A “parasitic” couple who preyed on a “vulnerable, defenceless and unwell” Bradford man before killing him in his own home have been handed lengthy jail sentences.
Ian Mitchell, now 35, and Sarah Pearson, now 23, murdered Mitchell’s 65-year-old stepfather Stephen Kershaw by beating and smothering him before concealing his body in an alcove.
Stephen Kershaw (Image: West Yorkshire Police)
His body was found three days later at his house in Shetcliffe Lane, East Bierley. He had suffered a range of injuries including blunt force trauma to his head.
Sentencing the couple at Bradford Crown Court His Honour Judge Jonathan Rose jailed Mitchell for 23 years and Pearson for 19 years.
Prosecutor Miss Victoria Lamballe said that it was not possible to say with any certainty when Mitchell and Pearson murdered Mr Kershaw – but it was possibly within hours of him returning home from a visit to his daughter in Leeds on September 11, 2022.
Mr Kershaw, who was known as “Kersh”, was reported missing two days later. His decomposing body was found on September 17. It had been rolled inside a rug and placed in an alcove beneath various household items and a mattress.
Police who found the body were alerted by a bad smell.
An examination of his body showed cuts to his head and a complex fracture to his cheekbone caused by blunt trauma that could have been caused by a grab handle that had been on the bathroom wall.
Body tissue was found on screws attached to the rail as well as hair fragments and blood staining that matched Mr Kershaw’s body.
The location of the material showed the grab rail had been used to injure him.
In the days after Mr Kershaw went missing, and before he was found, Mitchell and Pearson denied knowing where he was.
They said he had gone straight to bed and hadn’t spoken to them, had then got up and gone out the next morning when they were still in bed.
Then, with his body trussed up in the house, they went on a spending spree, using his bank card to buy alcohol, food, and clothes.
They were seen in the area shouting, screaming, and causing a nuisance, and were asked to leave a local supermarket after drunkenly knocking over a display of wine.
In the months leading up to Mr Kershaw’s murder Mitchell and Pearson bullied him into handing over money to fund their drinking and drug-taking to the extent that he had to borrow money from relatives and use a food bank.
The court heard that Mitchell and Pearson were habitual drug users who stole Mr Kershaw’s medication.
Mitchell had moved in with his stepfather and was joined by Pearson when the couple began a relationship in 2022.
On the weekend of his death Mr Kershaw travelled by bus to visit his daughter in Leeds and said he was fed up with the duo’s constant demands for money to buy beer and drugs.
He said he had given them money but that they would “get nasty” when they couldn’t get their own way.
Friends of Mr Kershaw and the pastor of a local church saw him when he had a black eye and other injuries.
When he returned home on September 11 he walked into his house on Shetcliffe Lane and was never seen again.
After the couple were arrested on suspicion of murder Pearson was released to a hotel in Shipley where she befriended a man drinking in a church garden.
She later told him that she was on bail for murder, referring to Mr Kershaw as “some old guy with dementia”.
She added: “I didn’t actually do it. I held his feet down. This guy I was with smothered him with a pillow.”
She also said she gave him permission to kill him and that Mr Kershaw was “old and disrespectful”.
In interviews with police she denied holding Mr Kershaw’s legs or that he had been suffocated. She also denied that she was intimidated by Mitchell or that she was scared of him. She said their relationship was “great”.
But in a police vehicle she was overhead talking to Mitchell about suffocation and said: “If you’re gonna do it, that’s the way to do it.”
In sentencing Mitchell and Pearson Judge Rose described their behaviour as “deplorable”, “reprehensible”, “callous” and “beyond the comprehension of decent people.”
He said: “It was not enough that you killed this man. You showed no respect for him in death.”
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