Star Hobson trial: Who is Frankie Smith?

While being acquitted of murder, Smith still allowed her violent partner Savannah Brockhill unsupervised access to her baby daughter, which tragically resulted in Star’s killing.

Star died from unsurvivable abdominal injuries caused by blunt force trauma on September 22, 2020, severing a main vein in her body and resulting in death within minutes.

Her mother allowed her to be in harms way, and subjected her to cruelty and neglect throughout her whole life.

Star’s life ended at the hands of Savannah Brockhill, who savagely, and brutally murdered the defenceless tot.

But who is Frankie Smith?

Born in Bradford, Smith grew up in Baildon, going to Titus Salt School. However, education wasn’t her strong suit. Mentally immature, severely intellectually limited, Smith has an IQ of 70, placing her in the bottom two per cent of the population. Add to that, she is a highly compliant person.

Born to Yvonne Spendley, she had a close knit family unit in the area, but home life was chaotic.

Aged 17, she fell pregnant to her boyfriend Jordan Hobson. A year earlier she’d still been playing with dolls.

40 weeks later, in May 2019, Star was born. Her relationship with Jordan was on its last legs, and ended when he went back to university.

At first she showed signs of good mothering, but – like any teenage mum would – needed a lot of help from her family. However not long after, the family were taking on more and more responsibility.

Smith had no interest in looking after Star – besides dressing her up in nice clothes – leaving feeding, nappy changing, night shifts, to others.

When she turned 18, her mind was on the pub more than parenting, leaving Star with a babysitter most weekends to go out boozing, often with her mother Yvonne, at pubs around Shipley and Bradford.

It was while on a night out she met Savannah Brockhill. At The Sun pub they caught each other’s eye.

Spellbound by Brockhill’s confidence, Smith – despite never having been interesting in dating women and still maintaining to be heterosexual – was drawn like a moth to a flame; and she was about to get burnt.

Soon after they were an item, their relationship “obsessive”. Smith spent every waking minute either speaking to Brockhill or speaking about her, to Star’s detriment. Propped up with a bottle to feed, left in a walker stuck on carpet for hours, the neglect had already begun.

The relationship was not good. On and off every few weeks, turbulent, tempestuous, arguing about Smith going out drinking, and her care for Star.

Smith was still under Brockhill’s spell, a spell of coercion, control, domestic violence and abuse. At her girlfriend’s orders, a strict regime was implemented on Star for when she could eat and sleep.

Any wrongdoing punished by being made to stand facing a wall for up to 30 minutes at a time.

Star wasn’t the only one being treated harshly. Brockhill was violent to Smith on a number of occasions, leaving her with black eyes, bruises on her neck, arms, body, legs, assaults with backhanded slaps or objects.

She was punched in the face by Brockhill, chipping her tooth, while at the pub, completely unprovoked.

Bombarded with thousands of messages asking where she was, who she was with, where she was going, not to talk to people.

When Smith’s grandmother made a social services referral concerning Star in May, Smith told her family they couldn’t see Star, on Brockhill’s orders, she said.

Together, they would be cruel to Star, neglectful, borderline torture. Keeping her awake for over 24 hours and filming her fall off a chair, exhausted, falling face first into her food, asleep. All they did was film and laugh.

Smith would film herself shouting at Star to wake her up, to make her jump. “Evil aren’t I,” she says on one clip.

More videos of her forcing Star to stand at the wall for minor misdemeanours. Forcing her to crawl up two flights of stairs, to “prove to Brockhill I’m being firm”, footage that’s really difficult to sit through.

In the last three months of Star’s life, Brockhill had begun a campaign of assaults on Star. But Smith never noticed, never suspected. Bruises appearing on her daughter in random, unusual places, but she never questioned. And when she did, Brockhill fed her lies and she ate them up happily.

It was only by September 13 she became suspicious, the weekend Star spent at a recycling plant with Brockhill, where she was viciously beaten. Swollen hands and feet were all Smith was worried about though. The bruise on Star’s face cuts to her nose, she just accepted Brockhill’s excuses.

Later that week, Star was not well. Screaming, crying, not walking, burning up, limping when she did walk, in a seemingly permanently fraught mood. What help did she get Star? None.

She just dragged her round Bradford city centre on a shopping trip like a ragdoll, filming Star screaming on the floor and refusing to stand up.

At the time, and obvious now, the reason for Star’s demeanour was due to the brutal injuries she had already suffered. She had a fractured leg – refractured just days earlier – and broken ribs, also recently refractured. No wonder she didn’t want to walk.

The bizarre moods, refusing to eat, screaming, crying, burning up, those were all because Star had a severe skull fracture at the time, caused days earlier, and no doubt had a very severe concussion.

But Smith said she had “no idea at the time” the level of injuries her baby daughter was carrying. She just believed Brockhill who said Star was "petting".

Then on September 22, she let Savannah Brockhill into her flat. She was suspicious her daughter had been assaulted. She shouldn’t have let this woman anywhere near her daughter, and certainly not unsupervised.

But she went to the toilet to change her sanitary product, leaving Star alone with Brockhill. And minutes later, after hearing a thud and someone say “Oh Star”, she returned to find Star dying, sat on Brockhill’s lap, who told her everything was going to be ok.

In the ambulance to hospital, Smith told her mother she’d been out of the room when Star was attacked and returned to find Brockhill there, but at hospital Brockhill, once again engraining her lies in Smith’s mind, told her to lie about what happened.

And Smith, the low IQ, highly compliant, domestic abuse victim, just went along with what her abuser said.

She maintained that story for over 12 months until on November 8, midway through the trial, she realised she couldn’t cover up any longer, and she told the truth to the court.

She told of what happened that day, the catalogue of assaults and abuse suffered at the hands of Brockhill. She accepted she had been neglectful and cruel to her daughter, that she was a terrible mother.

And she was found guilty of allowing the death of her child. Allowing Savannah Brockhill to murder Star Hobson in her own living room.