Police failed to help woman who dialled 999 twice before she was murdered

A mentally ill woman who was bludgeoned to death by her neighbour and his 13-year-old friend rang 999 twice during her ordeal, but police failed to respond to both calls, a report has found.

By Lucy Cockcroft
Published: 7:30AM GMT 27 Jan 2010

Joanne Butler, 38, was discovered dead in her burned out flat in Earl Shilton, Leicestershire, shortly after she made the calls.

She had been murdered by Sean Wilson, then 37, a man with a history of violence, and the teenage boy, who had used a sock filled with rocks and a metal bar to beat her about the head before butchering her with an axe.

This was despite Miss Butler dialling 999 twice and her pleas for help being graded top priority as a possible incident of domestic violence.

Details of the police failings have been published in a report by East Midlands Strategic Health Authority, which disclosed a previously confidential review conducted by Leicestershire Constabulary into Miss Butler's case.

It showed that in her first call at 5.04pm on January 3, 2006, the operator heard someone scream ''you -------'' in the background. Ten minutes later she phoned again but the line went dead.

All the BT operator heard during the second connection were ''noises and a scream''.

The call was labelled as a ''possible domestic'' and the details were passed on to the police operators who deploy officers.

But, despite repeated requests from the operators, there were no officers available to attend Miss Butler's flat and the emergency request was listed as a ''duplicate incident'' and closed.

The internal police review also found police had regular contact with Miss Butler, who suffered from psychotic symptoms and depression, having dealt with her 20 times in the ten months before she died.

Police also knew Wilson, now 41, an alcoholic and suffered from depression, regularly attacked his ex-wife, once holding a hacksaw to her throat.

The boy was a known pyromaniac and ''enjoyed setting fire'' to things while he was detained in a young offenders' institution in 2005.

But despite the volatile characters and histories of the three, police were unable to send an officer to their flats as they were all busy.

To further compound the failures, it was disclosed that Mr Wilson himself had called police within minutes of Miss Butler's calls, in which he described her as the ''psycho woman'' in the flat above his own.

Officers then received a fourth call from a neighbour in the flats claiming his car had been damaged by Miss Butler.

But the calls were not linked and the operator decided to pass the complaint on to an officer working the next day while Wilson was told to ring back if he had any more problems.

In total, police were rung four times from the flats in just 15 minutes but not one officer was deployed.

The health authority published part of the force's review within an independent investigation into the care provided by mental health workers to Miss Butler.

In the police's internal report, the force admitted its mistakes. It concluded: ''The reviewing officer acknowledges that attendance by the police as a result of these calls had the potential to defuse the situation and possibly resolve the problems being encountered by the parties concerned.''

Wilson was jailed for life in November 2006. His minimum term of 12 years behind bars was increased to 15 after prosecutors appealed against the original sentence. The boy was ordered to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure for at least nine years.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/7080609/Police-failed-to-help-woman-who-dialled-999-twice-before-she-was-murdered.html