care for themselves, the elderly, the disabled, the chronically ill.

It requires compassion, patience, and a genuine desire to help people.

And the fact that Shirley was doing this work tells us something important about her character.

She was someone who cared for people, who wanted to make a difference in their lives.

Shirley had also had academic ambitions.

At some point, she’d enrolled in a foundation degree program in forensic science at the University of Central Lanasher.

Forensic science, the application of scientific principles to legal questions, often involving crime scenes, evidence analysis, and expert testimony in court.

It’s a field that requires attention to detail, analytical thinking, and a strong stomach for the sometimes grim realities of criminal investigation.

She didn’t complete the degree for reasons we don’t know.

Maybe financial pressures made it impossible to continue.

Maybe the demands of being a single mother and running businesses left no time for study.

Maybe she simply realized it wasn’t the path she wanted after all.

Life rarely unfolds in a straight line, and most people’s educational journeys include some detours.

But the fact that she’d pursued this field of study is painfully ironic.

Forensic science is about understanding how crimes happen and finding evidence to hold perpetrators accountable.

Shirley was interested in the mechanics of justice.

She had no way of knowing that she would become not a forensic scientist, but a victim whose case would be forensically examined.

that her death would be dissected in an inquest, that her name would be forever linked to one of Britain’s most notorious failures of criminal justice, and her family’s description of her paints a picture of someone deeply loved and valued.

They called her our rock, the person who held the family together, who others leaned on in times of trouble.

They described her as a beautiful, caring, kind daughter, sister, mother.

These aren’t just the generic nice things people say about someone who’s died.

When you read victim impact statements, you can usually tell the difference between platitudes and genuine feeling.

The Shenan family’s pain and their love for Sherie radiates from every statement they made.

Sherley was part of her local community wellknown and well-liked.

Her death would leave not just her family, but her entire community shocked and grieving.

So, how did Shirley Shannon come to be in a relationship with Paul O’Hara? Yeah.

And a man released from prison for murdering his previous girlfriend.

We don’t know the specifics of how they met.

Maybe it was through mutual friends.

Maybe they met at work.

Maybe through online dating.

What we know is that at some point after O’Hara’s release in April 2012, they entered into a relationship.

Did Cheryl know about O’Hara’s past? This is a question many people ask in these cases.

The answer appears to be not initially, but she found out.

More on that in a moment.

But first, let’s talk about what probation and police knew or should have known about O’Hara’s new relationship.

When O’Hara was released on life, he was assigned a probation officer.

This officer’s job was to supervise him, ensure he was complying with his license conditions, monitor his behavior for any signs he might be slipping back toward criminality, and most importantly, assess whether he was posing a risk to public safety.

Lifeline supervision varies in intensity.

For some offenders, especially in the early stages after release, it might mean meeting with probation weekly or even more frequently.

Over time, if the offender is seen to be doing well, the frequency might decrease to fortnightly or monthly.

But for someone with O’Hara’s history, a murder conviction, traits of psychopathy assessed as a risk to women, supervision should have been intensive and ongoing.

One critical piece of information that a probation officer managing someone like O’Hara should know is, is he in a relationship? This matters because O’Hara’s offense was intimate partner violence.

He killed his girlfriend.

Now, and if he’s in a new relationship, that means there’s a potential new victim.

That’s not to say that everyone who killed an intimate partner will automatically kill the next partner, but it’s a red flag.

It’s a scenario that requires increased vigilance.

Astonishingly, despite O’Hara entering into a relationship with Cheryl, despite them becoming serious enough that she was a significant part of his life, probation failed to adequately share information about this relationship with police.

The police, who would later respond to emergency calls from Cheryl, had no advanced warning that she was in a relationship with a convicted murderer.

They didn’t know to check up on her welfare proactively.

They didn’t know that if she called for help, it was potentially a life ordeath situation.

And this is exactly the kind of information sharing that MAPA facilitates.

In regular MAPA meetings, probation would update police.

The offender is now in a relationship with a woman named Cheryl Lee Shannon.

Here’s her address.

Here’s some background.

We need to ensure she knows about his history and that she has access to support if needed.

We need to monitor this situation closely.

Police would then have that information on their systems.

If Chery Lee called 999, the call handler would see, “Warning! Caller is in a relationship with Paul O’Hara, convicted murderer released on life, assessed as risk to women.” But none of that happened because O’Hara wasn’t in MAPA because information wasn’t being shared effectively because the system was failing and no one realized it until it was too late.

Through in November 2013, one year and seven months after O’Hara’s release from prison, warning signs began to appear that Cheryl was in danger.

Bonfire night is celebrated on the 5th of November throughout the United Kingdom, commemorating the foiling of the gunpowder plot of605.

It’s traditional to have fireworks displays, bonfires, and family gatherings.

For the Shenan family, the November 2013 bonfire night gathering should have been a nice evening.

fireworks, food, seeing relatives.

But when Cheryl arrived, her family noticed something deeply wrong.

She had serious facial injuries.

Her face was bruised.

There might have been swelling, discoloration, signs of trauma.

These weren’t the kind of minor bumps and bruises you might get from genuinely accidental causes.

Walking into a door, in tripping on stairs, these were the kinds of injuries that come from being hit.

When they asked Chery Lee what happened, she gave an alternative explanation.

She didn’t tell them the truth about O’Hara.

Why not? This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of domestic violence.

People often ask, “Why didn’t she just leave? Why didn’t she tell someone?” As if it’s simple.

As if the solution is obvious.

But leaving an abusive relationship is the most dangerous time for victims.

Domestic violence homicides most often occur when the victim is trying to leave or has just left.

Abusers escalate when they feel they’re losing control and Sherley had no way of knowing it at the time, but she was in a relationship with a man who had literally killed his previous girlfriend for leaving him.

Beyond the physical danger on there are complex psychological factors.

Trauma bonding where the cycle of abuse and apology creates a powerful emotional attachment.

Fear, not just of physical harm, but of financial instability, of being alone, of judgment from others.

Shame, feeling like you should have known better, should have seen the warning signs should have been stronger.

Hope that this time will be different, that he’ll change, that the good person you fell in love with will come back.

Shirley gave an alternative explanation for her injuries, and her family, not knowing about O’Hara’s history, probably accepted it.

Maybe they were suspicious.

Maybe they filed it away in the back of their minds as something to watch.

But they didn’t call the police.

Sherily asked them not to.

Or maybe she didn’t bring it up as an option.

And they respected her autonomy as an adult to make her own decisions.

But beneath the surface, the violence was escalating.

And within a few months, it would explode into a crisis that would bring Sherie face to face with the police and expose for the first time just how much danger she was really in.

On the 1st of March, 2014, everything changed.

This was the day when Sher’s sister, Ellen, learned the truth.

This was the day the police were called.

This was the day that should have saved Shirley Shannon’s life.

But it didn’t.

Shirley reached out to her sister Ellen and revealed what had really been happening.

Paul O’Hara had been abusing her physically, violently.

The injuries the family had seen back in November, those were from O’Hara, and it had gotten worse since then, much worse.

Yin Sherley told Ellen that O’Hara had broken her nose.

He’d fractured her jaw.

These aren’t minor injuries.

A fractured jaw requires significant force.

The kind of force that comes from being punched in the face with full strength or having your face slammed into something hard.

It’s incredibly painful.

It makes eating difficult.

Speaking is painful.

Every movement of your jaw sends shooting pain through your skull.

But there was something even more terrifying.

O’Hara had held Sherie hostage at knife point.

He’d threatened her with a knife.

The same method he’d used to kill Janine Waterworth 16 years earlier.

Whether Shirley knew this consciously or whether it was just the primal terror of having a blade pointed at you, she knew she was in mortal danger.

And finally, she told Ellen about O’Hara’s criminal history.

You know, she’d found out, we don’t know exactly how or when, that the man she’d been in a relationship with, the man who’d been hurting her, was a convicted murderer.

He’d killed his previous girlfriend, and now he was hurting Cherily.

Ellen and the rest of the family immediately called the police.

This was a 999 emergency call.

A woman was reporting that her sister had been seriously assaulted, that she’d been held hostage at Knife Point, and that the perpetrator was a convicted murderer.

Police officers were dispatched to Cheryl’s address.

When they arrived, they spoke with Sheril and family members.

They could see the injuries, the broken nose, the bruised and swollen jaw.

This wasn’t historical.

This was recent trauma visible on her face.

As the officers did what they’re trained to do in such situations, they ran a PNC check on Paul O’Hara.

The police national computer holds records of criminal convictions, warrants, and other police intelligence.

Within moments, the officers confirmed what the family had said.

Paul O’Hara had a conviction for murder.

He’d killed a woman in 1998.

He was currently on life.

This should have been the moment when alarm bells started ringing at maximum volume.

This should have been the moment when multiple agencies scrambled into action.

A lifelic prisoner, someone released from a life sentence, but still technically under sentence, still under supervision, was credibly accused of serious domestic violence against his current partner.

Me using the same type of violence, holding someone at knife point that characterized his original murder conviction.

In any functional system, here’s what should have happened immediately.

One, O’Hara should have been arrested on the spot.

Two, he should have been held in custody while the allegations were investigated.

