Sharon Carr

As of March 2020, Carr continues to be imprisoned despite the expiration of her minimum tariff.

In 2007, Carr was moved again to the medium-secure Orchard Unit, but was sent to HM Prison Bronzefield in 2015 as a Restricted Status prisoner as she was presenting a risk to patients and staff. Her warrant stated that she no longer required treatment or that no effective treatment could be given. In December 2018, she was moved to HM Prison Low Newton, but was quickly moved back to Bronzefield after a violent incident with another inmate in August 2019. In the same year, her application for her Restricted Status to be downgraded was denied. She appealed against this decision in 2020, but this was also denied on the grounds that she had yet to provide any significant evidence in a reduction in risk. Category A prison supervisors at Bronzefield reported that Carr was still evidencing incidents of volatile relationships and was continuing to have paranoid thoughts. She had also disclosed the desire to murder another prisoner.

In 2005, there was another stabbing incident at Collingwood College, in which a 14-year-old stabbed a fellow pupil. This led to renewed media interest in the school and the Carr case, with allegations being made that there was a culture of problems at Collingwood. However, local MP Michael Gove defended the school. In 2010, Carr's case was again discussed in the press when another British child, 15-year-old Lorraine Thorpe, became Britain's youngest convicted female double murderer. Her case also returned to the news in 2016, when two female children were convicted of the murder of a vulnerable woman named Angela Wrightson, which led to comparisons with Carr's case.

In 2004, it was reported that Carr's defence team were challenging her 14-year minimum tariff as well as her conviction, with Carr wanting her murder conviction to be replaced with one of manslaughter on the grounds on diminished responsibility. However, the appeals were dismissed.

Following her murder conviction, Carr was held in HM Prison Holloway, Britain's most notorious prison for women. She was later transferred to Broadmoor Hospital in 1998. Whilst in Broadmoor, she continued to assault staff and other residents, and admitted wanting to kill a fellow inmate by slitting her throat. On occasions, she also began believing that she was a lizard and tried to cut herself to attempt to find out whether she was still human.

Carr was charged with the murder of Rackliff in May 1996. On 25 March 1997, after a month-long trial at Winchester Crown Court, Carr was convicted of murder. The jury had deliberated for five hours before reaching a unanimous guilty verdict, choosing to convict her for murder and not manslaughter. The conviction meant that Carr was officially Britain's youngest ever female murderer, having been only 12 at the time of the killing (Mary Bell was infamously convicted at age 11 of killing two boys in 1968, but she was convicted of manslaughter, not murder). When sentencing Carr, Judge Scott Baker remarked: "What is clear is that you had a sexual motive for this killing and it is apparent both from the brutal manner in which you mutilated her body and chilling entries in your diary, that killing, as you put it, turns you on. You are in my view an extremely dangerous young woman." Carr was smiling as she left the dock after the conviction. She received a minimum tariff of 14 years imprisonment after her trial.

Police found that Carr had a long history of cruelty to animals, having once decapitated a dog with a spade, and concluded that she was probably suffering from a form of psychopathic disorder. Carr continued to write her boasts about the murder even after being questioned by the police, and in January 1996 gave a further series of confessions to prison officers that she had a 'crush' on. On the four-year anniversary of the murder on 7 June 1996, she wrote in her diary: "Respect to Katie Rackliff. Four years ago today."

With Carr not apprehended, she returned to school, but was excluded twice in early 1994. Two years to the day after Rackliff's murder, on 7 June 1994, Carr attacked 13-year-old fellow pupil Ann-Marie Clifford with a knife for no apparent reason in the toilets at Collingwood College Comprehensive School, Surrey. Clifford was stabbed in the back, which punctured her lung, and she nearly died as a result of her injuries. The attack was only stopped when five students entered the toilets and intervened, which probably saved the victim's life. Clifford said that Carr was smiling and appeared happy during the attack on her.

After arrest, Carr was sent to a medical assessment centre, where she tried to strangle two members of staff. She was charged with two counts of actual bodily harm for this in addition to the charges for her attack on Clifford. She was convicted in December 1994 and sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure. She was initially held in various psychiatric units but continued to regularly seriously assault other females, and so was transferred to an all-boys unit at Aycliffe Secure Centre. In September 1995, she was transferred to Bullwood Hall young offenders' institution, where it was thought her aggressive and sexualised behaviour could be better managed.

On 7 June 1992, Carr randomly stabbed 18-year-old apprentice hairdresser Katie Rackliff to death as she walked home in the early hours from Ragamuffins nightclub in Camberley. In total, Carr stabbed Rackliff, who was a stranger to her, 32 times with a 6 and a half inch knife through her ribs, in her heart and in her vagina and anus. Some of her jewellery was then stolen. Following the attack, Rackliff's body was taken by Carr and some associates and driven to Farnborough, where she was dragged along a road and then dumped by a cemetery wall. The body was found later that morning by a group of boys.

At school, Sharon was initially described as polite and helpful by teachers. Friends said that she was a sociable girl who preferred the company of older boys, and also said that she occasionally showed flashes of aggression. Later, she became much more badly behaved, becoming disruptive and attention-seeking, and she had problems relating to authority. In 1990, her headteacher at Cordwallis Junior School in Camberley contacted social services over her behaviour. Sharon was briefly put into foster care, but she returned home after only one month away. By the time she started secondary school, her mother had a new partner, who already had two daughters.

Sharon Louise Carr (born 1981), also known as "The Devil's Daughter", is a British woman who is Britain's youngest female murderer. In June 1992, aged only 12, she murdered 18-year-old Katie Rackliff after picking her out at random as she walked home from a nightclub in Camberley. The murder initially went unsolved until June 1994, when Carr attacked and stabbed another pupil at Collingwood College Comprehensive School for no apparent reason, and then repeatedly boasted about the murder of Rackliff to friends and family and in her diary entries made in prison. She was convicted of the murder in 1997, attracting much media interest due to her young age and the brutality of the killing. She was ordered to serve at least 14 years imprisonment but remains imprisoned long after this minimum tariff expired due to her disruptive behaviour in prison. A Restricted Status prisoner, she has continued to regularly attack and attempt to kill staff members and fellow inmates and has regularly expressed her desire to kill others.

Carr was born in Belize in 1981, and was brought up by her mother and stepfather. She was one of four children by three fathers, and grew up in great poverty. She never knew her biological father. After moving to England in 1986, the family settled in Camberley, Surrey. Her parents' marriage ended shortly after this when there was a serious domestic violence incident in which Sharon's mother poured boiling fat over her partner. The incident caused the couple to be hospitalised with burns and Sharon's mother charged with assault.