Man found guilty of murder in historic Bristol trial
Steven Craig has been found guilty of fatally injuring Jacquie Kirk, when he tortured her back in 1998
A man from York has been found guilty of murder after an historic trial at Bristol Crown Court.
Steven Craig, who is 58, was accused of causing the death of his then girlfriend Jacqueline Kirk, by torturing her in Weston Super Mare in 1998.
He tied her to a chair, doused her in petrol and set her on fire in a re-enactment of a scene from the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs.
Jacquie, who was from Bath, survived the attack and lived for another 21 years until 2019, but despite that the prosecution argued that the injuries caused by Craig's attack had a more than minimal impact on her passing, 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.
We have spoken to Detective Chief Inspector Mark Almond from Avon and Somerset Police.
"I'm mainly pleased for the family, that we've got the guilty verdict today," 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 convicted in 2000 of causing GBH with intent and for the last few weeks, he has stood trial again.
"The trial over the last month has not been about whether Steven Craig committed the act, he doesn't dispute that he set Jacquie on fire," DCI Almond said.
"The trial has been purely on the basis of whether the injuries caused in 1998 played a significant 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 ruputuring.
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."
Craig now faces a life sentence for Jacquie's murder, with the judge due to pass her sentence on November 9.
Craig is already subject to one life sentence for the charge of GBH, which he received in 2000, as well as several other offences.