[News] Update: Trans killer, 26, is jailed for life for murdering stranger as he walked home from a night out

A transgender woman has been jailed for a minimum term of 24 years after murdering a man she deliberately targeted.

 

 

Scarlet Blake, 26, who is transgender, singled out BMW worker Jorge Martin Carreno, 30, as he walked home from a night out in Oxford in July 2021, before brutally attacking him.

 

 

She led him to a secluded riverbank, where he was hit on the back of the head with a vodka bottle, strangled, and then pushed into the River Cherwell where he drowned.

 

 

Sentencing Scarlet Blake for life with a minimum term of 24 years, Mr Justice Chamberlain said the defendant had intended to kill Jorge Martin Carreno although he could not be sure of the exact method used.

 

 

‘It is not possible to say exactly how, whether you hit him on the back of his head with a vodka bottle or something else you had in your backpack, then strangled him by applying pressure to the blood vessels just beneath his jaw using your hands or ligature, then putting in the river where he drowned,’ the judge said.

 

 

‘You may have held him down in the water while strangling him. Either way, you intended to kill him, and you did.

 

‘The decision to kill Jorge was not a reaction to something he had said or done – it was not a momentary mistake, it was not a decision made in anger or because your emotions overcame you.

 

 

‘It is the culmination of a plan you’ve been considering and formulating for months before, and after July 25 as you showed an obsession with harm and death.’

 

 

Mr Justice accused Scarlet Blake of seeking to blame others for the murder – including former partner Ashlynn Bell.

 

 

‘You told the court that you didn’t want to kill a living creature, let alone a person, and it was Ashlynn who pressurised you to do so,’ he said.

 

‘You attributed your morbid interests to a split or dissociative personality, using the language of psychiatry or psychoanalysis.

 

 

‘You adopted the persona of a cat. You talked about the difficulties you had had since transitioning in childhood to live as a woman and about your troubled relationship with your parents.

 

 

‘All this was part of an elaborate attempt to rationalise what you had done and shift responsibility to others.

 

 

‘Whatever role Ashlynn Bell may have played in encouraging your interest in killing, she remained in the US.

 

 

‘She did not control or direct you. Even if the decision was motivated in part by a desire to please her, the decision to kill was entirely yours.’

 

 

The judge added that Scarlet Blake had carried out a ‘grotesque act of cruelty towards a cat’ in which it was tortured during an internet livestream and then killed.

 

 

‘You suspended the cat by its neck, using a ligature made from ribbon,’ the judge said.

‘But, although you strangled it, you made sure that it remained alive for at least three minutes, during which it endured intense pain while you cut open and eviscerated it, before stabbing, dissecting, and removing its heart, which you kept as a memento.

 

 

‘As the audio makes clear, the thing you enjoyed most was seeing the animal gasping and panicking before it died.

 

 

‘After you had killed the cat, you put a scalpel into its eyes, skinned it and decapitated it. You disposed of the body by putting it into a blender.

‘In your evidence, you told the jury that you did all this to please Ashlynn Bell and derived no pleasure from it yourself.

 

 

‘Apparently seriously, you invited the jury to believe that you disapprove of people who are cruel to animals.

 

 

‘The audio we all heard and the stills and video clips we saw of you smiling and laughing while posing with the animal’s severed head leave no doubt whatsoever that you personally enjoyed what you were doing, as well as the pleasure that Ashlynn Bell derived from it.

 

 

‘Once you had dissected the cat, you said, ‘Well, one day I want to learn how to do this to a person’.’

 

 

Passing sentence on Scarlet Blake, Mr Justice Chamberlain said: ‘You decided to kill someone because you believed Ashlynn Bell would find it sexually exciting, as in fact she did.

 

 

‘As you later said to another partner, you killed ‘because my lover said it’d be hot’.

 

 

‘There was, therefore, a clear sexual motivation for the killing. You also believed that you would derive pleasure, whether sexual or not, from the experience of killing a person.

 

 

‘I am sure you did derive pleasure from killing Jorge, as you had from killing the cat.

 

 

‘You revelled in what you had done, returning at least twice to the scene to take photographs, and made conscious use of your status as a murderer to secure the admiration of others who shared your interests in harm, death, and killing.

 

 

‘There is very little that can be said in mitigation, though I have borne in mind the fact that you were 23 years old at the time of the offence.’

 

 

Prosecutors said Blake, who is transgender, killed Mr. Martin Carreno because she had a ‘fixation with violence and with knowing what it would be like to kill someone’.

 

 

His murder came four months after Blake, who was obsessed with violence and death, live-streamed the sadistic killing of a cat, Oxford Crown Court heard.