'My granddaughter saw her mummy dying' - Melissa's mum recalls horrific events

Jean Mulvaney said Melissa’s daughter had come down to her house that day, after her mum rung to ask if Jean could look after her.

She arrived at about 1.20pm but within moments she set alarm bells ringing because the 13-year-old told Jean that Andrew Wadsworth, newly released from prison and of whom Jean strongly disapproved, was up at Melissa’s house on Up Holland Road, to which Jean replied “no way.”

Then a friend of the granddaughter who lives near Melissa’s house rang at 2.20pm and asked if she would like to go up to her’s. Jean protested saying she’d only just got there. However, Melissa had given £20 for the taxi there and back so she called for one and it collected her.

Jean said: “At 2.40pm I rang my granddaughter’s mobile to make sure she had arrived all right but it just rang and rang. I thought ‘I bet she’s left the phone at home and gone round to her friend’s', but that was not the case.

"My granddaughter had gone home to find Wadsworth arguing with Melissa (he had arrived by taxi at around 10am apparently. It had picked him up from his mother’s house and stopped off at Bargain Booze to buy four bottles of vodka and two bottles of coke).

“I tried ringing again at 2.55pm but still no reply so I had a bath. Then at 3.20pm my granddaughter rang me back. She was screaming down the phone shouting ‘Nana, Nana, Andrew is stabbing Mummy.’ She said she had asked him why he was doing it and her turned to her and shouted ‘you ****ing know why.’

“I told her to ring the police but it turned out she already had. I rang them too and as I did I could hear sirens of police cars heading up Ormskirk Road and the police helicopter passing over my house and I thought ‘I hope that’s not for what’s going on at Melissa’s’ but, lo and behold, it was.

“I got dressed and went straight to Melissa’s. There were police everywhere.

“The house has a porch on the front and I could see the glass panel at the bottom had been smashed in. It turned out that that was a neighbour who had done that. He had seen my granddaughter, who had run downstairs from the bedroom where Melissa was being attacked, and was banging on the living room window.

“He used a golf club to smash the panel and crawl through then managed to get the inner front door open and get her out.

“Wadswoth clearly intended to kill my granddaughter too. He ran downstairs with the knife he had used to kill my daughter and cut the guy up really badly. He was critically ill in hospital for some time. He later rang to say ‘I am sorry I could not save your daughter.’

“At the time of arriving though I did not know what was going on or that she was dead. I’d come up to bring her back to my house. Forensics people were everywhere, crawling in and out through the door panel.

“A policeman said ‘you can’t go in there,’ and I said ‘yes I can, it’s my daughter’s house.’ But he said ‘I’m sorry you cannot and she’s gone.’

“He told me to go to the shop along the road where my granddaughter was being looked after in the back by two policewomen. They had shut the shop. One said ‘is it Jean?’ I replied ‘yes’ and she said ‘I am sorry but Melissa has gone.’ It did not register, I was just in shock.

“The policewoman said ‘you need to speak to Kelsey’ and I said ‘what do you mean, gone?’ and she said ‘I am so sorry but we couldn’t save her.’

I went through to my granddaughter; she was shaking and said ‘have you got Mummy?’ I had to tell her ‘I’m sorry but she’s not here. She’s gone with the angels.

“And she witnessed it all. She saw her mummy dying. Melissa held her hand out to her when she was dying on the bed.”