Relaxing with his girlfriend, he looks the picture of innocence.
Yet not long after this picture was taken with Rebecca Aylward, Joshua Davies battered her to death.
Davies, 16, lured his ex-girlfriend to a secluded spot where he killed her to win a bet over a free breakfast.
Trusted friend of the family: Joshua Davies with Rebecca Aylward during their three-month relationship
Rebecca, 15, and her mother
Sonia had both been delighted when Davies, an academically gifted boy
from a churchgoing family, arranged to meet her again.
When
her daughter failed to come home, Mrs Aylward's reaction was to tell
her sister not to worry adding: 'She's safe, she's with Josh'.
By that time Rebecca had
been bludgeoned with a rock the size of a rugby ball - and Davies was
trying to cover his tracks on Facebook.
He failed - and was yesterday found guilty of murder.
The chilling case highlighted how he used the internet, text messages and an array of social networking sites to plot her death.
Welcomed into the family: Davies with Rebecca
and her brother Jack. Rebecca even bought new clothes for the 'date'
unaware Davies had been boasting to his friends how easy it would be to
kill her
A few weeks before the murder, one of his friends had joked that he would ‘buy him breakfast’ if he carried out his threat.
Two days before he killed Rebecca, Davies told him: ‘You may have to buy me a breakfast.’
New dress: Rebecca was left lying face down in the rain after the vicious attack
As
sentencing was adjourned for psychiatric reports, Mr Justice Lloyd
Jones lifted an order preventing the killer from being named and
photographed, saying it was in the public interest that he should be
identified.
And Rebecca’s
family issued a statement at Swansea Crown Court saying their lives had
‘stopped’ on the day in October 2010 when she was murdered.
‘Rebecca was killed in a senseless and barbaric act,’ they said. ‘She died at the hands of someone she loved and trusted.
‘We will never forget what he did to her or forgive him for destroying our family.’
Rebecca and Davies, from Aberkenfig,
near Bridgend, met at the age of 11 and began going out together in late
2009 but the relationship soured and was ended by Rebecca after three
months.
The following
October he asked to see her again. ‘Rebecca was quite happy to meet up
with him – she thought he was going to ask her back out,’ her mother
told the court.
‘She got up at 6am to get ready and to do her make-up. She put on her new clothes, bought the day before.
‘Rebecca sounded really happy when she saw it was him coming down the hill towards her.
‘I wanted to make sure it was him so I got Rebecca to say his full name twice.’
When
the couple were alone, 6ft Davies repeatedly slammed a rock into
Rebecca’s head before leaving her bloodied and battered body face-down
on a wet forest floor.
Joshua Davies arriving at Swansea Crown Court.
The trial heard that two days before the murder Davies texted his friend
to say: 'Don't say anything but you may just owe me a breakfast.'
He then took a friend, who cannot be named for legal reasons, to the scene to show him her body.
Davies
told him: ‘Do you know how hard it is to break someone’s neck? She was
facing away from me and I thought, “This is it, I’m going to go for it”.
‘I tried to break her
neck. She was screaming so I picked up the rock and started to hit her
with it. The worst part was feeling and seeing her skull give way.’
He
then updated his Facebook page saying he was at home at the time of the
murder, and after Rebecca had been reported missing even expressed his
own fears for her welfare.
Davies
made plans to return to the forest near his home on the night of the
murder to bury Rebecca’s body and even attempted to pin the blame on the
friend he led to the scene, using it as his defence during the trial.
Police were alerted to the killing after one of Davies’s friends told his parents and led officers to the body.
Other friends told detectives that
Davies was a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ character who was ‘fixated’ on murder and
would threaten to kill anyone who crossed him.
They
said that most of the time, Davies, who lived with his shop assistant
mother Hayley and mechanic father Steven, was a confident and outgoing
schoolboy in all the top sets who dreamed of becoming Prime Minister.
But
he also had a ‘dark and sinister’ side that would surface when he fell
out with people and was extremely ‘jealous and possessive’ of Rebecca.
