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| Two 15-year-olds get life for murders of mother and daughter | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Two 15-year-olds have been given life sentences with 20-year minimum terms for the murder of a mother and daughter in Lincolnshire in April. | |
| Dinner lady Elizabeth Edwards, 49, and Katie, 13, were smothered and stabbed while they slept at home in Spalding. | |
| Sentencing them, the judge said it was "a terrible crime which has few parallels in modern criminal history". | |
| The killers were 14 at the time, apparently making them Britain's youngest double-murderers. | |
| The judge at Nottingham Crown Court, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, said the case had "defining and particularly chilling" features and condemned their conduct as "grotesque". | |
| 'Meticulous and repeated' | |
| Jurors heard that the killers went on to share a bath, have sex, and watch four Twilight vampire films after the murders in Dawson Avenue, Spalding. | |
| Addressing the teenagers, the judge told them: "There is a clear intention to kill both victims - both defendants admitted wanting to murder them. | |
| "There was remarkable premeditation and planning - it was, on any view, substantial, meticulous and repeated." | |
| He added: "The killings were brutal in the form of executions, and both victims, particularly Elizabeth Edwards, must have suffered terribly in the last minutes of their lives." | |
| Mrs Edwards and her daughter were repeatedly stabbed by the couple, who were described in court as having a Bonnie and Clyde-style relationship. | |
| Mrs Edwards was stabbed by the boy eight times, twice in the throat, in a deliberate attempt to ensure her daughter was not woken by screams or cries for help. | |
| Katie was stabbed twice in the neck with severe force before she was smothered by the boy. |