Shivangi Sinha
In February 2015, Becky Watts, a 16-year-old student from Bristol, England, was reported missing. She had not taken many of the essential items she would need, and it did not seem like she had walked away on her own. As the police began speaking to people and tracing her steps, they focused on her stepbrother, Nathan Matthews, and his girlfriend, Shauna Hoare, who were the last people to see her alive. As inconsistencies in their timelines began to emerge, the police knew they had to look deeper. In ID’s ‘Deadly Women: Friends to Foes,’ the details of the investigation and the eventual justice in the case are explored in detail.
Nathan Matthews and Shauna Hoare Claimed That Becky Watts Left of Her Own Will
Nathan Matthews, the son of Anjie Galsworthy and her first husband, grew up in Bristol, England. While growing up, he spent a lot of time with his grandmother in Warmley, but he would visit his mother very often. In the early 2000s, when his mother married Darren Galsworthy, Becky Watts moved into the house at the age of five as his stepsister. In his teenage years, Nathan joined the Territorial Army and spent some time there. Around 2008, when he was 21 years old, he started dating 14-year-old Shauna Hoare, who was also from Bristol. She later described that their relationship was not always good and alleged that he was very controlling as well.
Eventually, Nathan and Shauna moved to a house of their own at 14 Cotton Mill Lane. On February 19, 2015, the two of them were at the house in Crown Hill where Becky lived with her father and stepmother. Anjie last saw her in the morning before leaving for a doctor’s appointment, and when she came back, she noticed that Becky was not there. She waited for her for a while, and the next day, on February 20, she filed a missing persons report. As detectives arrived at the house, they found that some of Becky’s personal items, like her laptop and phone, were missing, but other things, like clothes and money, were still there. This raised doubts about whether Becky had left the house of her own will.
Since Nathan and Shauna were the ones in the house that day, the police brought them in for questioning. At first, Nathan claimed that he had heard the door slam, and as he had not seen Becky afterward, he assumed she had just gone out and did not think much of it. However, inconsistencies in their account of events soon began to emerge. The police decided to look more closely and found evidence that raised an alarm. In the weeks following the disappearance, Nathan and Shauna had exchanged many texts regarding kidnapping Betty and their fantasies around it. Upon checking CCTV footage from nearby areas, the police also found the two of them buying a circular saw, gloves, goggles, tape, and cling film on February 20 from B&Q stores.
Nathan Matthews and Shauna Hoare Were Driven by a Sexual Motive to Commit the Crime
On February 28, 2015, Nathan Matthews and Shauna Hoare were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping Becky Watts. They were questioned and later released, as there was not enough evidence connecting them to the crime at that point. However, as more evidence emerged, they were arrested again on March 2, this time on suspicion of murder. During this arrest, Nathan confessed to the police and admitted that he had killed Becky, though he claimed it had not been intentional. He said that he had planned to kidnap and scare his stepsister to “discipline” her, but things got out of hand. He admitted that he had strangled and dismembered her remains and gave the location as a shed at Barton Court.
Shauna, who was pregnant at the time, claimed that she had been out of the house during the incident and had only helped dispose of the remains afterward. But, based on the texts she had sent, the police did not believe so. After the recovery of Becky’s remains, the police executed a search warrant at Nathan and Shauna’s home, where they discovered a stun gun, handcuffs, tape, a mask, and bags. The autopsy revealed that Becky had been suffocated and stabbed multiple times, and that a struggle had occurred, indicating she had tried to defend herself. Based on the evidence and their confession, the police knew what had transpired.
On February 19, 2019, Nathan and Shauna attacked and killed Becky. They had then kept her remains in the boot of their car and taken them to their home. The next day, they had bought items like a saw, gloves, and tape and used them to dismember her remains and kept them in storage boxes. On March 4, 2015, Nathan Matthews was formally charged with murder. In June 2015, Shauna Hoare was additionally charged with perverting the course of justice. Both were also charged with conspiracy to kidnap, preventing the lawful burial of a body, and possession of an illegal weapon. They faced four unrelated counts of making indecent images of children, and Matthews was further charged with unrelated sexual assault and voyeurism offenses.
Nathan Matthews is in Prison in England, While Shauna Hoare is a Free Woman Today
In October 2015, the joint trial of Nathan Matthews and Shauna Hoare began. Prosecutors presented evidence of the texts the couple had exchanged, asserting that the killing had a sexual motive. They highlighted Nathan’s consumption of child pornography and claimed he had involved Shauna in carrying out his fantasies. In November 2015, Nathan was convicted of murder, while Shauna was found guilty of manslaughter. Both were also convicted of conspiracy to kidnap, perverting the course of justice, preventing lawful burial of a body, and possession of two stun guns. Nathan was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 33 years, and Shauna to 17 years. In December 2015, both appealed their sentences, but the appeals were rejected. In September 2023, Shauna was released on licence and now maintains a low profile, while Nathan remains incarcerated in His Majesty’s Prison.
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