A “jealous” woman who stabbed her ex-partner in the heart on Christmas Day after seeing his Tinder profile has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years.
Kirsty Carless, 33, plunged a knife into 31-year-old father-of-six Louis Price’s heart in the early hours of December 25 2024, in an attack “motivated by anger and jealousy, and fuelled by cocaine and alcohol” after a friend sent her a picture of his dating profile, a trial at Stafford Crown Court heard.
Sentencing her on Thursday in front of a packed public gallery, Judge Mr Justice Choudhury said Carless, of Haling Way in Cannock, Staffordshire, had “destroyed the life of a young man and his family” when she fatally attacked him at his parents’ home in Elm Road, Norton Canes.
On Wednesday, after around a day of deliberation, a jury of seven men and five women found her guilty of murder and possession of an offensive weapon by unanimous verdicts in relation to the fatal stabbing.
She was also found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm by a majority of 11 to one in connection with an incident in November 2024 for which she was on police bail, but was cleared of intentional strangulation in relation to the same incident.
Carless showed no reaction in the dock as Mr Justice Choudhury passed his sentence on Thursday afternoon.He said the defendant had shown “no remorse” for what she had done and instead concocted a false story that she could not remember what had happened.
The trial was told Carless had been at the pub drinking with a male friend on December 24 before they had sex three times at his home.
She had been planning to stay the night when a female friend sent her a screenshot of Mr Price’s Tinder profile at around 1.30am on Christmas Day, which sent her into what Mr Justice Choudhury called “a jealous rage”.
Carless then left the male friend’s home, took a taxi back to her house, where she picked up a kitchen knife and got another taxi to Mr Price’s parents’ address, where she expected to find him with a woman but he was instead in a caravan in the back garden with friends.
CCTV showed her running up the front path into the house and then “stalking” him around the garden before he was later found with a single stab wound to the chest on the conservatory floor.
Carless had called Mr Price 45 times between 2.15am and 2.44am while she waited for the taxi to take her to the address where he had been staying since their relationship ended – only breaking up what prosecution counsel Jonas Hankin KC called the “barrage” of calls to impatiently phone the company to check where her taxi was.
After arriving at the address, Carless asked the taxi driver to wait outside while she went into the property to stab Mr Price at around 3am.
Less than two minutes after arriving at the scene, Carless was “anxious and sweating” as she got back into the taxi and demanded the driver take her to her parents’ home, where she admitted what she had done and her stepfather called 999.
Mr Justice Choudhury said: “Less than two minutes is all it took for you to take a life and ruin many others, including your own.”
He added that Mr Price had only been inside the house for around six seconds, which meant Carless must have stabbed him “on sight”.
The judge said: “The intention to kill was plain. You stabbed him in the chest, a highly vulnerable part of the body.
“Having stabbed him, you didn’t stop there, you callously chased him around the garden brandishing a knife. You then fled, leaving him to die.
“You have showed no remorse for what you did, instead claiming falsely that you didn’t remember.”
The judge paid tribute to the “dignity” of Mr Price’s family, who all wore “Justice for Louis” T-shirts as they watched the sentencing.
In a victim impact statement, Mr Price’s mother Eleanor said her son had been “murdered by the woman he loved” and described him as a “funny, beautiful man”.
She said: “Our hearts have been ripped apart. I brought Louis into this world and I should have left before him.
“Every minute of every day, I think about my boy. He was no angel, but thanks to Kirsty, he’s now my angel.
“It is thanks to Kirsty that his children no longer have a dad. How can we ever get over something like this? We never will.”
Mr Price’s father Graham described him as “my son, my fishing buddy, my best friend” and said his life had been taken by an “act of evil”.
He said: “Louis lost his life, she took it from him. We will never forget Louis or forgive what has happened to him.”
As Carless had been on police bail for assaulting Mr Price at the time of the fatal stabbing, Staffordshire Police made a referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, who decided not to investigate and the case was passed back to the force’s professional standards department.
In a statement, Staffordshire Police said: “A number of positive actions were taken to mitigate the risks identified, which included arresting Kirsty Carless, imposing bail conditions to prevent her from having further contact with Louis Price, them living at separate addresses, and the submission of a public protection notice for consideration at a multi-agency risk assessment conference.
“No misconduct or learning was identified and officers updated Louis’s father and explained the decision.”
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