Shortly
after she ended their relationship he began spreading vicious rumours
about her having an abortion and trying to get pregnant to keep him
following the break-up.
He
would share his threats and scheming with his friends on social
networking sites and over text messaging, using textspeak to
communicate.
The jury were given a list of text sayings and symbols to help them understand the conversations between the teenagers.
Davies
was obsessed with violent films and his Bebo page lists his favourites,
including There Will Be Blood, in which Daniel Day-Lewis bludgeons a
man to death with a bowling pin.
He
also told friends he was going to drown Rebecca in a river or throw her
off a cliff and dump her body in a hole, inspired by the violent
Spartan fantasy film 300.
He said: ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if she wasn’t here? I am going to kill her – it would be real easy.’
He even bought a toxic foxglove concoction that he said he was going to put in her drink so she would ‘die in her own filth’.
But despite all the warning signs, none of his friends believed he would actually carry out his threats.
Lifting
an order preventing Davies being named and pictured because of his age,
Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said: ‘This is a crime in a small and
closely-knit community and it’s right that the public should know there
has been a conviction and who has been convicted.
‘I accept that the weight given to the welfare of the boy changes now he has been convicted of a very serious offence.’
What would you do if I DID kill her... teenage murderer's chilling text message to friend
Joshua
Davies and his teenage friends inhabited their own online world in
which the line between fiction and reality often became blurred.
They would use textspeak, jargon and symbols in a language so impenetrable that the jury had to be given translations.
The
apparently playful way in which the schoolchildren communicated – in
sentences peppered with smiley faces and symbols – belied the sinister
nature of Davies’s intentions.
Davies bludgeoned Rebecca to death with a rock the size of a rugby ball. He later boasted to a friend and showed him the scene
In the months and weeks leading up to
Rebecca’s murder, he would post messages on social networking sites
including Facebook, MSN Messenger and Bebo, saying he wanted to kill
Rebecca.
His friends would
respond to these sickening threats in jest, often egging him on in the
mistaken belief that he was messing around.
But
Davies was deadly serious and continued sending the messages until just
days before he battered her to death in a woodland clearing.
Before he left to meet his ex-girlfriend on the day of the murder he told one friend: ‘The time has come.’
In one chilling exchange seen by the jury, Davies texts his friend asking: ‘What would you do if I actually did kill her?’
The friend replies: ‘Oh, I would buy you breakfast.’
Two days before the brutal murder Davies says: ‘Don’t say anything but you may just owe me a breakfast.’
His
friend replies: ‘Best text I have ever had mate. Seriously, if it is
true I am happy to pay for a breakfast. I want all the details. You
sadistic bastard.’
The text finishes with a smiley face symbol.
Sonia Aylward, Rebecca's mother, outside court
in Swansea after Davies was found guilty. Standing with her are
Rebecca's brother and sister
The friend, who cannot be named
for legal reasons, said in court that he did not believe Davies and had
not known how his texts would be taken, suggesting an extraordinary
disconnect between the online world and reality.
‘I didn’t mean I wanted him to kill her,’ he said. ‘I thought he was only joking so I was messing about with him.
‘I honestly didn’t think he was going to do it – I was just playing along.’
Davies
posted Facebook updates saying he was ‘just chilling with my two
friends’ while watching Strictly Come Dancing to imply he was at home at
the time the murder took place.
He
later posted the Facebook status update: ‘I enjoyed a rather good day
and a lovely breakfast’, in a clear reference to the bet he had made
with his friend.
And he
posted his own concerned messages on Facebook after Rebecca was reported
missing, suggesting he was genuinely worried and giving her family no
cause to suspect he was involved.
‘I feel sorry for her mother,’ the murderer wrote on Facebook.
When asked why, he replied: ‘Well if I was a parent I’d be worried if my daughter was missing.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019409/Joshua-Davies-16-dared-Facebook-friends-murder-Rebecca-Aylward.html#ixzz1TO5f7U9g