Three, probation should have been notified immediately that their lifelic supervise was accused of serious violence.

Four, an urgent recall to prison should have been initiated.

Lifelic prisoners can be recalled to custody if they pose a risk to public safety, breach their license conditions, or if recall is necessary for public protection.

You don’t need a criminal conviction to recall someone.

The threshold is, do they pose a risk? There are five multi- agency safeguarding measures should have been put in place for Sherie and her daughter.

But here’s what actually happened.

The officers created a police report documenting the allegations.

They noted that Sherolie was in fear of O’Hara.

They recorded that O’Hara had told Sheril he would kill again rather than go back to prison.

Let that sink in.

O’Hara explicitly told Sheroli he would kill again and she reported this to police and he was not immediately arrested.

The officers assessed Cheryl Lee as being at high risk.

In domestic violence cases, police use risk assessment tools to categorize victims as standard, medium, or high risk based on factors like the severity of violence, escalation patterns, threats to kill, weapons involvement, and the perpetrator’s history.

She surely ticked every single box for high-risisk, serious injuries, weapon involvement, threats to kill, perpetrator with a murder conviction.

But despite this high-risk assessment, despite O’Hara’s conviction for murder, despite him being on life license, despite his explicit threat to kill again, he was not arrested that day.

The officers took a report and left.

They classified the incident as historic, apparently meaning that because the most recent violence had occurred sometime before the 1st of March, even though the injuries were still visible, it didn’t warrant immediate action.

The report was filed, but it sat in the police system.

It wasn’t immediately shared with probation.

The two agencies that were supposed to be jointly managing O’Hara, police and probation, weren’t communicating.

Mary Shirley’s family must have thought they’d done the right thing.

They’d called the police.

They’d reported the violence.

The police had come.

Surely now Shirley would be safe.

Surely now the system would protect her.

But the system was already failing.

On the 2nd of March 2014, just one day after making the allegations and one day after the police documented that she was at high risk, Cheryl called the police back.

She wanted to withdraw her allegations against Paulo Hera.

This is heartbreaking, but it’s also predictable if you understand domestic violence dynamics.

Victims retract all the time.

They minimize.

They recant.

They say it wasn’t as bad as they first said or it didn’t happen at all or they don’t want to press charges.

Why? There are many reasons and they’re often operating simultaneously.

And the abuser might have apologized, promised to change, convinced her he loves her and it will never happen again.

He might have threatened her.

If you don’t drop the charges, I’ll kill you.

He might have threatened her daughter.

I know where Lucia goes to school.

She might have financial dependence on him.

She might fear being alone.

She might genuinely love him and want the relationship to work.

She might fear the criminal justice process, having to testify in court, being cross-examined by defense lawyers, seeing him sent to prison, and feeling responsible.

And in this specific case, there’s another factor.

O’Hara had explicitly said he would kill again rather than go back to prison.

If Shirley believed him, and why wouldn’t she? then keeping the allegations active meant putting herself in more danger, not less.

If he was arrested and charged, he might be remanded in custody, but he might also be released on bail.

And if he was released on bail, he’d know that Sheri had cooperated with police against him.

He’d know she was the reason he was facing prison again, and he’d threatened to kill rather than go back.

From Sheri’s perspective, dropping the allegations might have seemed like the safest option.

Keep the peace.

Don’t provoke him.

Maybe he’ll calm down.

Maybe it will be okay.

The police accepted her retraction.

And here’s another failure.

They should have been trained to recognize that retractions in domestic violence cases, especially high-risisk cases, are often the result of intimidation or fear.

The retraction itself should have been a red flag that Cheryl was in danger.

Not a reason to close the case.

On the 3rd of March 2014, domestic violence officers attended Cheryl’s home for a follow-up visit.

These are specialist officers trained in handling domestic abuse cases with sensitivity and understanding.

Their job is to build trust with victims, provide information about support services, assess ongoing risk, and try to keep victims engaged with the protective services available to them, even if they’re not ready to support a prosecution.

The officer sat down with Sheril to discuss the situation.

Sheril confirmed that she wanted to withdraw the allegations.

She was exercising her right as an adult to make that decision.

The officers, having accepted the retraction, didn’t push back aggressively.

But here’s the thing that makes this scene almost unbearably tragic.

While these domestic violence officers were sitting in Shirley’s home talking with her about Paul O’Hara’s violence, Paul O’Hara himself was hiding in a cupboard in the same room.

He was there listening, controlling, making sure Cheryl said the right things, making sure she stuck to the story, making sure she didn’t reveal anything that would get him arrested.

The officers didn’t know.

They had no reason to search the property.

Shirley appeared to be alone and was speaking freely, or so it seemed.

They had no idea that the man who’ fractured her jaw, held her hostage at knife point, and threatened to kill rather than go back to prison, was 10 ft away, listening to every word.

This detail, O’Hara, hiding in the cupboard, tells you everything you need to know about the level of control he had over Sheril and the level of deception he was willing to employ to avoid consequences.

After the officers left, Shirley’s risk assessment was downgraded from high- risk to medium risk.

The logic presumably was, “She’s retracted her allegations.

She appears to be calm and in control of the situation.

The immediate crisis seems to have passed.” But the crisis hadn’t passed.

It had just gone underground, and the downgrade meant that the already insufficient response would be reduced even further.

It took until the 12th of March, 11 days after the initial police report, for probation to finally learn about the allegations that O’Hara had broken Sher’s jaw.

11 days.

In those 11 days, anything could have happened.

O’Hara could have killed Sherie.

He could have fled.

He could have escalated his violence even further.

But by sheer luck, Sherie was still alive.

On the 12th of March, when probation was finally informed, O’Hara’s probation officer called him in for a meeting.

She confronted him with the information she’d received.

We can imagine the conversation.

Paul, I’ve received a report that you’ve been violent toward your girlfriend, Cheryl Lee.

That you broke her jaw.

This is a serious allegation.

What do you have to say? O’Hara would have had his explanation ready.

Maybe he denied it outright.

Maybe he minimized it.

It wasn’t that serious.

She’s exaggerating.

We had an argument.

But I didn’t break her jaw.

Maybe he blamed Sheril.

She came at me first.

I was defending myself.

Whatever he said, the probation officer accepted it.

Or at least she didn’t take the action that the situation demanded.

Instead of immediately initiating recall proceedings, instead of assessing O’Hara as a clear and present danger who needed to be taken off the streets, uh, she gave him advice.

She told him to slow down the relationship.

Let me repeat that.

A man on life license for murdering his previous girlfriend, now accused of breaking his current girlfriend’s jaw, was told to slow down the relationship.

Not you’re under arrest.

Not you’re being recalled to prison.

Not even.

You must have no contact with Sherie whatsoever.

Just slow down the relationship.

This is a catastrophic misjudgment.

The problem wasn’t that the relationship was moving too fast.

The problem was that O’Hara was a violent, dangerous man who was abusing his partner.

Slowing down, the relationship wouldn’t change that.

It wouldn’t make Sherley safer.

It might even make things worse by prolonging her exposure to his violence.

But O’Hara was not recalled to prison.

Not on the 12th of March.

The opportunity to save Cheryl’s life slipped away again.

Two days later, on the 14th of March, the probation officer learned the full details from the 1st of March police report.

She read that O’Hara had not just broken Cheryl’s jaw, but had held her hostage at knife point.

She read that he’d told Sher he would kill again rather than go back to prison.

She read that Cheryl had been assessed as high risk.

She read about his explicit threats and the severity of his violence.

The probation officer’s concerns increased.

Of course they did.

How could they not? She now knew that her supervis, a convicted murderer, was credibly accused of serious violence, including weapon use and threats to kill.

She called O’Hara in again and told him more firmly to stay away from Sherily.

But still, incredibly, inexplicably unforgivably, she did not recall him to prison.

She did not coordinate with police for his immediate arrest.

She did not trigger a multi- agency meeting to discuss his risk level.

Why not? The inquest would later examine this question in detail.

Part of the problem was that MAPA wasn’t in place.

So there was no framework for multi- agency coordination.

Part of the problem was that probation at that time was underresourced and overwhelmed with officers managing too many cases and making judgment calls based on incomplete information and limited time.

But ultimately, the probation officer had the power to recall O’Hara.

Life conditions give probation that power.

If a supervise poses a risk, they can be recalled to custody without trial, without charges.

simply on the probation officer’s assessment that recall is necessary for public protection.

She didn’t use that power and three days later Shannon would be dead.

On the 17th of March 2014, Shirley Shannon made a phone call that should have saved her life.

She called probation.

She spoke to O’Hara’s probation officer, the same woman who’d been managing his case, who’d learned about the violence, who’ told him to slow down the relationship and stay away.

And Shirley told her the truth.

She confirmed that everything she’d reported to police on the 1st of March was true.

O’Hara had broken her nose.

He’d fractured her jaw.

He’d held her at knife point.

He’d threatened to kill her.

And she was terrified.

The probation officer listened to Shirley describe her fear.

He and Shirley used specific words.

She was terrified of him.

She was terrified for her daughter.

Lucia was 13 years old, living in the same house where her mother was being abused by a convicted murderer.

