Murder of Kelly Anne Bates

The murder inquiry was headed by Detective Sergeant Joseph Monaghan of Greater Manchester Police, who said: "I have been in the police force for 15 years and have never seen a case as horrific as this." William Lawler, the pathologist who examined Bates' body, described her injuries as the worst he had seen on a murder victim. Smith, who had a history of violence and torture against former sexual partners, denied murdering Bates, but was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on 19 November 1997.

On 16 April 1996, Smith reported to authorities that he had accidentally killed his girlfriend during an argument in a bathtub, claiming that she had inhaled water and died following his attempts at resuscitation. He also claimed that she often pretended to be unconscious. Police went to Smith's address and found Bates' naked body in a bedroom. Her blood was found throughout the house, and a post-mortem examination revealed over 150 separate injuries on her body. During the last month of her life she had been kept bound, sometimes tied to a radiator or furniture by her hair, other times by her neck using a ligature.

Although she had left Smith briefly because of arguments with him, she was once more living with him at Furnival Road by the end of November 1995. Her parents noticed bruises on her, which she explained away as being the results of accidents. She became increasingly withdrawn and in December 1995 resigned from her part-time job. In March 1996, her parents received cards purportedly from her for their anniversary and a birthday, but only Smith had written in them. When Bates' brother tried to see her at the house, Smith said she was not at home. When a concerned neighbour asked after her, she was briefly shown at an upstairs window.

In 1993, Smith began grooming Kelly Bates when she was 14 years old, having met her while she was babysitting for friends. Approximately two years later, when she had left school, Bates moved in with Smith at his home in Furnival Road, Gorton. She was concealing the age difference between them from her parents, Tommy and Margaret Bates. Bates' mother said of her first meeting with Smith after the two had started living together: "As soon as I saw Smith the hairs on the back of my neck went up. I tried everything I could to get Kelly Anne away from him."

James Smith was an unemployed divorcee living in the Gorton area of Manchester. Described by acquaintances as "house-proud" and "well groomed", he was a teetotaller and non-smoker. His marriage had ended in 1980, after ten years, because he had been violent towards his wife. His next relationship was with 20-year-old Tina Watson, whom between 1980 and 1982 he "used as a punch-bag", even subjecting her to severe beatings while she was pregnant with his child. She said: "At first it was now and again; just a little tap. But in the end it was every day. He would smack me in the face or hit me over the head with an ashtray. He would kick me in the legs or between the legs." Watson managed to escape from the relationship, during which Smith had also attempted to drown her while she was bathing. When that relationship came to an end in 1982, Smith then started seeing 15-year-old Wendy Mottershead, whom he also abused. In one attack he held her head under water in the kitchen sink in an attempt to drown her.

Kelly Anne Bates (18 May 1978 – 16 April 1996) was an English teenager who was murdered in Manchester, England at the age of 17 by her abuser, James Patterson Smith (born c. 1948). She was tortured by him over a period of four weeks, including having her eyes gouged from their sockets up to three weeks before her death, before being drowned in a bathtub.