Crack-addict serial rapist stabbed mother to death in front of her son after being freed on bail

A serial rapist murdered a young mother in front of her baby son just days after being bailed over another sex attack.

Crack cocaine addict Christopher Braithwaite, 22, was arrested for a rape in August last year but was released the next day.

He killed 23-year- old Stacey Westbury a week later.

The case will reignite debate on whether bail should be granted to those accused of serious offences. Government lawyers recently ruled that a blanket ban on bail for murder suspects would breach their human rights.

Braithwaite is today beginning a life sentence, and the prosecution has asked for six charges of rape against two other young women to remain on his file.

Braithwaite denies carrying out those six rapes, but he dramatically halted his trial this week to admit sexually attacking and murdering Stacey.

He was arrested on suspicion of raping a woman in her twenties on August 9 last year, but was released the next day pending further police investigation.

Then on August 17 he killed Stacey in her home in West London while her ten-month-old son Kayden lay in his cot yards away.

Katherine Rake of the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for justice for women, said yesterday: ‘The fact Braithwaite was released on bail shows that criminal justice agencies have utterly failed to implement adequate safeguards.

‘There is an urgent need for the Government to do more to ensure that better evidence is collected and acted upon when dealing with rape cases.’

The Old Bailey heard that Braithwaite, who had been at school with Stacey, sexually attacked her before killing her.

Her father Ken found her body 18 hours later, with her face bloodied and bruised from repeated punches. She had been strangled and stabbed in the neck, stomach and right hand with a nine-inch blade.

Her son was still in his cot, while his mother’s body lay on the sofa yards away. After the killing, jobless Braithwaite had tried to wash the blood from Stacey’s naked corpse, before ransacking her flat trying to find anything he could sell for drugs.

Stacey’s mother Lorraine Beasley, a dinner lady, said that Kayden had suffered nightmares and would scream hysterically if strangers came to the family’s home.

In a statement read to the court, she said: ‘Kayden has had his first birthday, which every child should spend with their Mum. Christmas was just terrible. Stacey should have been with us to watch her son open his presents.’

An statement from Mr Westbury was also read to the judge before sentencing. He said: ‘I can only describe the initial feeling of discovering what had happened to Stacey as numb shock, to be replaced very quickly by the most awful pain I have ever felt.

‘I also felt a white-hot rage that someone could do this to my little girl. On the day of Stacey’s funeral I stood at her graveside. You shouldn’t have to bury your children." continues here

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