Angela Marjorie Writeson was born in Darlington, a town in County Durham, England. She was one of nine children, all of whom were raised separately in the care system and ended up in different homes. Their mother, Maureen, was in her life at some points and absent at others. Her father, Brian, passed away, but was also absent from her life.
Angela began drinking as a child, and no one has ever explained exactly how or when it started. But by the time she was a young adult, drinking became her whole life. Whenever she drank, she was erratic. It was not uncommon to see her throwing things or chasing people down the street with a metal bar. Now, it should be noted that Angela was described as frail and underweight, standing at 5’4″ tall and weighing 91 lb.
Angela also allegedly made prank calls to emergency services and violated court orders put in place specifically to stop her from buying alcohol. By the time she was in her 30s, she had 47 criminal convictions on her record and had served multiple prison sentences. While she was serving one of those sentences, she met Donna Jenkins.
Donna later said Angela was a lost soul who found life easier inside. She’d become largely institutionalized. According to Donna, her position working at a laundromat was the first time she had felt valued. When she got out, the structure was gone, and the cycle would repeat itself. When she was released for the last time in 2011, Angela moved to 14 Stephen Street in Hartlepool.
Donna said it was the happiest time of Angie’s life. She met a guy who eventually became her boyfriend, and he was everything to her. That didn’t last long, as her boyfriend soon died from an alcohol-related illness. Angela was heartbroken. She’d grown up without a family, spent nearly her entire adult life in and out of prison, and never held a job.
It was safe to say that Angela lived a very lonely life, and when she had finally found someone, he was taken from her. From that moment on, people began using Angela’s home as a doss house. You would hear it called a flop house here in the States. Angela stopped buying food, and according to her neighbors, she spent her entire benefits check on alcohol, consuming 9 L of strong cider every day.
It earned her the name Alco Ange. She would start drinking the moment she woke up and kept at it till she passed out. She slept on the sofa and rarely used any other room in the house other than the living room. But beneath all that, she was characterized as house proud and kept her home neat and tidy despite others frequently trashing the place, as well as her own personal struggles.
She loved animals and would feed the local dogs and take in strays when she could. At one point, she looked after a neighbor’s dog for 3 weeks. She found a friend in the dog, and having him around even slowed her drinking down, according to people who knew her. She was heartbroken when she had to give him back.
Angela also bought chocolate bars when she went to the shop for cider and would slip them through her neighbor’s mailbox for their young son. Above all, she was described as easygoing and kind. According to her neighbor, Siobhan Quinn, Angie craved company. That’s why she caused havoc sometimes.
She was just lonely. Angela would call Siobhan often about an appliance breaking or electricity problems, not because those things were always true, but because she needed a reason to talk to someone. She would sit on her front doorstep for long stretches of the day, hoping that someone would stop and simply talk to her.
But Angie wasn’t entirely on her own. She had a social worker who visited regularly and tried to make sure her money was spent on food and toiletries rather than alcohol. Her rent was paid directly to her landlord by the council, so she did have a roof over her head, but her behavior was erratic and difficult to manage.
She would often call her landlord, John Meggison, with fictional problems, saying windows were broken when they weren’t, and threatening to break them herself if he didn’t respond to her. In 2009, Angela was issued with an alcohol purchasing order. This is essentially a legal ban on buying alcohol. She ignored it.
In 2012, her care team got her into a residential facility for 8 months. She was doing well until she figured out how to leave and buy booze. She would keep coming back drunk and aggressive. Police were called in, and eventually she lost her placement. In 2013, her social worker drove her personally to a rehabilitation retreat near York and helped her settle in.
Within 24 hours, Angela took a taxi home. She later said she’d been desperate for a drink. They tried to get her back, but given her actions, the retreat refused her. Back at 14 Stephen Street, dozens of people would come through that door at any hour of the day or night without bothering to knock. People with names like Mad Molly, Goofy, and Cider Bill, and yes, that was actually in our research.
Groups of teenagers also showed up first thing in the morning to get Angela to go to the corner store for cigarettes. Others came in the evening begging her to buy alcohol. The arrangement worked like this. Angela could not afford company on her own terms, but she could afford to buy what teenagers wanted if they sat with her while they drank.
And for a few hours, she wouldn’t be alone. Some neighbors tried to intervene when things got loud or when anyone overstayed their welcome and Angela was clearly struggling. She would call someone to make the kids scatter, as she put it, but she always let them back in the next day. By December of 2014, two teenage girls had become regulars at Angela’s house.
Because of a lifetime anonymity order, they cannot be named. Court documents call them D and F. We’re going to call them by the pseudonyms Olivia and Yasmine, as many publications have done to avoid confusion. Olivia was 14 and was living in a children’s care home in Hartlepool. She started drinking alcohol and taking drugs when she was around 11 or 12 years old.
