York man given life sentence for historic murder
Steven Craig tortured his then girlfriend in 1998, which a jury found played a "more than minimal part" in her death 21 years later
Last updated 10th Nov 2022
A man from York has been given a second life sentence with a minimum term of 15 years, after being found guilty of murder in an historic trial at Bristol Crown Court.
Steven Craig, who's 58, tortured his then girlfriend Jacqueline Kirk from Bath, by tying her to a chair, dousing her in petrol and setting her alight in a Weston Super Mare car park, in 1998.
She survived the attack, which was a re-enactment of a scene from the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs and lived for another 21 years until 2019, but the prosecution in Craig's trial successfully argued her injuries played a "more than minimal part" in her death at the age of 62.
It is understood the guilty verdict for Craig breaks a UK legal record, as never before has a person been convicted of murder when their victim died so long after an attack.
WATCH: Our video report from the day Craig was found guilty
At the time we spoke to Detective Chief Inspector with Avon and Somerset Police, Mark Almond.
"I'm mainly pleased for the family, that we've got the guilty verdict," he told us.
"Jacquie's family have been through a hell of an ordeal over the last two decades really and some, so it's been really important to get justice for Jacquie's family and for Jacquie."
Craig has already served jail time once for attacking her.
He was given a life sentence in 2000 for causing GBH with intent in relation to the attack plus several other crimes.
This latest trial was not about whether Craig committed the attack on Jaquie, but merely whether the injuries played a part in her death.
Jacquie was admitted to Bath's Royal United Hospital in 2019 with a severely swelling abdomen, which eventually caused her diaphragm to rupture and due to her condition doctors decided an operation to repair the damage would not be appropriate.
Throughout the trial the prosecution argued the extensive scarring to her body, caused by the 1998 attack, meant her body was unable to expand as a normal person's would have and therefore played a "more than minimal" part, in the diaphragm rupturing.
Sonna is Jacquie's daughter.
"She was strong willed, strong minded, very funny," she told us.
"She found it very hard because she couldn't get people to understand what she was saying, because the tracheostomy made it very hard for her voice to be heard, but she still made a big point of making her voice heard as much as she could."
As well as being severely burned on her outer body, Jacquie's throat and voice box was also damaged, meaning she needed a tracheostomy to breathe.
"She wasn't meant to survive but she had, and then she wasn't meant to recover," Sonna said.
"We were told 10 years, she probably wouldn't survive after 10 years because of the implications of living with a tracheostomy, so we made the most of it.
"I managed to get some of my mum back."
"It is an unusual case," DCI Almond said.
"The reason being that the original attack on Jacquie happened in 1998 and she didn't die until some 21 years later.
"As far as I am aware that is one of the longest, probably the longest periods of time between the incident and death, that we've had go through the courts in the UK and had a guilty verdict."