Jacqueline Kirk attacker guilty of murder 21 years after he set her alight

A man has been convicted of murdering his ex-partner who died 21 years after he set her alight, inspired by a scene from the film Reservoir Dogs.

Jacqueline Kirk was left severely disfigured from the attack by Steven Craig in Weston-super-Mare in 1998.

Craig, 58, was found guilty of grievous bodily harm at the time and released in 2015, having served a prison sentence.

Ms Kirk died in 2019 from complications relating to the injuries she suffered, so Craig was then charged with murder.

Jurors at Bristol Crown Court unanimously found Craig guilty after approximately four hours and 45 minutes of deliberations.

Ms Kirk’s family shouted “yes” and wept when the verdict was delivered.

He is due to be sentenced on 9 November.

His conviction is believed to be a legal first, given the length of time between the attack and Ms Kirk’s death.

Thanking the jury, judge Mrs Justice Stacey said: “I’m sorry you’ve had such a harrowing and difficult case to listen to.”

During the three-week trial, the court heard Ms Kirk died, aged 61, from a ruptured diaphragm, which her doctors blamed on the scarring to her chest and abdomen.

It meant the skin could not stretch to accommodate the swelling of her intestines when she suffered an unusual gut disorder.

Ms Kirk, a mother-of-two, was in hospital for nine months following the attack and suffered burns to 35% of her body, requiring a tracheotomy and operations including skin grafts.

Craig was sentenced to life in prison in 2000 and was ordered to spend a minimum of 15 years in jail for the petrol attack on Ms Kirk and the rape of another woman.

He was first released on licence in 2015 but was recalled to prison on two occasions, and has spent around 17-and-a-half of the last 22 years in custody.

Craig, a heroine and amphetamine user, was frequently violent towards Ms Kirk during their four-year relationship.

The court heard how Craig was obsessed by the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs.

When he attacked Ms Kirk in a car park he was inspired by a scene from the film in which a police officer is tied to a chair and tortured before being doused in petrol.

On 18 April 1998 he tipped petrol over Ms Kirk’s head and forced her to take a lit cigarette.

Jonathan Price, a consultant anaesthetist at the Royal United Hospital (RUH) in Bath, confirmed Ms Kirk’s cause of death on 23 August 2019 was abnormal “acute right-sided diaphragmatic perforation”.

It led to her bowel passing into her chest, which was an extremely rare event, Mr Price said.

The decision was taken not to operate following the perforation.

When asked why, Mr Price told the court it was “multi-factorial,” but added that her burn injuries were a significant deciding factor.

“She was a very high-risk patient if surgery was undertaken,” he said.

Forensic pathologist Dr Alison Armour said the swelling to Ms Kirk’s gastrointestinal tract was “grossly abnormal” and that it was not clear what had caused it.

Professor Tim Cook, an intensive care consultant at RUH who treated Ms Kirk in the last few days of her life, said her scarring was “like having a belt tied around” her chest wall.

He told jurors: “Try to imagine three balloons, one is in the abdomen, and the other two are the lungs. And they’re all inflated.

“If the balloon in the abdomen was massively inflated that pushed up the other two balloons. And when they were inflated they were squashed.

“In patients without scarring they could expand more.”

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