She grew up in a home where she was beaten by her parents, and she was referred to mental health services at some point in her childhood. Two months before December 8th, she was arrested for assaulting a staff member at her care home. Staff chose not to press charges, and she was given a warning. Yasmine was 13. She was placed with a foster family after her biological parents said they couldn’t manage her anymore.
Her background was a bit more stable than Olivia’s, even though she had run away from home multiple times. There were also concerns at school about her behavior. She was described by her own defense attorney as someone who thought as a child, spoke as a child, acted as a child. The two girls had known each other since early childhood, but had not been especially close until a few months before December of 2014.
They started meeting up with each other every day. Yasmine described Olivia as fun, not boring. They were into fashion, often obsessing over clothes or makeup. Their favorite song was I Don’t Care by singer Lloyd. They posted on Facebook constantly, declaring their love and loyalty to not only each other, but their wide circle of friends.
About 5 weeks before the events of today’s story, Yasmine sent Olivia a message calling her my partner in crime and writing, “We will be with each other through thick and thin.” Night time, the two girls escaped from their care placements 18 times. On the afternoon of December 8th, 2014, Angela’s landlord came to her house.
She was already drunk when he arrived. She wanted him to purchase alcohol for her, and when he refused, it turned into an argument that saw her throwing her keys at him. He eventually took the keys and left, planning to return in the morning to give them back to her. That same day, Olivia and Yasmine spent the early evening strolling about Hartlepool.
They were drinking cider, smoking cigarettes, and taking selfies. Olivia had gotten into an argument with her mother earlier that day, and at some point during the call, her mother told her to go off and to remove herself from this earth. Yasmine originally planned to spend the evening with a different friend, and they separated early, and to no one’s surprise, the two of them found each other and decided to raise Just before 7:30 p.m.
, Olivia and Yasmine arrived at Angela’s home and pushed through the unlocked front door. She was home, and they sent her to the corner store to buy cider and chocolate. The shop security footage captured her making the purchase. She wore multiple layers of clothing, and the camera was clear enough to confirm that she was okay with no visible injuries.
She paid for the goods and went back home to the girls. What triggered it has never been definitively established, but at some point between 7:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., Olivia and Yasmine began beating Angela inside her own living room. They used their hands and feet first, and then they reached for what was around them.
They used different objects, a shovel, an 18-in wooden baton filled with screws down its length, a CRT television set, a kettle, a metal pan, a glass vase, ornaments from Angela’s shelves, a coffee table, a printer, a picture frame, and finally, a mirror, which was smashed directly over her face. Angela was restrained throughout.
At some point, she managed to raise her hands and arms to try to ward off the blows. A pathologist would later count 22 defensive wounds on her hands and forearms, including three fractured fingers. She was hit so hard repeatedly that her own teeth cut the inside of her cheek from the impact. Her face was struck so many times that blood began pooling in both sides of her brain.
She pleaded with them to stop. She said, “Please don’t stop. I’m scared.” She said it more than once, according to testimony from one of the girls who later described the attack to a friend. The friend who heard this said she described it without any particular emotion. At around 9:00 p.m.
, roughly 90 minutes into the attack, the girls stopped to take a selfie, which Yasmine posted to Snapchat. In the photograph, the two of them are smiling, holding a large bottle of cider up to their lips. Angela is visible in the background, curled up and cowering against the wall. Her face had already been beaten badly enough for the bruising to show up in the photograph taken in low light.
Then, the girls continued the assault. At some point during the attack, Yasmine made a phone call over Facebook to a friend. The friend could hear her voice clearly. She heard Yasmine shout, “Go on, smash her head in, brain her, [ __ ] kill her.” And in the background, there was laughter. It was later discovered that Angela had 124 separate injuries.
70 were slash wounds or cuts. 54 were blunt force injuries. And 71 of the 124 were to Angela’s head and face. Investigators later found shards of glass and small pieces of gravel that had been deliberately placed on or around her genitals. Ash from burnt paper was also placed inside her ear. The level of violence, prosecutors would later say, was hard to imagine.
At approximately 11:00 p.m., two of Angela’s regular drinking buddies, Tracy Gascoigne and Melanie Moon, arrived at her front door. They knocked and shouted, but there was no response from Angela. Melanie looked through a window and saw that the living room was in a state of total chaos.
She called out to Tracy, “Someone’s wrecked Angie’s house. You should see the state of it.” Tracy replied, “I don’t care.” There was no sign of Angela or anyone else because all three of them were in the bathroom. Angela was either unconscious or no longer capable of calling out for help. Some minutes later, Tracy and Melanie left.
