The pair, aged 13 and 14 at the time of the killing, had faced a seven-week trial at Leeds Crown Court and received a guilty verdict by a jury on Tuesday (5 April).
Advertisement
During the trial, the court heard that the girls used a variety of weapons to kill Ms Wrightson including a coffee table and computer printer.
Despite the girls giving different accounts of what happened next, the jury heard that Ms Wrightson was forcibly restrained and “brutally” assaulted in 12 separate areas of the home.
Leaving her with over a hundred bodily injuries.
“The officer picked them up, their demeanour was fine, they were laughing and joking”.
An earlier selfie posted to Snapchat showed the defendants smiling with Miss Wrightson pictured in the background shortly before her death, with further selfies showing the girls drinking cider from a bottle.
Soon after the two girls were picked up one sent a Snapchat selfie in the back of a police van.
Shards of glass and small pieces of gravel or grit were also strewn around Wrightson’s private parts and ash from burnt paper put in her ear. An education tutor described the future killer as “the most volatile young person she’d ever worked with”.
The youngins also shared images of their misadventure.
The two girls had let themselves into Wrightson’s home on the evening of the murder and asked her to visit the store for them.
Both girls had been drinking before the attack and the older girl told the court she had taken prescription drugs earlier in the day.
The two girls will be sentenced on Thursday. Throughout nearly 25 years of service I have never come across such a brutal murder committed by such young girls.
The younger girl said she felt lost without her mobile phone, which was described as her life, and they used it to document the events that followed.
The girl head-butted and punched walls, was arrested for assaulting staff at a care home and forced a terrified foster carer to barricade herself inside a room.
She still saw family members regularly but had a hard relationship with her mother who, during an argument on the day of the murder, told her to “f *** off” and to “go kill yourself”.
Detective Chief Superintendent Peter McPhillips, of Cleveland Police, said those involved with the case had been “shocked” by the severity of the attack.
Neighbour Alan Dixon told reporters: “She was a kind, trusting, decent woman who was lovely when she was sober, but she was vulnerable in drink and she was taken advantage of by groups of kids”.
Advertisement
Miss Wrightson’s family said she “had touched the lives of so many people”.
