An obsessed ex-boyfriend “executed” a mother-of-four and her new partner just four days after she reported him to the police.
Marcus Osborne, 35, of Harpe Inge, Dalton, West Yorkshire, was sentenced to life imprisonment at Leeds Crown Court for the murders of his former partner Katie Higton and her new boyfriend Steven Harnett.
Miss Higton, 27, had told West Yorkshire Police she feared Osborne would seriously harm or kill her after he repeatedly threatened to kill her if she had another boyfriend.
Days later, on May 15, 2023, he brutally stabbed her and Mr Harnett at his home in Huddersfield and they were both pronounced dead at the scene.
“Romeo and Juliet can die together now,” Osborne said after the brutal double murder that left Ms Higton with 99 injuries and Mr Harnett with 24 wounds, including to his genitals.
As Osborne was taken away, a family member shouted from the public gallery, “I hope you rot in hell.”
The judge, Mrs Justice Lambert, said the murders were “sexual in nature” and motivated by Osborne’s “pathological jealousy”.
“They were motivated by your sexual jealousy over Katie’s decision to pursue a new relationship with Steven,” he told Osborne.
“I do not accept (the murders) are explained by your ingrained insecurity about being abandoned due to a neglected childhood,” he added.
“Everything you did stemmed from sex and your need to sexually degrade and humiliate.”
The judge also said Ms Higton’s murder was a “brutal and sustained attack on a completely defenseless woman”.
He said during the attack, which began “before Miss Higton had even gone through the front door”, Osborne could be heard saying: “I warned you I was going to kill you… it’s your fault this happened.”
The judge said the woman, who was held captive in the house, described Osborne bathing between the killings, laughing and jeering, and even later inviting a neighbor into the living room to view the bodies “as if you were proud of what you had done.”
The court heard Osborne was waiting for Miss Higton and brutally attacked her as soon as she walked through the door of the home they once shared in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.
Osborne then used Miss Higton’s phone to pose as himself and lure Mr Harnett into the house.
Then, one night, he raped another woman, whom he held captive at home, at knifepoint. The court heard four children were in the house at the time of the murders.
Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford KC said: “The defendant committed a deliberate and brutal double murder out of sexual jealousy, his desire to have control over Katie Higton, his unwillingness to accept her decision to leave him and the freedom to have a relationship with another man.”
Ms Higton had been in a relationship with Osborne for five years but left him in early May last year following the “final straw” attack on April 28.
The woman later told police the relationship had become “coercive, controlling and physically abusive” over the past two years and she was regularly assaulted, including an incident in which she threw a cat at him, the court heard.
Mr Sandiford said Osborne also had convictions for violent offenses against two previous partners in 2011 and 2012.
In the days before the murders, Ms Higton told West Yorkshire Police Osborne told her she would “slit her throat if she said she did it” and “if she had a boyfriend he would kill them both”.
On 12 May, Osborne was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence offenses and released on bail on the condition that he not return to their home, but he spied on her in the following days before taking a taxi home on the night of the murders.
At the time the murder was reported, professionals were holding an emergency meeting to discuss ways to protect Ms Higton and her four children.
The court heard he found out about the developing relationship between Ms Higton and Mr Harnett by accessing his Snapchat account.
A victim personal statement read in court by Ms Higton’s mother Nicola McAlister said Osborne was “a monster of the worst kind”.
The judge sentenced her to 10 consecutive years for raping and falsely imprisoning the other woman in the house.
He told Osborne: “There are no mitigating factors in your case other than your admission of guilt. No psychiatric or other evidence has been placed before me that would explain or help me understand your actions.”
“This is a situation of such extraordinary seriousness that even a very long minimum period would not be a fair sentence. “What you did that night was terrible.”
Osborne pleaded guilty to two murders and other crimes.
Following her death, Ms Higton’s family and friends remembered her as “the best mum” and left flowers at the scene on behalf of her two eldest children, saying the family were “absolutely devastated”.
His former brother-in-law, who asked to remain anonymous, said his brother had been in a relationship with mother-of-four Ms Higton for seven years and was the father of her two eldest children, daughters aged nine and 10.
He described Ms Higton as “cheerful, outgoing, fun” and a “wonderful mother”.
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