Shortly after this, Olivia and Yasmine also walked out of the house. They went to visit a friend elsewhere in Hartlepool. He noticed that they were covered in blood, and when he asked them about it, they both claimed that they had fallen. They then sat with him and listened to rap music. And at approximately 2:00 a.m.
on December 9th, the girls went back to Angela’s house. Security cameras captured them walking back through the streets in the dark. According to court reports, they went back to see if she was dead. When they found out that she was still alive, they continued their attack. Whether she was conscious or not at that point isn’t known, but they did continue beating her.
At 4:00 a.m., One of them, it isn’t specified which, texted her guardian to come pick her up, but there was no response. They called 999 twice, requesting a ride home from the police. Apparently, this is something you can do as a minor in the UK. The Cleveland police later released an audio recording of one of the calls.
On it, one of the girls can be heard demanding the police hurry up. She’s laughing as she told the operator that they are freezing, they needed a ride, and that they had been reported missing from their placements. We will play that call for you now, and as I’m sure you can guess, the girls’ voices have been altered by the police to protect their identities.
Hello, Cleveland police. Uh I don’t know just ringing. What are you ringing for? Freezing. Sorry, who asked? Hello. I’ve just reported myself missing. Who reported yourself missing? Freezing. >> [laughter] >> Shouting in my ear, can you just What What do you want? Right, I’ve just rang to check the situation out.
Me and me and my friend are out. Will you tell me how long we’re going to be Freezing. What do we do for warmth? Tomorrow, then. There’s no need to be swearing, ringing up and swearing and going on like that. What’s your name? I’m cold. I’m just freezing. What do you want? What’s your name? Right, and where are you? Steven Street? Yeah.
Steven Steven Street. Pardon? You’re in Steven Street? Yeah. What’s your surname? No, don’t you just be swearing. I’m not being funny. Sure. Right, listen, right, you’re in Steven Street. We’ll get somebody along there as soon as we can. All right? Yeah, I’m freezing. I’m cold. Right, it’s not okay. Shortly after, officers arrived to collect them.
In the back of the police van, Olivia and Yasmine posed for a Snapchat photo together. The caption they posted read, “In the back of the busy van again.” The next morning at 8:45, Angela’s landlord, John Meggison, returned to give her her keys back. He was shocked by what he had found. The living room was covered in blood, glass, and broken furniture.
Angela’s body was lying on the couch half naked and battered beyond recognition. Angela Marjorie Wrightson was just 39 years old. Hello, police. Hi, are you standing in the street? Hello. Hi, yeah, can I have your address, please? >> Yeah, you’re breaking up. 14 Steven Street in Hartlepool. Okay, and what’s going on there? We’ve The landlord’s turned up at Angela Wrightson’s [clears throat] home address. Yeah. Um not breathing.
Face is covered in blood. She’s half naked. It looks like the house has been trashed, and there’s blood everywhere. Nothing’s been confirmed as to her well-being, whether she is or she isn’t breathing. Crews have just arrived, and I need your attendance immediately, please. On the morning of December 9th, while Angela’s body was still in her living room, Olivia went to the youth workers at her care home and started asking questions about what prison sentences looked like for murder.
Yasmine called her friends. She was described by people who saw her that day as quiet and shaking. She sent a text to one of her friends that read, “I might be getting sent down.” She told another friend what happened in enough detail that investigators would later use those conversations as evidence. The Cleveland police arrested both girls the same day.
During the investigation, Olivia admitted the girls had visited Angela that night, but denied hurting her. She said Angela was fine when they left and told the investigators the injuries must have happened another way, from someone else, probably after they were gone. Yasmine told the police a different story.
She said Olivia got into an argument with Angela and hit her with a table and kicked her. She said when they returned at 2:00 a.m., Olivia hit her again. But, she added that Angela was still alive when they left for the final time. At the same time, she refused to give the police the password to her cell phone. Fingerprints belonging to Olivia were found at the scene, including on the computer printer.
No fingerprints from Yasmine were recovered from any of the weapons, but Yasmine’s phone contained the photographs. It was Yasmine who made the Facebook call. It was also Yasmine who had posted to Snapchat twice that night. However, in Olivia’s bedroom at her care home, police found a sketch she had drawn.
It depicted a person being stabbed in the chest, and subsequently, both girls were charged with murder. The Cleveland police had the Snapchat photograph, the Facebook call, the security footage from the corner store, and the footage from Steven Street. They had the police van selfie with the timestamp, and they also had Yasmine’s conversations with friends the following day, in which she described what happened in enough detail to incriminate herself.
She essentially gave a step-by-step timeline of the whole night, something I assume would be a prosecutor’s dream. The first trial was scheduled for July of 2015 at Teesside Crown Court in Middlesbrough. It lasted just 3 days. In court, defense attorney Jamie Hill described the night as “just a terrible moment in history when these three people collided in the most appalling and tragic way.