Cheryl was not just worried about herself.

She was a mother trying to protect her child.

The probation officer finally finally understood the full gravity of the situation.

This wasn’t a case she could manage with phone calls and advice.

This was a woman in immediate danger from a man the probation officer was supposed to be supervising.

She needed to act and she needed to act now.

She immediately called the police.

The call was made with urgency.

The probation officer’s message was clear.

We need to get him arrested.

She explained that her supervise was Paul O’Hara, a lifeic prisoner with a murder conviction.

And she explained that he’d been abusing his partner, Shirley Shannon.

She explained that Sherie was terrified and in danger.

She explained that O’Hara had consistently physically abused Cheryl and she made it clear this needed an immediate police response.

The emergency call handler who took the probation officer’s call graded it as a grade two call.

In police terminology, grade one calls are immediate emergencies requiring the fastest possible response.

Active violence in progress, life in immediate danger, crime in action.

Grade two calls are urgent but not quite at the grade 1 threshold.

They require a response within one hour.

Grade two was appropriate for the information provided.

A domestic violence situation with a high-risisk victim, a dangerous perpetrator, and a request for arrest, but no indication that violence was actively occurring at that moment.

But here’s where another failure occurred.

The police dispatch should have sent uniformed officers to respond.

Officers equipped with stab vests for protection.

Pavis spray and incapacitant spray to use if they encountered resistance.

Batons, handcuffs, radios.

Uniformed officers responding to arrest a violent offender, especially one with a murder conviction, would come prepared for confrontation.

Instead, the response was assigned to two domestic violence detectives, Detective Sergeant Damen Mallister and Detective Constable Karen Kenworthy.

These were experienced, dedicated officers who specialized in domestic abuse investigations.

They were skilled at interviewing victims, gathering evidence, and building cases for prosecution.

But they were detectives and not response officers.

They attended in plain clothes.

They carried only a single baton between them.

No stab vests, no pava spray, no protective equipment.

And crucially, they attended more than one hour after the call was made.

a breach of the grade two response time requirement.

This was a resourcing failure and a dispatch failure.

The right response to a call about arresting a life license murderer accused of ongoing domestic violence should have been at minimum two uniformed officers properly equipped arriving promptly.

Ideally, it should have been more.

A coordinated arrest operation with multiple officers, a plan for taking O’Hara safely into custody, and welfare arrangements for Shirley and her daughter.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, when two detectives without protective equipment arrived at Cheryl’s address at Hardman Avenue in Rottenstall in the middle of the afternoon on the 17th of March, and Paulo Hara was waiting for them.

At approximately 3:00 in the afternoon on Monday, the 17th of March, 2014, Detective Sergeant Damen Mallister and Detective Constable Karen Kenworthy arrived at Cheryl Shannon’s home on Hardman Avenue in Rotten, Lanasher.

Rotten stall is a town of about 22,000 people in the Rosundale Valley surrounded by the beautiful hills of the Penines.

It’s a place with a strong sense of community where people know each other where crime, especially violent crime, is rare enough to be genuinely shocking.

Hardman Avenue is a residential street of terrace houses and the kind that are common throughout Northern England.

Brick row houses built a century or more ago for mill workers and their families.

modest but solid, each with a small front yard and a back garden.

It’s a quiet street where children play and neighbors chat over garden fences.

On this particular afternoon, one daughter, 13-year-old Lucia, was at school, scheduled to arrive home soon.

One mother, 40-year-old Cheryl, had called for help and was waiting, hoping that this time the system would protect her.

and one predator, 43-year-old Paul O’Hara, was sitting in his car nearby watching.

O’Hara had been lying in wait.

The prosecutor, who would later handle his case, Graham Reed’s QC, would describe O’Hara as having been lying in weight in his car near Cheryl’s home.

This wasn’t a spontaneous act.

This wasn’t someone who happened to be in the area and impulsively decided to confront his exartner.

This was planned.

He was watching, waiting, preparing.

DS Mallister and DC Kenworthy approached the front door and knocked.

Sherily answered.

Just 30 seconds later, half a minute, barely enough time for introductions, Paul O’Hara burst through the back entrance of the property.

He was carrying a claw hammer.

It was concealed in a plastic bag so it wouldn’t be immediately visible as he approached.

But once he was inside, he pulled it out and began his attack.

A claw hammer is a tool, but in the hands of someone intent on violence, it’s a devastating weapon.

The flathead is used for driving nails.

The claw is for pulling them out.

Both ends are solid metal designed to deliver force.

Neural blow from a claw hammer to the head can fracture skulls, cause traumatic brain injuries, kill.

O’Hara had come to kill Sheri.

There’s no other reasonable interpretation.

He didn’t bring the hammer to scare her.

He didn’t bring it to threaten her.

He brought it to beat her to death and he would have succeeded if not for the courage of two police officers who put themselves between him and his intended victim.

What happened in the next few minutes was chaos and terror, but it was also extraordinary bravery.

Detective Sergeant Damen Mallister physically placed himself between Paul O’Hara and Cheryl Shannon.

A police officer’s job includes confronting danger.

It’s what they sign up for.

But there’s a difference between responding to a reported burglary and deliberately making yourself a target to protect someone else.

Ne Mallister saw a man with a hammer attacking a woman, and he didn’t hesitate.

He stepped between them.

O’Hara struck Mallister repeatedly over the head with the claw hammer.

The detective suffered serious injuries that would require 20 stitches to close.

Think about that for a moment.

20 stitches.

That’s not a single blow.

That’s multiple blows to the head, causing multiple lacerations, bleeding profusely.

The kind of injuries that in another context might easily have been fatal.

While O’Hara was attacking DS Mallister, DC Karen Kenworthy took action.

She called for emergency backup on her radio, requesting immediate armed response, ambulances, additional units.

Code read, “Officer under attack.” And then she grabbed the baton, the single defensive weapon they had between them, and struck O’Hara with it, and trying to get him to stop attacking her colleague.

The baton strikes had some effect.

O’Hara’s attention shifted.

Sheri, seeing a brief window of opportunity, broke free and ran for the door.

DS Mallister, despite his injuries, despite blood pouring from his head, ran with her.

They fled into the street.

Sherily, a terrified woman running for her life, and Mallister, an injured officer trying to protect her, but they couldn’t run fast enough.

Both were injured, traumatized, not thinking clearly because of adrenaline and shock.

O’Hara wasn’t done.

He went to Cheryl’s kitchen.

He grabbed a knife, a large kitchen knife, the kind every household has for cutting vegetables or meat, now repurposed for murder, and he pursued them into the street.

An eyewitness, a neighbor who happened to look out their window, eye drawn by the commotion, later described what they saw.

Paul O’Hara caught up with Cheryl Lee Shannon as she lay on the ground trying desperately to defend herself.

And the eyewitness said something chilling.

O’Hara appeared calm.

His actions were measured and not frantic.

This detail is important.

This wasn’t someone in the grip of uncontrollable rage, mindlessly attacking in a red mist of fury.

This was someone methodically, deliberately, calmly committing murder.

O’Hara knew what he was doing.

He was in control of himself.

And he chose in that moment of calm and measure to kill Sheroli Shannon.

He stabbed her as she lay on the ground as she tried to protect herself with her hands and arms as she begged for her life.

He stabbed her.

Shirley Shannon died there in the street in broad daylight in her own neighborhood, yard just yards from her home where her 13-year-old daughter would arrive from school in a matter of hours.

An air ambulance had been scrambled.

An emergency helicopter with advanced medical personnel who can provide trauma care at the scene, but it arrived too late.

Paramedics from the ambulance service arrived, tried to save her, but there was nothing they could do.

Sherie was pronounced dead at the scene.

Paul O’Hara, having accomplished what he came to do, didn’t flee far.

Police backup arrived rapidly.

Once that emergency radio call went out that officers were under attack, every available unit in the area would have responded with lights and sirens converging on Hardman Avenue as fast as their vehicles could get them there.

Officers found O’Hara in a nearby garden.

He was detained.

When someone is actively resisting arrest or potentially still armed and dangerous, police have options for less lethal force.

In this case, officers use CS gas, an incapacitant spray that causes temporary blindness, coughing, and disorientation, allowing officers to safely take a violent individual into custody without having to engage in a physical struggle that might result in further injuries.

O’Hara was sprayed with CS gas, handcuffed, and taken into custody.

He was arrested on suspicion of murder, assault on police officers, and assault with intent to resist arrest.

After his arrest, O’Hara made statements that were later documented.

He said, “I can’t deny it, can I? She was running down the street scared.” This is an acknowledgement.

He knew Shirley was terrified.

He knew she was running for her life, and he killed her anyway.

And he also asked, “Why did I do that? Why didn’t the police help her? There’s something grotesque about these questions.

He’s asking why he did it as if he’s baffled by his own actions.

As if someone else controlled his hands.

Andy’s asking why police didn’t help her.

When two police officers nearly died trying to help her.

When he attacked those officers.

When he’s the reason she needed help in the first place.

These are the words of someone trying to evade responsibility, trying to create psychological distance between himself and his actions.

But the evidence was overwhelming.

Multiple witnesses, two police officers who could testify to exactly what happened.

