'My sister Sasha Marsden was murdered by predator who offered her a fake job interview': MP backs Sasha's Law

Katie Brett remembers sitting in court, hearing how her younger sister was raped, murdered and then set on fire at a Blackpool hotel in 2013. Sasha Marsden had been lured to her death, with the promise of a cleaning job at the hotel - by sick predator David Minto.

After years of campaigning for a change in the law that would keep Sasha’s murderer behind bars, Katie has finally gained the backing of her MP and hopes to help introduce Sasha’s Law.

Minto did not receive a life sentence for his crimes; instead, receiving a sentence of 35 years. Families of murder victims currently only have 28-days to appeal if they think a sentence is too lenient – which Katie and her family do not think takes into consideration the grieving period.

Watch our documentary

Our documentary Lured To Her Death: The Murder of Sasha Marsden airs on Saturday 22nd Feb at 8pm, as part of Shots! TV's documentary weekend. You can watch on Freeview channel 262 and Freely channel 565. It can also be viewed online - https://www.shotstv.com/watch/vod/52757816/true-crime-revisited-sasha-marsden-lured-to-her-death

Since then, she has been campaigning to remove the 28-day limit on appeals against unduly lenient sentences and has been trying to hit 100,000 signatures in order for the change in the Law to be discussed in parliament. This petition is the fourth time she has attempted to reach this goal to change the Law and thus ensure that her sister's killer and rapist, David Minto, does not walk the streets again.

Katie has now received support from the MP for Blackpool North and Fleetwood, Lorraine Beavers, who has said on social media that she supports the calls for Sasha's Law. She is now working with Mrs Brett to change the Law in parliament.

Mrs Brett said: "Sasha was 16, and she was college studying childcare because she wanted to work with children. When you are at college you don't get very much money, so she wanted to earn some extra money by working part time and she was offered a job at a hotel in Blackpool. Her Dad dropped her off on her first day.

"Everything was fine. She was there for an induction. She was there for an hour and a half, and he paid her £10, and it was arranged for her to come back on Thursday. She went to college on Thursday and had a really good day; she had just been told by the head of the course that she had already done enough work to complete that course and that she would be moving onto the next level; she was really proud of herself because she had a difficult past and she had to leave school due to bullying so it was a really good day, a really positive. She had just passed the course, she was moving up to the next level, and now she was going for her first full day at work."

The hotel where Sasha was going to be working was down a side street and David Minto had suggested that he dropped her off at Windsors and that would be where they met.

Mrs Brett said: "As soon as he got her in there, he attacked her from behind with a knife, and she had over 100 injuries in total to her head, face and neck and defensive wounds where she had tried to defend herself, one knife wound went through her hand and I am guessing she held it up to her face to try and protect herself. She had 57 injuries just to the back of her head. That was the initial where he had attacked her from behind. She almost escaped. Sasha's fingerprint was found in blood on the lock.

"She bled out there was no blood left in her body, then he dragged her down the stairs by her feet, and we know it by her feet because the drag marks on the carpet had her hair so her head has been banging on the stairs dragged her into the basement and propped her over the bath and raped her vaginally and anally while she was dying.

David Minto spoke to Sasha's mum about her whereabouts later in the day when her parents came looking for her and said she had left the hotel hours ago.

Mrs Brett said it was quite difficult to explain the emotional impact that it had on her family and her.

She said: "I think you feel like you failed; she was the youngest person in our family; Sasha was tiny. She wasn't even five foot tall; she was raped when she was fourteen by a 22-year-old man. She was only just getting her life back. She was bullied at school because this 22-year-old man had groomed a lot of other kids, and they saw him as their mate, and they all called Sasha a liar. She got bullied out of that school, and then she went to another school and got bullied out of that school because she played up. I mean, who wouldn't."

As a result of what she had been through, Sasha had begun to self-harm.

Mrs Brett said: "I actually promised her. I said, look, Sasha, you have had the worst thing that could ever happen to you; you have had to deal with something that most adults don't ever have to deal with, and you are safe, and the chances of that happening are so rare, nothing like that is going to happen to you again. You have had your deal of bad luck. Now is your time to live your life and move on; you are safe to live your life the way you want to live it. Then this happened to her; I promised her she was safe.

"I feel like I had failed. I couldn't protect her then, and then I had not protected her again."

