Anne Maguire

On 28 April 2014, 61-year-old teacher Ann Maguire (5 April 1953 – 28 April 2014) was stabbed to death while teaching a Spanish lesson at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds, England. The perpetrator, William "Will" Cornick, who was 15 years old when he committed the murder, was sentenced to life with a minimum of 20 years at Leeds Crown Court on 3 November 2014.

Ann Maguire (née Connor) was aged 61 when she was murdered. She and her husband of 37 years, Donald, had two grown daughters, the younger of whom is Royal Ballet soloist Emma Maguire. She had spent her entire working life at Corpus Christi Catholic College, having taught there for 40 years, and was due to retire in five months. Her funeral service was held at the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on 16 May 2014.

Among those paying tribute to Maguire were Pope Francis, Prime Minister David Cameron, and Frances Lawrence, widow of London headteacher Philip Lawrence who was murdered in 1995.

Author Anthony McGowan had been a pupil of Maguire's at Corpus Christi in the 1970s. He wrote an article about her in the Telegraph in which he said:

"What I remember most about her was her determination to get the best from us, to put into our heads what we needed to get through, to get by. That caring, that intensity, could at times spill over into fierceness, goaded by some jackass, or when she came across bullying or unkindess in others.But it isn’t the fierceness that I remember when I think of her. I think of her face, always on the verge of a smile. Her consideration. The way she listened when you spoke to her, and tried to answer, rather than fob you off. I remember her kindness and consideration for me."

An Educational Trust offering bursaries in artistic subjects was set up in her name.

Will Cornick's parents were separated, yet both were described as supportive. He joined Corpus Christi in Year 7. His former Head of Year described him as polite and with 100% attendance. Prior to the murder, he had only five incidents of misbehaviour in four-and-a-half years at the school, and no criminal record. Classmates described him as academically gifted, and unlikely to cause trouble.

A personality change in Cornick had been noted following a collapse on holiday in Cornwall, after which he was diagnosed with diabetes. He had briefly self-harmed due to the condition. In 2013, he was upset at not being able to join the Army due to his diabetes. On Christmas of that year, he sent a Facebook message to a friend in which he talked about "brutally murdering" Maguire.

Cornick admitted to psychiatrists that he had been planning the murder, and intended to do it four days earlier. Cornick, who had a "deep seated grudge" against Ann Maguire, had also put out a Facebook message to his friends to see if any of them would murder Maguire for him for a payment of £10.

On 28 April 2014, Cornick attended lessons as normal. After morning break, he went to the top floor for his Spanish lesson. Half way through the lesson, he stabbed Maguire seven times in the back and neck with a 21 cm (8.3 in) knife . One cut straight through her jugular vein. He then chased her into the corridor where Susan Francis (Head of Languages), alerted by screams, ran to help her. She separated and shielded Maguire from Cornick. Francis got Maguire away into another room where she held the door shut to keep Cornick out. Cornick then returned to his class and told a friend that it was a shame that he had not killed Maguire.

Cornick had brought a bottle of whisky to "celebrate" and admitted he planned to kill two other teachers.

There is concern that the inquest into Maguire's death did not get the full picture. Cornick told young people who had been pupils at the school at the time that he planned to murder Maguire. These youngsters did not enter the witness box during the inquest.

On his arrest, Cornick was detained at Wetherby Young Offenders Institution near Leeds, but due to concerns for his safety he was transferred to HM Prison Hindley near Wigan.

Due to an anomaly in British law, although it was illegal to name or identify Cornick during his trial due to his being a minor, it was legal to name him before the trial began. The tabloid newspaper The Sun named him the day following the murder.

Psychiatrists said that Cornick possessed “a gross lack of empathy for his victim and a degree of callousness rarely seen in clinical practice” and that he “presents a risk of serious harm to the public and that this risk is present for the foreseeable future. The risk is of grave homicidal violence and this could easily involve the use of a weapon. The risk is immediate and unpredictable and could cause serious and lethal injury.”

He was imprisoned at Leeds Crown Court for a minimum of 20 years. He has never shown any remorse for his actions. He said that he knew "the family would be pissed off", but he thought that "everything was fine and dandy".

Mr Justice Coulson lifted the restrictions on naming Cornick, saying that the action would have a "clear deterrent effect". Cornick's defence lawyer Richard Wright brought up that this would be illegal under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights due to immediate threat to his life, which the judge countered with Article 10, freedom of expression.

Penelope Gibbs, who chairs the Standing Committee for Youth Justice (SCYJ) umbrella group of charities and campaign groups, said the sentence was too long and more emphasis should be placed on rehabilitation. There is concern that the minimum tariff is excessive because the brain of a 15-year-old is not mature, neuroscientists do not currently understand fully how the brain matures during adolescence and rates of maturity vary between individuals. Deborah Orr wrote:

At 15 or 16, a human brain is far from fully developed. The volatility of teenagers is partly a consequence of the accelerated neural sculpting that goes on in these years. (...) Cornick – or any person who commits a crime at 15 years of age – is not a fully developed human being. The man serving Cornick’s sentences will have a materially different brain and mind from the boy who committed the crime. Child criminals should be treated differently to adult criminals for this reason. (...) Cornick should have been given a sentence that pertained until his adulthood, at which point a judge would have been in a realistic position to receive information about the manner in which the rest of his sentence should be conducted. No one, not even a judge, can know at this point what kind of a man Cornick will become.

Allegedly other western European nations would be less severe though the tariff appears to be in line with tariffs for other UK minors convicted of murder.

In January 2015, Cornick lost an appeal against his sentence.

In November 2017 an inquest was held into Ann Maguire's death.