Physical evidence, the hammer, the knife, Cheryl Lee’s body, and his own statements acknowledging what he’d done.

Paul O’Hara was taken to a police station, processed on, and held in custody.

The next day, the 18th of March, he was formally charged with murder, section 18, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm regarding DS Mallister and assault with intent to resist arrest regarding DC Kenworthy.

He would not be released on bail.

He would remain in custody pending trial and this time there would be no second chance.

This time there would be no possibility of parole.

Rotten is a small town.

When something like this happens, a woman murdered in her own street in broad daylight.

Everyone knows about it within hours.

The news spread quickly.

Sheri Shannon, well-known local businesswoman and carer, mother to Lucia, had been killed.

A man had been arrested.

For Cheryl’s family, the next hours and days must have been a nightmare beyond comprehension.

Her mother, Se Betty Roberts, had to absorb the fact that her daughter was dead, murdered.

Her sister Chivone had to process that her sister, the person she’d grown up with, shared a childhood with, loved and fought with, and laughed with, was gone forever.

Her other family members had to grapple with sudden, violent, senseless loss.

And 13-year-old Lucia came home from school to find police tape across her street, police cars everywhere, officers who had to tell her that her mother was dead.

A child lost her mother in the worst possible way.

She didn’t just lose Cheryl Lee to illness or accident losses that are also devastating, but at least allow for some psychological processing.

She lost her mother to murder, to violence, to a man who’d pretended to care about them.

Lucia’s whole life changed in an instant.

She’d have to live with relatives now.

Then she’d have to navigate grief while also navigating adolescence.

She’d have to grow up without her mother at her graduation, her wedding, the birth of her own children.

every milestone, every achievement, every moment of joy for the rest of her life would be tinged with the sadness of I wish mom could see this.

The community rallied around the family as communities do.

There would have been flowers left at the scene, candles, teddy bears, cards with messages of condolence, neighbors bringing food to the family home because when tragedy strikes, people don’t know what to say, but they know how to cook, how to offer small gestures of care.

But alongside the grief and shock, there was anger because this didn’t have to happen.

On people in Rottenstall learned that the man who killed Cheryl was a convicted murderer who’d been released from prison, that he’d killed before, that police had known he was violent toward Sherily, that he’d been reported and nothing had been done.

The question on everyone’s mind was simple and devastating.

Why? Why was he free? Why wasn’t he stopped? Why did Cheryl Lee have to die? Those questions would be formally examined in an inquest 5 years later.

But first, there was a trial to get through.

DS Damen Mallister required immediate medical treatment for his head injuries.

20 stitches is significant trauma.

He would have been taken to hospital, examined by doctors, had his wounds cleaned and closed, been monitored for signs of concussion or more serious traumatic brain injury.

He’d have been told to rest and to watch for symptoms like severe headaches or dizziness that might indicate complications.

But what struck people who knew DS Mallister was his reaction to what happened.

He wasn’t primarily concerned about his own injuries.

He was devastated that he hadn’t been able to save Shirley.

In statements later, it was noted that he felt more upset that he hadn’t been able to get her away than about his own injuries.

This is the mark of someone who truly cares about protecting others.

He’d put himself in harm’s way, literally used his own body as a shield, and taken a beating that could easily have killed him.

But because the outcome was that Cheryl Lee died anyway, he felt he’d failed.

He hadn’t failed.

The system failed, but officers like DS Mallister carry that weight anyway.

NC Karen Kenworthy described the incident as the most frightening and horrific in her 22 years of policing.

22 years.

She’d seen terrible things in that time.

Car crashes, sudden deaths, violent crimes.

She’d responded to situations that would give most people nightmares.

But this was worse than all of them.

Both officers showed incredible resilience.

Within weeks, both had returned to work.

They could have taken extended leave.

They could have sought transfers to other duties.

No one would have blamed them for stepping back from frontline policing after such a traumatic incident.

But they came back.

They continued doing the job and they would later be recognized for their extraordinary bravery.

Paul O’Hara’s trial was scheduled for Preston Crown Court.

Preston is the county town of Lanasher and its crown court handles the most serious criminal cases from across the county.

The case was assigned to Judge Anthony Russell QC who held the position of recorder of Preston, the senior circuit judge at that court.

The prosecution was led by Graham Reed’s QC, an experienced barristister who specialized in serious criminal cases.

His job was to present the crown’s case against O’Hara to prove beyond reasonable doubt that O’Hara had murdered Cheryl Shannon and assaulted the two police officers.

But Graham Reed’s QC didn’t need to present much of his case because on the 30th of June 2014, less than three and a half months after Cheryl Lee’s murder, Paul O’Hara appeared before Judge Russell and pleaded guilty to all charges.

Guilty to murder.

Guilty to section 18 wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm to DS Mallister.

Guilty to assault with intent to resist arrest against DC Kenworthy.

O’Hara’s defense council, Tony Cross QC, had the unenviable task of representing someone who had committed indefensible crimes.

The best he could offer was an acknowledgement that these were grave crimes, and present the guilty pleas as evidence that O’Hara was at least taking responsibility.

Early guilty p usually result in a reduction in sentence, typically one-third off the minimum term.

The rationale is that by pleading guilty, the defendant spares the victim’s families the ordeal of a trial, saves court time and public resources, and demonstrates some level of remorse or acceptance of responsibility.

But in cases this serious, particularly when the evidence is overwhelming and the defendant really has no choice but to plead guilty, the mitigating value of the plea is minimal.

Judge Russell prepared to pass sentence.

In cases of murder, the judge must follow sentencing guidelines set out in schedule 21 of the sentencing act.

These guidelines set starting points for the minimum term based on the seriousness of the offense.

For most murders, the starting point is 15 years.

For murders involving weapons brought to the scene, the starting point is 25 years.

For murders of police officers on duty or involving sexual or sadistic conduct, the starting point is a whole life order.

But there is another category, murders committed by someone who has already been convicted of murder.

For these cases, the double lifers, the starting point is also a whole life order.

A whole life order means exactly what it sounds like.

The person will spend the rest of their natural life in prison.

They will never be eligible for parole.

They will never be released.

They will die behind bars.

It’s the most severe sentence available in English law, reserved for the most serious crimes.

Judge Russell imposed a whole life sentence on Paul O’Hara for the murder of Cheryl Shannon.

He also imposed concurrent sentences of 10 years for the attack on Das Mallister and two years for the assault on DC Kenworthy.

Concurrent means these sentences run at the same time as the murder sentence, not in addition to it, though it’s a moot point when someone is never being released anyway.

And Judge Russell addressed O’Hara directly.

This was indeed a most brutal and savage attack.

And having read all the witness statements, I am left in no doubt that you intended to kill Sheri Shannon.

It is her family and friends that are left to pick up the pieces.

It is clear from the many statements on the papers that she was a muchloved member of her local community, which is left shocked by the cruel manner of her death.

The judge’s words acknowledged what everyone in that courtroom knew.

This wasn’t just about Paul O’Hara’s crimes.

This was about a woman who was loved and valued, whose loss created a hole in her family and community that would never be filled.

In Detective Superintendent Eddie Thistleweight of Lancaster Constabularary issued a statement after sentencing, O’Hara is a predatory and violent individual who manipulated his victims, including Sherily, preying on their craving for love and attention.

He has shown no or little remorse throughout this process.

This characterization, predatory, manipulative, gets at something important about abusers like O’Hara.

They don’t approach relationships the way healthy people do.

They don’t seek partnership, companionship, mutual support.

They seek control.

They identify vulnerable people and exploit those vulnerabilities.

They isolate their victims from support systems.

They alternate between charm and violence, creating trauma bonds that make it psychologically difficult for victims to leave.

Janine Waterworth wasn’t a random victim.

Shirley Shannon wasn’t a random victim.

O’Hara chose them deliberately, pursued relationships with them and then destroyed them when they didn’t conform to his desires or tried to assert their own autonomy.

Paul O’Hara was taken from Preston Crown Court to begin his whole life sentence.

He’s currently held in a highsecurity prison.

He’s now in his mid-50s.

If he lives an average lifespan, he’ll spend another 25 or 30 years behind bars before he dies.

Janine Waterworth never got to grow old.

She never got to turn 30 or 40 or 50.

She never got to have children, build a career, travel the world, or do any of the thousand things that make up a full life.

Shirley Shannon never got to see Lucia graduate, get married, have children.

She never got to grow old with her family.

Paul O’Hara stole their futures and now he has no future of his own except for the walls of a prison cell and the knowledge that he’ll never leave.

In the wake of the trial and conviction, attention turned to recognizing the extraordinary courage of DS Mallister and DC Kenworthy.

They received personal letters from Prime Minister David Cameron praising their bravery and thanking them for their service.

For a serving police officer, receiving a letter from the prime minister is a significant honor.

It’s recognition at the highest level of government that your actions went above and beyond the call of duty.

Lancasher Constabularary awarded them the William Garnett Cup, an annual award given to the officer or officers who performed the most gallant deed of the year in the highest traditions of the service.

The award is named after William Garnett, Ghana, a Lancer police officer who was killed in the line of duty in 1876.

To receive this award is to be recognized as exemplifying the best of what it means to be a police officer.

