The murder of Tia Sharp

On Friday 3rd August 12 year old Tia Sharp is seen leaving her grandmothers home in New Addington, South-East London, at around midday. Tia told relatives that she was going to the Whitgift Centre in Croydon, it was the last time anybody saw Tia.

On Monday 6th Tia's family makes an emotional plea for her to return home as police find no trace of her on CCTV.

On Tuesday 7th A CCTV image of Tia outside of her local Co-Op is released as her grandmother says she hopes it will jog someones memory. It is thought that the last person to see Tia is her grandmother's partner, Stuart Hazell. Police begin searching a local wood scouring the undergrowth. The Sun newspaper offers a £25,000 reward. Tia's uncle makes a televised plea for her safe return. Fifty-five sightings were reported by members of the public, but none were substantiated. Eighty police officers were assigned to the search, and 800 hours of CCTV footage were collected.

On August 8th Police take a German Shepherd dog into Tia's grandmothers house, where it is believed Tia was last seen. Metropolitan police area commander Neil Basu announces that police officers have been redirected from Olympic duties to join an 80 strong team involved in the hunt for Tia. He says Scotland Yard has received more than 300 calls and 60 reported sightings of Tia. Stuart Hazell is led from Tia's grandmothers house by two men in plain clothes and voluntarily questioned by police.

On August 9th Stuart Hazell appeared on an interview for ITV News, denying that he had done anything to Tia and praying for her safe return.

On August 10th Two detectives arrive at Tia's grandmothers house in the morning, leaving 30 minutes later with brown evidence bags. A police sniffer dog is brought to the house, Tia's grandmother leaves the house with police at midday. Police seal off the area around the house at 1pm for a "pre-arranged search". At 4.45pm police discover a body in a black bed sheet in a black bag in the loft of Tia's grandmothers house, after searching it for the fourth time. Stuart Hazell is arrested at 8.25pm and held on suspicion of murder, it was later announced that two further arrests had been made. Tia's grandmother Christine on suspicion of murder, and Christine's neighbour Paul Meehan on suspicion of assisting an offender. Christine and Paul were subsequently bailed. Commander Neil Basu, the officer in charge of the investigation apologised to Tia's mother for the delay in finding her daughter's body, he blamed human error and said that a review would be undertaken "to ensure such a failing is not repeated". (Sources differ on what date Christine and Paul were arrested, some say the 10th others say the 11th.)

In the early hours of August 12th, Stuart Hazell was charged with the murder of Tia Sharp. (Sources also differ on what day he was charged some say the 11th others the 12th.)

Stuart Hazell appeared before Camberwell Green magistrates' court on August 13th via video-link, no plea was entered and the case was committed to the Old Bailey for the trial, with a first appearance on August 15th, also via video-link with a preliminary hearing set for November 19th and a provisional trial date set for January 21st 2013. He was remanded in custody to Belmarsh prison where he was kept in  isolation for his own safety.

A post-mortem on the body found at Tia's grandmothers house began on August 10th and paused later that day. By August 16th the post-mortem had still not been completed, but at an inquest into the death, which opened that day it was confirmed that the body was that of Tia Sharp. The post-mortem later concluded without establishing the cause of death. Experts told "This is Croydon Today" that the delay in finding the body made it much harder to establish the cause of death, and that without a cause of death the prosecution would find it much harder to build a case. However, detectives suspected, and it was widely reported that Tia was smothered, although this was not officially proven to be the cause of death.

On August 23rd police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe addressed his force's failure to find Tia's body, he said the error could not be attributed to a single officer and that he wanted to "understand what processes and management decisions we've made that led to that failure".

 It was announced on November 26th 2012 that Stuart Hazell would face trial in May 2013.
On December 7th, the metropolitan police announced that Christine Sharp would not face charges.
On February 5th 2013 Paul Meehan was charged with wasting police time, he appeared at Croydon magistrates' court on February 28th, where he denied the charge against him and was released on bail for a one day trial.

On March 8th Stuart Hazell pleaded not guilt in court. The trial began on May 7th before Mr Justice Nicol. On May 13th Stuart changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment on May 14th with a minimum term of 38 years, meaning he is eligible for parole when he is 75 years old. 
On August 5th Paul Meehan was found guilty of wasting police time and sentenced to five months in prison.

In June 2013, the house where Tia was murdered, her grandmothers house was demolished and in mid 2014 work began on new houses being built on the site.

In November 2013, partly in response to the murders of Tia Sharp and April Jones, the search engines Google and Bing modified their systems to block results from searches aimed at producing child abuse images.

 The murder of Tia Sharp was a high profile case of child murder in the UK.

Other information on Stuart Hazell, in 2002 he was convicted of a racially aggravated assault this was also the year he met Christine Sharp.
In 2003 he is sent to prison for 34 months for supplying cocaine.
In 2010 he is convicted of carrying a machete, Christine stands by him stating she never saw his violent side.
Stuart had 30 previous convictions and had been to prison 3 times.
Stuart has a history of depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, self-harm and suicide attempts.
Experts claim that his early exposure to sex, through his mother meant there was a risk of him becoming a serious sexual offender.

I remember this happening because it happened in 2012 which was the same year as the London Olympic games so there was lots of hype around London and then it came up on the news that a 12 year old girl had gone missing after going out to buy shoes and never coming home. I remember watching the news and seeing the family interviews and discussing it with my family, we couldn't understand how a young girl could leave her grandmothers house and disappear into thin air.  When more information started coming out over the coming days that police searched the grandmothers house multiple times and that there was no trace of Tia on CCTV footage it started to seem very strange and then when Stuart Hazell appeared on the news stating that he had nothing to do with Tia's disappearance it was really weird. Then the news came out that a body had been found inside Tia's grandmothers house which I think is so incredibly sad not only because she was murdered by someone she trusted but because while her family was wondering where she was and if she was OK, she was actually in the same house as them and he knew it, he knew exactly where she was and what had happened to her. I couldn't find any information on whether Stuart Hazell has ever admitted what happened to Tia or if he's ever told Tia's family exactly what happened to her so I think her death is still undetermined.


This case was researched via multiple sources so if any of the information is incorrect or if I have missed any important information then I am very sorry.
If you have any cases that you would like me to cover please let me know.










Tia Sharp image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Tia_Sharp_photo.jpg