The emotional impact that this horrific murder had on the family was significant. Katie had been the closest sister to her, and they shared a bedroom. Her Dad had been the one who drove her to the hotel and was unable to talk about it to this day. The murder drove her mum to have a stroke a few years later, and she lost her ability to talk, which stopped her from being able to articulate the symptoms of lung cancer that she was experiencing. When the doctors finally found it, it was too late, and she died a year later.

"Essentially, it killed my mum".

Katie has suffered from nightmares where she was in the hotel watching the incident, and she is also having to deal with hiding the gruesome details from her own children as well.

Sasha's Law will remove the 28-day time limit for the victim's family to appeal against an unduly lenient sentence. Sasha's family were not aware that they could appeal the sentence given to David Minto at the end of the trial they were not told.

Katie compared the 28-day time limit to returning a t-shirt you don't like, and it shouldn't be the same for appealing a murder sentence.

"We had to sit in court and listen to all the details, and that was the first we knew of the details; we knew she had been killed, we knew she had been stabbed, and we knew that she had been raped, and that is all we knew. We did not know how many times we had to listen to how each individual injury from that knife went into Sasha; we had to hear about how one of the injuries to the back of her head, he had attacked her so brutally it had chipped her skull.

"You have to sit there and listen to that, when you are listening to those details when it is your daughter or your sister that that has happened to you can't just walk away from that and be fine. You are grieving what has happened in that court room and 28 days is not long enough to get over that."

She said it is not enough time to have the emotional capacity to look at the sentence from an objective viewing point, realise that it was the wrong sentence and to put a case together in order to appeal it.

The CPS did refer this case to the unduly lenient sentence scheme within the 28-day time limit, and it was the Solicitor General who reviewed the case and chose not to refer it.

Mrs Brett said there is no way that this crime does not meet the sentencing criteria for a whole life order."

She explained that the ruling made no sense to other experts that she spoke to.

She thought that the case had gone to the solicitor general but by the time they looked at it, it was outside the 28 time limit and they couldn't do anything about it. The defendant does not have to appeal without the limit of 28 days.

Her mum used to log into the petition first thing in the morning and celebrate when they had got more signatures on the first Sasha's Law petition. The current petition is the fourth attempt.

"To have Lorraine (Beavers) say now I wrote to the attorney general's office, and Chris Webb is supporting me with this, and we have asked for a meeting with the Attorney General. I think that is a huge thing, and it gives us a voice, and being there face to face, I think, might make a huge difference."

Mrs Brett said that the crime was a sexually motivated murder of a child, which does hit the criteria for a whole life sentence.

Lorraine Beavers is the MP for Blackpool North and Fleetwood; she said: "I knew about the crime because at the time it was massive, so I have always known about the crime. Katie contacted the office and wanted some help, so we contacted the attorney General's office to ask for an interview with Katie, myself and the other local MP because it happened on his patch. We wanted some answers about the unduly lenient sentencing scheme and about the time frame of 28 days, which is absolutely a ridiculous limit for a grieving family to even think about appealing a sentence like that. When they have been through the trauma of hearing every detail about how a loved one had been murdered and in such a way that Sasha was taken from this world."

Mrs Beavers said that she had recently lost both her parents and explained how she had struggled to function for a significant amount of time afterwards.

"28 days is just not long enough. The family have sat in that court room and heard every single detail of what this person had done to take her away from her family, and then they are expected to even know about this 28 days to appeal that sentence, which they and I believe was unduly lenient.

"All you have to do is listen to the case and hear what happened to this beautiful young girl because that is what she was a child; this person is a predator and should not be on the streets. Due to not having the knowledge or being able to function properly, they have not been able to get the ball rolling to ensure this gentleman does not get out."

Mrs Beavers was extremely worried about David Minto being let out of prison potentially in the future, at this current moment in time David Minto could be let out when he is 57 years-old.

She said: "I am going to help Katie in whatever way I can to see if we can get this changed. Families need to be informed that they could appeal against the 35 year sentence."

She wanted to protect future generations.

Mrs Beavers said: "I hope it will boost the petition, there are a few documentaries as well, Katie is working really hard to get as much appetite for it as possible which is amazing and it is about people remembering Sasha's story and think that this needs to go to parliament and we need to re-look at this."

You can sign the petition here.

Watch our documentary

Our documentary Lured To Her Death: The Murder of Sasha Marsden airs on Saturday 22nd Feb at 8pm, as part of Shots! TV's documentary weekend. You can watch on Freeview channel 262 and Freely channel 565. It can also be viewed online - https://www.shotstv.com/watch/vod/52757816/true-crime-revisited-sasha-marsden-lured-to-her-death