DS Mallister also received an award at a national conference on the investigation of domestic abuse, recognizing his innovation and dedication in this field of policing.

Despite the trauma of what happened on Hardman Avenue, he continued working on domestic abuse cases, bringing his experience and insight to help protect other victims.

Chief Constable Steve Finnegan publicly praised both officers for acting in an extremely brave and selfless manner.

And he was right.

Bravery isn’t the absence of fear.

It’s acting despite fear.

Mallister and Kenworthy were terrified that day.

How could they not be? But they didn’t run.

They didn’t retreat on.

They put themselves between a violent murderer and his intended victim.

And they fought to save her life.

The fact that they didn’t succeed, that Sherily died anyway, doesn’t diminish their bravery.

It amplifies the tragedy.

If they’d been properly equipped with stab vests and other protective equipment, if the response had been properly resourced, the outcome might have been different.

They did everything they could with what they had and they nearly died trying.

But even with O’Hara convicted and sentenced, even with the officers recognized for their bravery, there were still massive unanswered questions.

Why was O’Hara released after only 14 years for Janine’s murder? Why wasn’t he under MAPA supervision? Why didn’t probation share information about his relationship with police? Why weren’t the reports from the 1st of March acted upon immediately? Why was his probation officer told about his violence on the 12th of March and didn’t recall him to prison? Why was the police response on the 17th of March so inadequately resourced? Were there systemic failures? Were there policy problems? Were there individuals who should be held accountable? Cheryl’s family wanted answers.

They deserved answers.

And they fought for 5 years to get them through the inquest process.

We’ll cover the inquest, its findings, and the fight for reform in part four.

But first, let’s take a moment to remember who Cheryl Shannon was beyond the manner of her death.

She was a mother who loved her daughter fiercely.

She was an entrepreneur who built businesses and took risks.

She was a carer who helped vulnerable people.

She was a sister who her family called our rock.

She was beautiful, caring, and kind.

She had friends, hobbies, dreams.

She was a full, complex, valuable human being and she was failed by systems that should have protected her.

If you’re finding this documentary valuable, please take a moment to like this video and subscribe to Cold Case Desk.

We’re committed to telling these stories with the respect they deserve, to honoring victims, and to examining how we can prevent future tragedies.

In part four, we’ll examine the inquest into Cheryl’s death, the jury’s damning findings, and the family’s fight for justice and reform.

For those unfamiliar with the British legal system, let me explain what an inquest is because it’s different from a criminal trial and serves a different purpose.

An inquest is a factf finding inquiry held by a coroner to determine the circumstances of a death.

Inquests are mandatory for certain categories of death.

Deaths in custody, deaths involving police contact, deaths in the military, and deaths where the circumstances suggest systemic failures or public interest issues.

The purpose of an inquest is not to assign criminal or civil liability.

That’s what criminal trials and civil lawsuits are for.

Instead, an inquest seeks to answer four key questions.

Who is the deceased? When did they die? Where did they die? And how did they die? That last question, how, is the critical one.

How, doesn’t just mean the medical cause of death.

It means the circumstances.

In Cheryl’s case, everyone knew she died from stab wounds.

Gian, the question was, how did she come to be in a situation where a convicted murderer who should have been supervised was free to stab her? What failures, actions, and decisions led to that moment? Inquests can be held with or without a jury.

In certain circumstances, including deaths involving police, a jury must be impanled.

The jury hears evidence, listens to witnesses, and ultimately delivers conclusions about the death.

They can also deliver narrative conclusions that go beyond the basic facts to describe the circumstances in detail.

Importantly, if an inquest identifies failures or systemic problems that pose ongoing risks of future deaths, the coroner has the power to issue regulation 28 reports to prevent future deaths.

These are formal documents sent to relevant organizations, government departments, police forces, our healthcare trusts, etc.

requiring them to respond with what actions they’ll take to address the problems identified.

This is what Cheryl’s family fought for, an inquest that would expose the truth, identify the failures, and force systemic change.

Cheryl Shannon died on the 17th of March, 2014.

Paulo O’Hara Hara was convicted and sentenced on the 30th of June 2014, but the inquest into Cheryl Lee’s death didn’t take place until June of 2019, 5 years later.

Why the delay? Inquests involving complex systemic failures, multiple agencies, and potential criticism of public bodies take time to organize.

Evidence must be gathered.

Witness statements must be taken.

Documents must be disclosed.

Legal representatives for all the interested persons, the family, the police, the probation service, why the NHS, and others must be appointed.

And critically, inquests are usually delayed until after any criminal proceedings are concluded.

This is to avoid prejudicing the criminal trial.

If an inquest were held first and made findings about what happened, it might be difficult for the criminal defendant to get a fair trial.

So typically the inquest waits until the criminal case is finished.

But waiting five years for answers is agonizing for families.

For 5 years, Cheryl’s mother, Betty, her sister, Shivane, and the rest of the family had to live with unanswered questions.

They knew O’Hara killed Sherie.

That was never in doubt.

But they didn’t know the full extent of what police and probation knew when they knew it and why they didn’t act.

They didn’t have the catharsis of a public examination of the failures.

Yeah.

And they didn’t have the official acknowledgement that this death was preventable.

They didn’t have the promise of reform.

They waited and they fought.

Because inquests don’t just happen automatically with families passively receiving whatever conclusions emerge.

Families have to advocate often with the help of solicitors who specialize in inquest law to ensure the scope of the inquest is broad enough that all relevant evidence is examined that tough questions are asked.

Cheryl’s family instructed solicitors from Dayton Pierce Glenn, a law firm known for representing families in inquests involving state failings and human rights issues.

Their solicitor, Sarah Ra, would become a fierce advocate for the family throughout the inquest process.

In June of 2019, 5 years and 3 months after Cheryl’s death, at the inquest into her death finally began at Preston Corer’s court.

The coroner was James Newman, area coroner for Lancaster.

A coroner is typically a lawyer or a doctor with specialized training in investigating deaths.

They have quasi judicial powers.

They can compel witnesses to attend, can require documents to be produced, can question witnesses directly, but they also have an inquisitorial rather than adversarial role.

Unlike in a criminal trial where prosecution and defense are battling, a coroner’s inquest is supposed to be a cooperative search for truth.

Because this was a death involving police contact, a jury was impanled.

Jury selection for inquest works similarly to criminal trials.

Potential jurors are called from the community, screened to ensure they can serve fairly, and then sworn in.

Yeah.

The jury’s role is to listen to all the evidence, and then deliver conclusions about the death.

The inquest was scheduled to last approximately 4 weeks.

Four weeks of evidence, four weeks of testimony, four weeks of Cheryl’s family sitting in a courtroom reliving the worst period of their lives, hearing details about the failures that cost Sherie her life.

Who testified? The inquest heard from a wide range of witnesses, police officers who responded to the calls on the 1st of March and the 17th of March.

They described what they found, what actions they took, what information they had, the probation officer who supervised O’Hara after his release.

She described her interactions with him, what she knew about the allegations of violence, why she made the decision she made.

Representatives from the probation service hierarchy who could speak to policies, procedures, training, and whether the probation officer was properly supported.

Police supervisors and policymakers who could explain the decisions about resourcing, response grading, and how domestic violence calls were handled.

Social services representatives because there was a child, Lucia, living in a home where domestic violence was occurring.

NHS staff, potentially including doctors or nurses who might have treated Sherley for injuries, domestic violence experts who could provide context about victim behavior, why victims retract allegations, how abusers control their partners, and perhaps most importantly, Sheril’s family members.

They could testify about what Cheryl told them, what they observed, what they did to try to help.

The inquest didn’t hear from Paul O’Hara.

He’d been convicted of murder and was in prison.

He had the right to attend or to provide a statement, but apparently chose not to participate.

This is not uncommon.

Convicted murderers rarely want to engage with inquests into their victim’s deaths as there’s no benefit to them and potential further exposure of their culpability.

Over four weeks, a detailed picture emerged, not just of the 17th of March, though that was examined in detail, but of the entire chain of events from O’Hara’s release in April 2012 through to Cheryl Lee’s death.

The jury heard about the assessment that O’Hara had psychopathic traits and posed a risk to women.

They heard that despite this assessment, he wasn’t placed under MAPA.

And they heard about his relationship with Sheril and how probation failed to adequately inform police.

They heard about the 1st of March report, the broken jaw, the knifeoint hostage situation, the explicit threat to kill rather than go back to prison.

They heard how that report sat for 11 days before probation was informed.

They heard how even after probation learned about it, O’Hara wasn’t recalled.

They heard about Cheryl retracting her allegations while O’Hara hid in a cupboard.

They heard about the risk assessment being downgraded from high to medium despite her being in a relationship with a convicted murderer.

They heard about Cheryl’s final call to probation on the 17th, her terror, her desperate plea for help.

They heard about the response being graded as grade two, about the delay in response about two detectives without protective equipment being sent to arrest a violent murderer.

and they heard from DS Mallister and DC Kenworthy about what happened when O’Hara attacked.

After four weeks of evidence, the jury retired to consider their conclusions.

This is a weighty responsibility.

They had to sift through complex information about policies, procedures, and individual decisions.