” On the third day, the judge, Mr. Justice Globe, this is how they refer to judges in the UK, was handed a document compiled by the Cleveland police. It contained more than 500 comments that had been posted to Facebook in connection to the trial. The comments were threatening Olivia and Yasmine. Both the prosecution and the defense agreed that there was now a real risk of an unfair trial, and the judge agreed.
The jury was dismissed, and the judge banned any reporting of the retrial until after the verdicts were returned. This order was challenged by multiple news outlets who argued it violated the principle of open justice and said it would be unenforceable on social media. The Court of Appeal agreed in part.
Lord Justice Levenson granted the appeal, but imposed strict conditions. The media could report the retrial, but without using social media and without allowing comments on articles. This was the first time in UK history that such an order had been made. The second trial began in February of 2016 at Leeds Crown Court, relocated from Teesside in hopes of a fair trial.
Both of the girls denied responsibility for Angela’s murder. Olivia’s version of events placed all the blame on Yasmine. Said Yasmine had told her to knock Angela out, that Yasmine was the mastermind, that Yasmine had sat on her phone saying, “Fucking hell, isn’t she knocked out yet?” while Olivia was the one doing it.
However, the prosecution felt that neither account told the whole truth. Both girls were there. Both of them stayed, returned, and took photographs. During the trial, Olivia attempted to remove herself from this earth four separate times. She attempted twice at the court building itself, once in a bathroom where she attempted to use her own hair as a noose.
The judge in his sentencing remarks cited these attempts directly. He said he was concerned and disturbed that if the identities of the girls were released to the public, it would cause the threat to their lives to be real and immediate. So, the anonymity order was upheld. April 6th, 2016, both girls were found guilty of murder.
Both of them were in tears when the verdict was read, and they were led out immediately. The following day, they were sentenced to a minimum term of 15 years. Olivia was 15 at sentencing, and Yasmin was 14. Angela’s mother, Maureen, had submitted a victim impact statement. It was not read in full, but it was summarized by the judge.
She described seeing her daughter’s body in the mortuary. She said she did not think she would ever be able to stop seeing it. She could not understand how the girls could have been as sadistic and violent as they were. Angela’s extended family also released a statement. It read in part, “It’s true that Angela, or Angie as she was known to us all, led a troubled and at times chaotic lifestyle.
And as a family, we were not as close as we ought to have been. The chance to put that right has been taken away from us. Listening to the details of her injuries and of her final moments has been a harrowing experience, something which will continue to haunt us each and every day. No sentence, regardless of its severity, will ever bring Angie back.
The two girls responsible will one day be women themselves, free to live their lives and perhaps have children of their own, a right which was taken from Angie.” Even in prison, Yasmin was involved in a high number of incidents, including assaults on staff and other inmates. She had to be restrained on multiple occasions.
She was transferred to a women’s prison in March of 2019, whereas Olivia was transferred in April of 2018. In the aftermath of all of this, Hartlepool was stunned at what happened. Tributes started pouring in, and flowers were left on Stephen Street. On a nearby wall, someone wrote, “RIP Ange” in spray paint. It stayed there for a long time.
Angela’s niece, Rachel Tressider, rejected an apology offered by the mother of one of the killers. Before long, she began advocating publicly for what she called Angie’s Law, formally proposed as the Vulnerable Persons Act, which would give care providers the legal authority to obtain orders protecting disabled or vulnerable adults from individuals who intrude on or take over their homes.
She said, “Angela was failed by the system, which is why we need to create Angie’s Law.” Based on our research, it doesn’t appear the law ever went into effect. Angela’s funeral was held on Wednesday, January 28th, 2015, at Corporation Road Baptist Church in Darlington. The service began at 12:30 p.m.
, followed by interment at West Cemetery. Her obituary described her as a much-loved daughter of Maureen and the late Brian, a loving sister of Joanne and Michelle, and also a dear auntie. Only people who knew Angela were there at her funeral. Her mother, Maureen, was there. Her sisters, Joanne and Michelle. Her niece, Rachel. For a family that had been scattered through the care system for decades, it was one of the only times most of them had been in the room together, and it was because of Angela.
Angela Marjorie Wrightson had been a troubled woman. She drank 9 L of cider a day, slept on a sofa, and was desperate for human connection. She had been in and out of prison her whole adult life. She was lonely in a way that most people should never have to experience. She let anyone who knocked come in because the alternative was silence.
If Angela’s story resonated with you, then please click here to check out the story of Gemma Hayter, also from the UK. Gemma was a 27-year-old disabled woman who was tortured and murdered by three people she considered to be her friends.
