A mother and her 22-month-old daughter were murdered in a horrific machete attack by her former partner, as her eldest daughter listened helplessly to their screams via an “open line” telephone call, the Old Bailey heard on Monday.
Edward Brown, QC, prosecuting, told a jury that the injuries inflicted on Valerie Forde, 45, the manager of a community centre and her daughter, Jahzara, were “as shocking as they are brutal”. The killings, he said, lay “beyond sensible comprehension”.
At the opening of the murder trial of Roland McKoy, 53, Forde’s partner of 18 years and the father of three of her four children, Brown said the mother and daughter were killed within a very short time of each other and “in equally terrible circumstances”.
“It is only to be hoped that neither saw the other being attacked so dreadfully and killed,” said Brown. “Given the evidence, however, that is a hope with little foundation.”
McKoy denies the murders.
On the day of the double murder, Forde called her 28-year-old daughter, Carrise, when an argument broke out over McKoy’s refusal to leave the family home. The line remained open as the attack began, jurors heard.
In those “frantic moments”, Carrise was able to dial the emergency services from another phone.
Brown told the jury, of six men and six women, that they would hear the call.
But, he said, by the time police forced entry to the third floor of the house in Hackney, Forde and Jahzara lay dead. Forde was found with multiple hammer blows to the head, stab wounds to her abdomen and multiple lacerations to her head face and hands. Her infant daughter’s neck was slashed “from one side to the other”, Brown told the jury.
The terrible attack, on 31 March 2014, came on the day of a deadline Forde had issued three months previously to McKoy for him to leave the family home, after their relationship had broken down.
A note, written on an A4 piece of paper, was found over Forde’s face.
“You will see the note,” Brown told the jury. “You will see that it seeks, in some perverse way, to blame Valerie Ford for what had happened.”
McKoy was found at the scene, lying in a foetal position on the floor next to a hammer, machete and screwdriver. When he was roused, he vomited up bleach.
“You will decide whether the defendant’s apparent attempt on his own life was a serious one,” Brown told the jury.
He said McKoy’s injuries were a “reaction to the truly dreadful and murderous acts carried out by him”.
Two months before the killing, Forde, a mother of four from Hackney, became afraid of McKoy and went to Stoke Newington police station to report death threats he had made to her and her family, the court heard.
Brown warned the jury that the case would arouse strong emotions. “It involves, after all, a wholly defenceless and very young child” and her mother in “terrible circumstances”. But he said, they had to put them aside and look at the evidence with a dispassionate and critical eye.
When they met 18 years ago, Forde and McKoy had a happy relationship and appeared to be in love, the court heard. They had three children together, including Jahzara.
The family lived together in a three-bedroom terraced house in Hackney, but the relationship deteriorated after Forde discovered McKoy had been living a double life and was still married to another woman, with whom he had two children. In the latter years, McKoy spent little time at the family home, except as a place to sleep.
Their relationship improved briefly in 2012 when Jahzara was born, but deteriorated again and, six months before the murders, in October 2013, Forde issued McKoy with an ultimatum: either he contribute £150 each month to the household or leave.
“One source of argument at least between them was that the defendant did not contribute to the household, either financially or in effort,” Brown said.
She told friends he was lazy, used her for money and that he was mentally and emotionally abusing her.
By December, she told him the relationship was over and gave him three months to find somewhere else to live.
The deadline resulted in a change in McKoy’s behaviour, the court heard.
In January, Forde told McKoy he could not take any of the children when he left. He then told her: ”If I can’t have them, then you’re not having them” and “I’ll take Jahzara and you’ll never see her again,” the court heard.
In December 2013, he told a neighbour he would “get a shotgun, kill everyone in the house and then kill himself, rather than go to prison”.
Forde became afraid of him, telling her sister: “Just looking at his face and body language tells me I have to be very, very careful and pray for my safety each day and night.”
She reported “feeling a bit scared of him but I continue to be guided by my angels”.
Forde went to police on the 12 February to report the threats he had made to a neighbour. She also began recording his conversations with her and would often ring and aunt or her daughter on an “open line” so they could hear the conversions between them, the court heard.
The case, which is being heard by Judge Charles Wide, QC, continues. It is expected to last for two weeks.
A postmortem revealed Forde had at least 30 separate injuries, including 17 hammer blows to her head, 15 machete lacerations to her neck and hands including one which penetrated her skull and eight stab wounds to her abdomen. Jahzara had wounds to her neck and windpipe, one of which was 18cm long, the effect of which was “devastating”, and would have caused “torrential and rapidly fatal bleeding” the jury heard.
Brown said that the defendant’s case is that he was acting in lawful and reasonable self- defence when he caused the injuries to Forde.
“So far as the killing of Jahzara is concerned, the defendant’s case is that he had nothing to do with her death.” Brown said.
“It follows from that proposition that Jahzaras mother herself must have been responsible for killing her own daughter with that machete.”
Brown told the jury they would wish to recall the evidence of the telephone call during the attacks when Jahzara was still alive and being spoken to. He said that if, by the time of the attack on Forde Jahzara was still alive, then there was only one person who could have killed her - the defendant.
The trial continues