They had to assess whether failures by police, probation, or other agencies contributed to Cheryl’s death.

The jury returned unanimous findings.

When a jury is unanimous, it means every single juror agreed.

There was no disscent, no doubt, no, well, maybe.

They all saw the evidence the same way.

Their primary finding was that Cheryl Shannon was unlawfully killed.

Meaning her death was a homicide caused by Paulo Hera’s unlawful actions.

And this was never in dispute.

But then came the critical finding, the one that the family had fought for.

The jury found that Cheryl’s death was more than minimally contributed to by the failure to recall O’Hara to prison once reports were made of violence to Cheryl Lee and of him drinking.

Let’s break down what this means.

More than minimally contributed is legal language, but the substance is clear.

The jury found that the failure to recall O’Hara was a significant factor in Cheryl’s death.

Not the only factor.

O’Hara’s decision to kill her was the primary cause, but the systems failure to recall him when they should have was more than a trivial or negligible contribution.

It mattered.

It created the conditions that allowed O’Hara to be free to kill her.

If O’Hara had been recalled to prison on the 1st of March in or the 12th of March or the 14th of March, if probation had used the power they had to take him off the streets, Sherley would have been alive on the 17th of March.

The decision not to recall him directly contributed to her being dead.

The jury also found a lack of inter agency management or appropriate sharing of information prior to and after 1st March 2014.

This finding addresses the map of failure and the general breakdown in communication between police and probation.

These agencies are supposed to work together to manage dangerous offenders.

They’re supposed to share information freely and frequently.

They’re supposed to coordinate their responses.

None of that happened in O’Hara’s case.

If police had known from the moment O’Hara started a relationship with Cheryl that she was potentially at risk, they could have conducted welfare checks, ensured she knew about his history, offered her support services.

If probation and police had been in regular communication after the 1st of March report, a coordinated decision to recall O’Hara could have been made quickly.

If there had been a MAPA meeting on say the 5th of March with police, probation, and other relevant agencies, sitting around a table reviewing O’Hara’s case, someone in that room would have said, “This man is a convicted murderer displaying the exact same pattern of behavior that led to his previous conviction.

He must be recalled immediately.

But those conversations didn’t happen because the inter agency management wasn’t there.

After the jury delivered their conclusions, Cheryl’s family finally had the acknowledgement they’d fought for.

And this wasn’t just their opinion that the system failed.

This was a jury’s official finding after four weeks of evidence.

Cheryl’s mother, Betty Roberts, gave a statement.

Sherie was our rock.

She was a beautiful, caring, kind daughter, sister, mother.

But she’s gone.

Taken from us by a monster with a known history of violence to women on a life license for the murder of a previous partner.

Probation and police had all the information they needed to stop this, but they let it happen.

Betty’s statement captures the family’s pain and anger.

They didn’t lose Shirley to illness or accident, random tragedies that no one could have prevented.

They lost her to a preventable death.

The information existed to save her.

The power existed to save her.

But the system chose not to use it.

Shirley’s sister, Chivon Shannan, she was even more direct.

Knowledge is power and probation.

And police had both the knowledge and the power to prevent Sheri’s killing.

If they had used them, she would still be with us today.

Sherie was fed to the wolves by the very people that were supposed to protect her.

fed to the wolves.

It’s a visceral image and it’s accurate.

The system didn’t just fail to protect Sheril.

It actively placed her in danger by releasing O’Hara, by not supervising him properly, by not recalling him when warned, and then by sending inadequately equipped officers to respond when she finally called for help.

The family solicitor Sarah Ra of Dayton Pierce Glenn W characterized the jury’s findings as revealing institutional resistance to providing a decisive and effective response to violence against women.

This gets at something broader than just this one case.

The failures in Cheryl’s case weren’t unique.

They were symptomatic of wider problems in how the criminal justice system responds to domestic violence, how it assesses risk, how it protects victims.

Sarah Rica called the verdict a wake-up call to those that hold power in society.

The question was, would anyone listen? After an inquest identifies systemic failures that could lead to future deaths, the coroner has a duty to issue regulation 28 reports to prevent future deaths.

These are formal reports sent to relevant organizations identifying specific concerns and asking what actions will be taken to address them.

Coroner James Newman issued Regulation 28 reports following Sher’s inquest.

The reports went to Lancaster Constabularary, the police force responsible for the area where Sherley lived and where the failures in police response occurred.

The Ministry of Justice, the government department responsible for the criminal justice system, including sentencing policy, parole, and probation services.

HM Prison and Probation Service, the agency responsible for managing prisons and supervising offenders on license in the community.

These reports are public documents.

They’re posted on the courts and tribunals judiciary website so that anyone can read them.

This transparency is important.

It allows the public, the media, researchers, and campaigners to see what concerns have been raised and to hold organizations accountable for their responses.

Organizations that receive regulation 28 reports are required to respond within 56 days explaining what actions they’re taking or will take to address the concerns raised.

These responses are also published.

Did these reports lead to change? That’s a complicated question.

Organizations typically respond with a combination of acknowledgements of the problems, descriptions of changes already underway, and commitments to further action.

But whether those commitments translate into real sustained improvement in practice is difficult to assess from outside the system.

What we can say is that the inquest ensured that Cheryl’s death wasn’t forgotten, that it was officially recognized as preventable, and that pressure was placed on institutions to do better.

Whether they’ve done better is something that would require a separate investigation.

Cheryl’s case became a focal point in a broader national conversation about double lifers.

convicted murderers who are released from prison and then kill again.

Ministry of Justice data published around the time of the inquest revealed shocking statistics.

Between January 2007 and May 2015, a period of just over 8 years, 12 people were murdered by 11 separate offenders who had previously been convicted of murder and released on life license.

12 people like Sherily, 12 families destroyed, 12 preventable deaths.

The data also showed that approximately 300 people per year are released from prison, having served the custodial portion of a life sentence.

The average time served is roughly 16 1/2 years, similar to O’Hara’s 14 years.

Now, to be fair, the vast majority of those 300 people per year don’t go on to kill again.

Most lifelic prisoners successfully reintegrate into society.

They obey their license conditions.

They rebuild their lives.

They never commit serious crimes again.

But some do, and when they do, the consequences are catastrophic.

The question is, how do we identify which released murderers are safe and which are still dangerous? How do we supervise them effectively? And when warning signs appear, how do we respond swiftly enough to prevent tragedy? Yasio O’Hara case suggests the system was failing on all three counts.

He was assessed as having psychopathic traits and posing a risk to women, but was released anyway and not placed under enhanced supervision.

He entered a relationship, but probation didn’t adequately share that information with police.

And when warning signs appeared, violence, threats, weapons, the response was delayed and inadequate.

Cheryl’s family, particularly her sister Chivon, became affiliated with a campaign group called Killed Women.

This is an action group and memorial project that campaigns for justice for women killed by men, particularly in domestic violence contexts.

One of killed women’s key campaigns relates to sentencing disparities in murder cases.

Under current English law, the starting point for the minimum term in a murder sentence varies based on the circumstances.

If the murder involved a weapon brought to the scene specifically for the purpose of killing, like O’Hara bringing a carving knife to the bus stop where he killed Janine, the starting point is 25 years.

But if the murder involved a weapon that was already present at the scene, like a kitchen knife grabbed during a domestic argument, the starting point is only 15 years.

This 10-year difference has significant implications.

Most domestic murders involve weapons that were already in the home.

Kitchen knives being the most common.

Most stranger murders or premeditated killings involve weapons brought to the scene.

The effect is that domestic murderers who kill intimate partners in their own homes systematically receive lower starting points than those who kill strangers.

The campaign argues this disparity implies domestic murderers are not as dangerous as those who murder strangers.

A proposition that’s obviously false.

A man who kills his wife is just as dangerous, just as culpable as a man who kills a stranger.

The location of the weapon at the time of the decision to kill shouldn’t determine whether someone serves 15 years or 25 years.

This campaign gained significant traction.

In March 2023, the government published the Clare Wade KC domestic homicide sentencing review.

Clareire Wade is a king’s council, a senior barristister who was asked to examine whether sentencing in domestic homicide cases is fit for purpose.

The review examined the evidence, consulted with victims families, and and considered whether reforms were needed.

While the full details of the review’s recommendations are beyond the scope of this documentary, it represented official recognition that there might be problems with how domestic homicides are sentenced.

Additionally, the Sentencing Act 2020 and the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 introduced some reforms.

Notably, the murder of a police officer on duty was added as a category that carries a whole life order starting point.

And murder committed by a person previously convicted of murder.

The double lifer scenario now has a whole life order as its starting point.

This last reform came too late for Sheril.

O’Hara’s case was one of the cases that demonstrated the need for it.

But future double lifers, if the parole board makes the catastrophic mistake of releasing them, will at least face whole life orders if they kill again.

Whether this deters anyone is unclear.

People who are willing to commit murder are often not carefully weighing potential sentences, but it at least ensures that someone like O’Hara can never ever be released a second time.

Throughout the attention on Cheryl’s case and the inquest, Janine Waterworth’s family were also grappling with renewed grief and anger.

They’d lost Janine in 1998, 21 years before the inquest.

