Wigan double killer will get a new parole hearing next year, victim's family told

Darren Pilkington has served the extra 26 weeks he was given by a crown court judge in the late spring for mounting a prison break, so it was inevitable that he would soon be coming back up for parole.

And Trevor and Sheila Fairhurst, whose 19-year-old daughter Carly was killed by him in 2006, now know that it will be at some point between March and October 2023.

They take some comfort that the 39-year-old will be spending at least several months more inside than the latest jail term handed down and that because he went absent from prison before and has breached parole and licence conditions so many times since, he is no longer entitled to be moved to lower security institutions before release.

But it does mean that for the 16th year in a row the Hindley couple will be involved in proceedings aimed at preventing the release of a man they believe is an incurable criminal who should be incarcerated for life.

Pilkington was serving a sentence for the manslaughter of his friend Paul Akister when he became Carly’s penfriend, much to her parents’ alarm.

On his release they began dating and it proved an abusive relationship although the Fairhursts knew none of this until it was too late because their daughter kept it from them.

In January 2006 she and Pilkington were minding a house for a friend in Ince when they had a row during which he pushed her downstairs and left her there, badly injured all night before finally ringing for an ambulance.

Carly died several days later and Pilkington was charged with her murder. At Manchester Crown Court the prosecution accepted a manslaughter plea and thus Pilkington became one of the few people in British legal history to admit to that same charge in two wholly different cases.

He spent 10 years in prison, although because of the sentencing system operating at the time, he was entitled to parole tribunals after just three of them, meaning the Fairhursts were put on a distressing merry-go-round of hearings and writing victim impact statements which hasn’t stopped since. That is because since his release he has continuously broken the terms of his licence and ended up back in prison for short periods.

In May he went on the run from Kirkham open prison for several days and was eventually tracked down to a house in Horwich and re-arrested.

A man and woman were also detained on suspicion of assisting an offender and were released under investigation.

Now that latest sentence has run out, the agonising parole process begins yet again for Carly’s family.

Mr Fairhurst said: “This just never seems to end.

"We can at least be comforted that he’s not getting out yet. And our experience when they give such a wide period in which to hold the hearings is that it is difficult to get all parties together, so it could prolong his time in prison further.

"But we could really do without any of these processes and we know it is going to happen all over again once he’s out. At least he can’t go back to low security prisons.”