Vice girl knifed punter to death in attack at flat

Months before the killing Joanne Green, 20, had told a psychiatric nurse that she had been having thoughts about killing a man and putting his body in the boot of a car.

She also said she had wondered how many men she could kill before getting caught.

Leeds Crown Court heard that Green repeatedly stabbed Darren Edeson, 32, on Halloween last year at his high-rise flat at Parkway Towers, Seacroft, in Leeds, after he picked her up in Bradford.

Mr Edeson suffered a fatal knife wound to the chest as well as blows to his back and chest which damaged his liver.

He was also stabbed through the lip and with another weapon, thought to be a screwdriver.

After the attack Green searched the flat and took mobile phones and cash before locking Mr Edeson inside the property and disposing of the weapon and keys down a drain outside.

CCTV footage played to the court showed Mr Edeson and Green arriving at the flats and getting into to the lift to his property shortly before 10pm. Green was then shown getting back into the lift alone around 40 minutes later and running from the entrance to the flats.

Mr Edeson’s decomposing body was discovered eight days later when his mother and two other relatives went to his home after becoming concerned at not hearing from him.

Green bought heroin and crack cocaine after the killing and told a friend she had stabbed a man as they took the drugs together.

She also confessed to a drugs worker about stabbing a man and was arrested after Mr Edeson’s body was discovered.

A jury yesterday found that Green had inflicted the injuries that caused Mr Edeson’s death. She is unfit to stand trial for murder due to mental illness.

Mr Justice Openshaw imposed a hospital order under the Mental Health Act so that Green can continue to receive treatment for her condition.

Green, of Hawkswood Place, Kirkstall, Leeds, appeared in court via a video link from high-security Rampton Hospital, in Nottinghamshire, where she is being held.

The judge described her as “exceptionally dangerous” after hearing that psychiatrists had described her as suffering from schizophrenia and intense paranoid beliefs.

The court heard that Green had suffered from hallucinations and heard voices in her head telling her to harm people as a result of her mental condition combined with her addiction to drugs.

After the killing she told a doctor: “I had to stab him. I could not give him a chance to harm me.

“The voice had been egging me on to do something bad for ages.”

Green’s barrister, Richard Man-sell QC, said there was no evidence Mr Edeson had been violent towards Green or intended to harm her.

He said Green had suffered a life of “appalling depravation, abuse and sexual exploitation”.

Mr Mansell said that if Green was ever well enough to stand trial for murder it was likely a defence of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility would have to be considered by a jury.