They’d spent two decades living with that loss.

And now they learned that the man who killed their daughter and sister had been released and had killed again.

They learned that a second family was going through what they’d gone through.

and they learned that if the system had worked properly, Sheroli wouldn’t have died and O’Hara would have remained in prison where he belonged.

Tracy Washington, Janine’s sister, spoke to the Oldm Chronicle in 2018.

The parole officers are supposed to be watching these people and how they’re rehabilitating properly, but they don’t.

They haven’t got the powers or the people to do that properly.

This is a damning assessment from someone with direct experience.

Tracy wasn’t speaking as an outside critic of the system.

She was speaking as someone whose sister was murdered by someone the system later released to kill again.

She also said, “If you can kill somebody once, it must be far easier to do it a second time.” This observation is chilling and possibly true.

The first time someone commits murder, nah, there’s a psychological threshold to cross.

Taking another person’s life is the most extreme transgression of social norms and moral codes.

Most people couldn’t do it.

But once someone has crossed that threshold, once they’ve killed and lived with having killed, the psychological barrier is lower the second time.

O’Hara killed Janine with a knife, stabbing her 12 times until the blade broke.

16 years later, he killed Sheril with a hammer and a knife in a public street in broad daylight.

The second killing was, if anything, more brazen, more violent, more defiant of social norms.

He wasn’t more hesitant or more conflicted.

He was, if anything, more dangerous.

Tracy also spoke about her mother.

Mom has never been the same person since we lost Janine.

20 plus years of grief.

And now the added pain of knowing that Janine’s death didn’t satisfy O’Hara’s capacity for violence.

He killed again.

And another mother lost a daughter.

Another sister lost a sister.

Another child lost a mother.

The Waterworth family’s pain is often overlooked in coverage of this case, which naturally focuses on Cheryl Lee as the more recent victim and on the systemic failures that allowed her death.

But Janine was O’Hara’s first victim, and her family deserves recognition of their loss and their ongoing suffering.

The first and most fundamental lesson from this case is that domestic violence kills.

This isn’t an exaggeration or hyperbole.

Intimate partner violence is one of the leading causes of homicide for women in the United Kingdom.

On average, one woman is killed by a current or former partner every four days.

Every 4 days.

When Janine Waterworth was killed 3 days after ending her relationship with O’Hara.

Cheryl Shannon was killed on the same day she finally reached out to probation for help.

Both women were killed because they tried to assert autonomy.

Janine by leaving, Cheryl Lee by reporting.

The most dangerous time for a victim of domestic violence is when they’re leaving or have just left.

Abusers kill to regain control, to punish, to prevent the victim from being with anyone else.

If I can’t have you, no one can.

It’s the ultimate expression of the possessive mindset that drives intimate partner abuse.

But here’s the thing.

Domestic violence homicides are often predictable.

They don’t come out of nowhere.

There’s usually a history.

escalation of violence, previous incidents, threats, stalking, weapons, choking, jealousy, isolation.

Well, these are known risk factors.

When researchers and domestic violence experts study homicides and work backward, they almost always find that multiple red flags were present before the killing.

In Janine’s case, O’Hara had a history of violence against women.

He had substance abuse issues.

He exhibited intense jealousy.

He stalked her, lying in wait at a location he knew she’d be.

He brought a weapon.

These are textbook warning signs.

In Cheryl’s case, O’Hara was a convicted murderer.

He’d killed his previous partner.

He subjected Chery to serious physical violence, broken bones.

He used weapons, holding her at knife point.

He made explicit threats to kill.

He isolated her, hiding in a cupboard while police interviewed her.

Again, textbook.

The warning signs were there.

Professionals saw them.

Police officers, probation officers, in family members, but the system didn’t respond adequately.

Which brings us to our second lesson.

The failure in Sherley Shannon’s case wasn’t a single person’s mistake.

It was a systemic failure involving multiple agencies and multiple opportunities for intervention.

O’Hara should have been under MAPA.

He wasn’t.

That’s a systemic failure.

Probation should have informed police immediately when O’Hara entered a relationship.

They didn’t.

That’s a communication failure.

Police should have arrested O’Hara on the 1st of March or at minimum shared information with probation immediately.

They didn’t either.

That’s a coordination failure.

Probation should have recalled O’Hara to prison when they learned about the violence on the 12th of March.

They didn’t.

That’s a decision-making failure.

Police response on the 17th of March should have been properly resourced and equipped.

It wasn’t.

That’s a resourcing failure.

Any one of these failures, if corrected, might have saved Sher’s life.

If O’Hara had been under MAPA, regular multi- agency meetings would have identified the risk.

If police and probation had shared information freely, a coordinated response would have been possible.

If probation had recalled him on the 12th, he’d have been in custody on the 17th.

If the police response had been properly equipped, the officers might have been able to control O’Hara before he could harm Sheril.

But all the failures happened together.

They compounded and Sheril died.

This is what systemic failure means.

It’s not that bad people made evil choices.

It’s that good people working in broken systems, not with inadequate resources, unclear responsibilities, poor communication channels, and competing pressures, made a series of decisions that individually seemed defensible, but collectively added up to catastrophe.

The inquest jury recognized this.

Their finding wasn’t this one person is responsible.

It was the system failed.

And here’s the hardest truth.

If the system failed this badly in this case where the risk was so obvious, how many other high-risisk cases are being inadequately managed right now? How many women are in relationships with dangerous men who should be supervised but aren’t? How many opportunities to intervene are being missed because agencies aren’t talking to each other? We don’t know.

And that’s terrifying.

Paulo Hara served 14 years for Janine Waterworth’s murder.

14 years out of a life sentence.

Well, then he was released and killed again.

This case became one of the poster cases for the argument that life should mean life for the most dangerous offenders.

And it raises uncomfortable questions about the parole system and rehabilitation.

On one hand, the concept of rehabilitation is philosophically important.

A criminal justice system based purely on punishment without any hope of redemption is arguably inhumane.

People change.

People grow.

Someone who commits a crime at age 27 might genuinely become a different person by age 41.

Denying the possibility of change is denying something fundamental about human nature.

And in fact, most people released from life sentences don’t reaffend.

And the recidivism rate for released life prisoners is actually relatively low compared to prisoners serving short sentences for lesser crimes.

So, the system does work for many people, but it catastrophically failed in O’Hara’s case.

He was assessed as having psychopathic traits.

He posed a serious risk to women, and he exhibited the exact same pattern of behavior after release, entering an intimate relationship and becoming violent.

That led to his original conviction.

The parole board, when they released him in 2012, presumably believed he was safe.

They made a judgment call based on the information available to them.

But that judgment was wrong.

Fatally wrong.

Since the O’Hara case and others like it, the law has changed.

Murder committed by someone previously convicted of murder now carries a whole life order as the starting point.

So if someone like O’Hara were convicted today, they wouldn’t be eligible for parole.

They’d stay in prison until they died.

Is that the right policy? It’s a genuine question.

On one hand, someone who has killed twice has demonstrated beyond any doubt that they’re capable of lethal violence and that they haven’t changed despite years in prison.

Why give them a third chance to kill? On the other hand, there are edge cases.

What if someone killed at age 18 in a gang-l incident, served 20 years, was then released at age 38, and killed again at age 40 in a completely different context.

Should they never have been released or should they have been but with better supervision? There are no easy answers.

And what we can say is that in O’Hara’s case specifically, he should never have been released.

The assessment that he posed a risk to women should have been given more weight.

And if he had to be released, he should have been under the most intensive supervision possible.

Neither of those things happened.

DS Damian Mallister and DC Karen Kenworthy are heroes.

They put themselves between a violent murderer and his intended victim.

They fought to save Cheryl’s life.

They nearly died trying.

But bravery isn’t enough.

They should never have been in that position.

Two detectives without stab vests carrying one baton between them.

Sent to arrest a convicted murderer who had explicitly threatened to kill rather than go back to prison.

That’s not a proper deployment of resources.

That’s sending people into danger inadequately prepared.

Young the officers who make resourcing and deployment decisions aren’t callous.

They’re working within constraints.

Limited officers, limited equipment, competing priorities, multiple calls for service simultaneously.

They make judgment calls about what level of response is appropriate for each call.

But this call, arrest a lifeic murderer who’s been violent toward his partner, should have been flagged as high risk.

it should have warranted an armed response unit or at minimum multiple uniformed officers with full protective equipment.

The fact that it didn’t suggests either information wasn’t properly communicated so the dispatcher didn’t know how serious it was or resources were stretched so thin that even high-risisk calls couldn’t get appropriate responses.

Either way, it’s another systemic failure.

One, and it nearly cost two officers their lives.

DS Mallister and DC Kenworthy received awards and recognition which they absolutely deserved.

But they also deserved not to be put in that position in the first place.

They deserved a system that supported them properly.

This is a lesson that extends beyond this case.

Police officers, social workers, probation officers, and others who work on the front lines of public safety are asked to do incredibly difficult, dangerous jobs.

Often they’re underresourced, under supported, and undervalued.

And when things go wrong, they’re the ones who bear the physical and psychological scars.

If we want people to do these jobs well, we need to give them the tools, training, and support they need.

