'My daughter's life is worth 10 years less than other murder victims'
Inside a cupboard upstairs in Julie Devey’s house is an Ikea bag, and it is very important to her. To most people this wouldn’t look like much but to Julie the empty bag is filled with emotion. It is from the last time she went shopping with her daughter, and it represents the hope and promise of Poppy Devey Waterhouse’s life, and what it could have been.
“We went shopping in Ikea on my last visit to see her before she was killed,” explains Julie, 60, from her cosy living room in Frome, Somerset. “We spent hours there choosing new things for her new flat, her new life. She was excited and so was I, for her. I knew she was clear about her decision and right to move on on her own. She talked about colour schemes and measured bookcases and cupboards. She left with a huge amount of shiny new things. I still have this bag and the things she bought. I even have the receipt… it makes me so, so sad now.”
In the middle of the night on December 14, 2018, just weeks after Julie visited Poppy up in Leeds, the 24-year-old was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Joe Atkinson in the flat they shared for a few more days before she moved into her new place, with all that new stuff. Atkinson stabbed her 49 times, and caused over 100 injuries.
Julie is a campaigner for tougher sentencing for domestic murders.
Poppy was killed by her ex boyfriend in 2018 (Julie Devey)Julie’s eyes well with tears as she answers what she misses most about Poppy. “I just miss her being here. Those incidental moments. In my working day or at lunchtime I’d get a little text from her or or have a little chat. Walking around if I’d see something silly in a shop I take a picture to send to her,” says Julie, who is also mum to Zeb, 27.
“It’s that sort of thing or I buy her things, thinking ‘Oh, she’d really like that. Especially in the run up to Christmas for me just buying bits, and those are the hardest things to deal with actually. It’s that general drip drip drip of somebody being there all the time that you just want, and that doesn’t go away.”
Poppy was a talented Maths graduate with a masters degree and a bright future. She was moved up a year at school and taught herself further maths on the kitchen table. “Although she was driven with academic studies, she actually loved being with her mates. That’s what she loved,” explains Julie with a sad smile.
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“And travelling, she’d been to 34 countries by the time she was 24, all self-funded. She had part-time jobs from the age of 14. She did everything, she would stay out late and be the last one to leave the party, but still be up at work at six o’clock at the local hotel handing out breakfast as well. If she said she was going to be there or do a job she would always be there. She never, never, ever missed it.”
Poppy Devey Waterhouse was a keen traveller, and had visited many countries (Julie Devey)Julie knew Atkinson well, he had been dating her daughter for years after meeting on his last day at Nottingham University, and she even went to join the pair when they went travelling in South America. Still, even now, she cannot wrap her head around what happened.
“It was so out of the blue, we knew him. He sat on the sofa. He slept in the bed. I’ve got photos of her here, and he took them all. I’ve got a lovely photograph downstairs of when we were in Peru, me and Poppy and Zeb when we were sand-boarding, and it was lovely. But in the reflection in Zeb’s sunglasses, I can see him because he’s taking the picture. I can’t not have the pictures, you know, so he is everywhere, unfortunately,” she says.
Atkinson was sentenced to life in jail in 2019, to serve a minimum of 16 years and 2 months. If he had attacked her outside of the home, and killed her with even one thrust of a knife he would have got a minimum of 25 years in prison. This is because when a knife or other weapon is taken to the murder scene with intent, the sentencing starting point is 25 years. This became the standard in law in 2009 after the murder of Ben Kinsella.
“Because the weapon was at the scene of the crime, the starting point is 15 years,” says Julie, who is co-founder of Killed Women, a campaign group of families of victims who is calling for the starting point for domestic killings to also be raised to 25 years. So far last year over 100 women were killed at the hands of men, but justice is not being served as a lot of these deaths took place at home.
One of Julie's favourite photographs of her and Poppy (Julie Devey)
Poppy Devey Waterhouse as a young child (Julie Devey)“The problem is this disparity where you’re left going, ‘My daughter’s life is worth 10 years less than somebody who’s murdered by a stranger with one knife wound,” Julie says. There is a public consultation that is currently open until the 4 March to change the starting point for domestic killings where a weapon is used to 25 years, and now is the time to have your say. The Mirror has launched a campaign to help, Justice For Our Daughters, and is calling on readers to register their support with the Ministry of Justice.
This disparity in the current law comes from the idea that bringing a weapon to the scene of the crime shows a level of premeditation, but with such a prolonged attack and overkill Poppy’s death was no heat of the moment event. “He came back from his Christmas party. He’d even stopped on the way to get a pizza,” says Julie. “He then had to go and get the knife, choose it from the knife block, go into the other room and still continue to use it. He could have stopped at any time.”
Jealous Atkinson, who couldn’t deal with the fact that Poppy had left him, attacked her at around 2:30 am while she lay in bed. “He went into her bedroom, and started his attack and stabbed around the neck. She somehow managed to get to the door of the flat to try and get out, but there was evidence that he pulled her down by a hair, turned her over, sat on her and carried on his assault.”
Following his vicious onslaught he attempted to clean up the area, and put a new knife in her hand to try and indicate Poppy had initiated the attack. “He took his clothes off, put them in a bag and then drove for two hours to get rid of them and the knife,” explains Julie.
Hours later he called the ambulance and as the final insult performed CPR on the phone over her lifeless body. Atkinson lied to the police for months before finally coming clean, yet after less than 11 years he could be walking free, while Julie and her family are stuck serving a life sentence of grief, and Poppy is gone.
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Julie teamed up with Carole Gould, who’s daughter Ellie, 17, was strangled then stabbed 13 times by boyfriend Thomas Griffith in 2019 to form Killed Women, a network of other grieving family members who lost someone to femicide. They have managed to channel their grief into action and are trying to get justice for their daughters, and keep these killers off the streets for longer.
In a recent survey of more than 100 relatives of murdered females the group found that 90 percent felt let down by prison sentence lengths. This public consultation is the chance to alter some of this sentiment, but Julie explains that people also need to use their voice to include strangulation in the proposed new laws, as currently hands are not classed as a weapon. “Strangulation is a prolonged death, and it’s face to face,” says Julie.
“And not only does somebody stop breathing, other bodily things happen, and there’s no way that that’s an accident. If you’re going to strangle someone to death, it takes a long time, with purpose. And so we feel the strangulation must also carry that 25 year starting point.” Tragically, these much needed longer sentences will never bring Poppy or other murdered women back, but locking up killers for longer could at least help to stop someone else’s mother from learning the depths of Julie’s pain.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice told the Mirror: “These are truly tragic cases and we would like to thank Carole Gould and Julie Devey for their tireless campaign to drive reform in this area after the deaths of their daughters, Ellie and Poppy, at the hands of their partners. We have taken action to toughen sentences for domestic killers, creating new statutory aggravating factors of overkill, coercive and controlling behaviour, and killing at the end of a relationship and are consulting on the starting point for all murders committed with a knife or weapon, or which are pre-empted by coercive and controlling behaviour."
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