Greasby mum organises march for justice

Oct 8 2008 by Lorna Hughes, Hoylake and West Kirby News

Mum organises march for justice

THE mother of murdered Birkenhead woman Chantel Taylor joined hundreds of campaigners in Liverpool at the weekend demanding that a life sentence should mean life.

Members of Merseyside Families for Justice marched from Hope Street to Liverpool Crown Court on Saturday, echoing a march in London earlier this summer.

Mother-of-five Jean Taylor, 59, of Greasby, has spearheaded the movement after seeing two of her children killed.

Her son Stephen was 31 when he was killed at the end of a house party in 2000 – the woman responsible was given a three-year sentence for manslaughter.

Her daughter Chantel Taylor died four years later at the hands of an acquaintance, Steven Wynne, who was found guilty of murder after admitting mutilating her body, which has never been found.

He was originally arrested for setting fire to Borough Road mosque in Birkenhead but confessed to Chantel’s killing when police found a letter in his house alluding to the murder.

He was sentenced to life with a 21-year tariff, which was lowered to 18 on appeal.

Jean Taylor said: “You have to go through it to understand how this affects us. The people who came to the march were all carrying a second kind of pain and that pain is the injustice to our loved ones.

“Their lives were snatched, brutally, from us and the lives of all our family members at the same time. Because we have no quality of life now.”

Jean has helped raise a petition with 35,000 signatures which has been handed to the Prime Minister.

And she is planning a march on Whitehall next year which already has 25,000 people.