Expecting individuals to make up for systemic failures through personal heroism isn’t sustainable.

Yarn took 5 years for Cheryl’s family to get the inquest.

5 years of fighting for answers, for recognition, for accountability.

That’s too long.

Families shouldn’t have to fight that hard for truth.

The inquest system in England and Wales is actually relatively good compared to many other countries.

The fact that inquests are public, that they can compel evidence, that they can make findings about systemic failures, and that coroners can issue reports to prevent future deaths.

These are all valuable features, but the system is under strain.

Inquests are delayed because coroner’s courts are underresourced.

Families often need to hire specialist lawyers to ensure their voices are heard which is expensive.

The process is adversarial even though it’s supposed to be inquisitorial.

I because institutions bring lawyers to defend their actions and families need lawyers to challenge them.

And even when inquests make powerful findings and coroners issue prevention of future death reports, there is limited enforcement mechanism.

Organizations are required to respond, but no one checks whether their promises of reform actually lead to real change.

Sheri’s family got their verdict.

The jury found what they knew to be true.

That systemic failures contributed to her death.

But does that bring Sherie back? Does it heal the trauma? Does it mean Lucia gets her mother back? No.

It provides some measure of validation and accountability.

It might lead to changes that save future lives, but it can’t undo the loss.

This is why the family’s fight was so important.

They didn’t do it just for themselves.

They did it so that future families wouldn’t have to go through the same thing.

That’s an incredible act of public service born from unimaginable pain.

Amid all the discussion of systemic failures and policy reforms, we must not forget the individual human beings at the center of this tragedy.

Janine Waterworth was 21 years old when she died.

She was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s niece, granddaughter, friend.

She was a beloved aunt to her sister’s children.

She had a whole life ahead of her, birthdays she never celebrated, places she never traveled, experiences she never had.

We don’t know what Janine wanted to be.

Maybe she had career aspirations.

Maybe she wanted children of her own someday.

Maybe she had hobbies, passions, dreams.

The public record doesn’t tell us those details because Janine’s life was cut short before she could fully become whoever she was going to be.

What we know is that her family loved her, that her mother was never the same after losing her, that her sister Tracy still speaks about her decades later with love and pain.

Janine made a decision that should have been simple and safe.

She ended a relationship that wasn’t working for her.

For that, she was murdered.

Stabbed 12 times at a bus stop on a dark morning in March.

She deserved better.

She deserved to live.

She deserved to grow old, to find love with someone who respected her, to have the full rich life that was stolen from her.

When we talk about the O’Hara case, when we discuss policy and failures and reforms, we must remember this is why it matters.

Because Janine mattered.

because her life had value.

N because her family’s grief is real and ongoing.

Shirley Shannon was 40 years old when she died.

She was a mother to Lucia who was just 13 and who lost her mother in the most traumatic way possible.

Shirley was an entrepreneur.

She’d owned a beauty salon and a furniture store.

She was a carer helping vulnerable people.

She’d pursued education, enrolling in a forensic science degree.

She was someone her family called our rock, the person they leaned on, the person who held things together.

She was beautiful, caring, and kind.

She was wellknown, and well-liked in her community in Rottenstall.

Her death shocked the entire town.

Shirley tried to get help.

She told her family what was happening.

They called the police.

She called probation.

She did everything right.

She reached out to the systems that were supposed to protect her.

And those systems failed her.

They failed her when they released O’Hara without proper supervision.

They failed her when they didn’t arrest him on the 1st of March.

They failed her when they didn’t recall him to prison.

They failed her when they sent two underequipped officers to respond on the 17th of March.

She was, in her sister’s words, fed to the wolves by the very people supposed to protect her.

Shirley deserved better.

She deserved to see her daughter grow up, graduate, get married, have children.

She deserved to grow old with her family.

She deserved to live.

When we talk about reforming the criminal justice system, when we talk about better supervision of released prisoners and better protection for domestic violence victims, and we must remember this is why it matters.

Because Cheryl Lee mattered.

Because Luchia deserved to have her mother.

Because the Shenan family’s grief is real and ongoing.

This documentary has laid out in detail how Paul O’Hara murdered two women 16 years apart and how systemic failures enabled the second murder.

But here’s the question that should keep all of us awake at night.

Could this happen again? Are there other convicted murderers currently on life license who are inadequately supervised? Are there other women in relationships with dangerous men where police and probation aren’t properly coordinating? Are there other domestic violence victims calling for help who won’t get adequate responses? The honest answer is yes.

Almost certainly yes.

The systemic problems that led to Cheryl’s death under resourcing poor inter agency communication, inadequate risk assessment, delayed responses are not unique to Lancaster in 2014.

They exist in varying degrees throughout the criminal justice system.

Have reforms since 2014 made things better? Probably somewhat.

The whole life order for double lifers means that future Paul O’Hara won’t get a second chance to kill.

The Clare Wade sentencing review and the campaigns around domestic violence have raised awareness.

The inquest and the regulation 28 reports have pushed for improvements, but awareness and policy changes don’t automatically translate into frontline practice.

The officers and probation workers managing high-risisk cases today are still underresourced, still overwhelmed with case loads, still working in systems that prioritize efficiency over thoroughess, and victims are still being let down.

Women are still being killed by intimate partners at horrifying rates.

The mechanisms for protection are still inadequate.

So yes, this could happen again.

And until we fundamentally restructure how we fund, staff, and organize services for protecting vulnerable people, it probably will happen again.

That’s not defeatism.

It’s realism and it’s a call to action because we know what needs to change.

We need better funding for domestic violence services.

We need smaller case loads for probation officers so they can actually supervise their clients properly.

We need better communication systems between agencies.

We need police forces to treat domestic violence calls as the high priority emergencies they are.

We need courts to take domestic violence seriously in bail and sentencing decisions.

And we need schools and communities to educate people about healthy relationships and consent and the warning signs of abuse.

These aren’t mysteries.

We know what works.

The question is whether we have the political will and the resources to do it.

Throughout our research for this documentary, we encountered a persistent detail in online discussions about this case, references to Janine Waterworth as a nurse or to the nurses involved in the case.

We need to address this directly.

There is no evidence that Janine Waterworth was a nurse.

There is no evidence of any nurse connection to this case at all.

After extensive research across news archives, court records, inquest documents, and case databases, we found no mention of Janine’s occupation anywhere.

Um, Paulo Hara’s occupation is listed simply as various.

Cheryl Shannon was a businesswoman and carer, but not a nurse.

So, where did this detail come from? The most likely explanation is confusion with another case.

In a widely shared 2021 investigation into double lifers, the O’Hara case was featured alongside the case of Leroy Campbell, who raped and murdered nurse Lisa Skidmore in 2016.

The proximity of these stories in the same articles likely caused the nurse detail to be inadvertently transferred to the wrong case.

This is actually a perfect illustration of how misinformation spreads.

One article mentions two cases in succession.

Someone reads it quickly and remembers nurse murdered by released killer.

They Google it later and find the O’Hara case.

They assume that’s the nurse case they read about.

They mention it to someone else or post about it online.

And gradually the false detail becomes an established fact that people repeat without checking.

We’ve taken care in this documentary to rely only on verified sourced information.

When we say something, we can point to where we learned it.

That’s our commitment to you and to the memory of Janine and Cheryl Lee to tell their stories accurately and respectfully.

We’ve reached the end of this documentary on the Paul O’Hara case.

We’ve told you about two murders 16 years apart.

We’ve examined the failures that enabled the second one.

We’ve looked at the brave officers who tried to save a life and nearly lost their own.

We’ve discussed the inquest, the reforms, and the ongoing struggles of two families seeking justice and meaning in their losses.

But this isn’t just a story about the past.

It’s a story about now.

Right now, there are women in dangerous relationships.

Right now, there are released offenders who should be supervised but aren’t.

Right now, there are opportunities to intervene that might be missed.

If you’re in a situation of domestic violence, please reach out for help.

In the UK, you can contact the National Domestic Abuse Helpline at 082000247.

In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 180079-97233.

There are resources and people who can help.

If you know someone who might be in danger, check on them.

Let them know you’re there.

Believe them when they tell you what’s happening.

help them access resources.

And if you’re someone who works in the criminal justice system, police, probation, courts, social services, please remember cases like this one.

Remember that the decisions you make, the information you share or don’t share, the risk assessments you conduct matter.

They can be the difference between life and death.

For Janine Waterworth and Shirley Shannon, the systems failures were fatal.

Let’s honor their memory by learning from those failures and doing better.

Thank you for watching this documentary from Cold Case Desk.

If you found this valuable, please like this video and subscribe to our channel.

We’re committed to bringing you thoroughly researched, respectful, true crime content that honors victims and examines how we can create a safer society for everyone.

Leave a comment below sharing your thoughts on this case on what reforms do you think are most important? How can we better protect domestic violence victims? And remember, behind every true crime case is a real person whose life mattered, whose loss is still felt, whose memory deserves respect.

Janine Waterworth, 21 years old, murdered in March 1998.

Shirley Shannon, 40 years old, murdered on March 17th, 2014.

May their memories be a blessing and may their deaths not be in vain.

This has been Cold Case Desk.

Thank you for listening.