A FORMER Army officer has been jailed for a minimum of 34 years for the brutal murder of a York estate agent in an attack lasting nearly nine hours.

Jeremy Peter Andrew Green, 26, imprisoned Nikki Waterhouse and her colleague Karen Browne in their flat in Phoenix Boulevard, off Leeman Road, as he repeatedly stabbed them with a lock knife and broken glass and tried to suffocate them, said Peter Moulson QC, prosecuting at Leeds Crown Court.

Miss Waterhouse, 32, died after suffering 65 injuries and Miss Browne was left helpless in her bedroom with 19 injuries including several cuts to her throat, millimetres from her blood vessels. A judge said Green’s savagery was “almost beyond belief”.

Green, who had previously dated Miss Browne, arrived at Phoenix Boulevard at 9.55am to give her a DVD, said Mr Moulson. She did not let him into the flat, but allowed him into the building when he claimed he was visiting a friend in another flat.

Twenty minutes later, after she had contacted him to say she was leaving, she heard a creaking and turned to see him in her bedroom.

He said: “You lied. You said you were going out.” He stabbed her with a knife and she screamed to Miss Waterhouse, who was in her bedroom, to “get out or get help”.

Miss Waterhouse came to her aid, but was attacked herself and dragged to her room by Green after he had cut Miss Browne’s spinal cord and left her helpless.

In the following hours, he smashed a bottle on Miss Waterhouse’s head, forced her to undress and tied her up by her wrists, tried to strangle Miss Browne with a belt, tried to make Miss Browne’s wounds bleed more quickly, and stabbed and tried to suffocate each of them.

Green then left with with the bank cards and PIN numbers he had terrorised them into handing over, and locked them in the flat, before taking £750 from their bank accounts.

Throughout the day, he made 100 phone calls and text messages to other women, in which he had sounded normal, laughing and joking, they later told police.

After he left, Miss Browne’s screams for help were heard by a neighbour in the communal landing and police broke down the door.

Green was arrested that night.

Members of Green’s family wept as the Waterhouse family described the effect of his crime on them, but he sat impassively in the dock throughout the hearing.

Nikki’s sister Danielle, looking at him across the court, said: “He has destroyed all our lives and has taken part of our family we can never replace.”

Miss Browne said she had “been to hell and back” and will never recover fully. She will never forgive him. She had lost feeling in her left hand side and is permanently scarred.

Jailing Green for life with a minimum of 34 years for murder, and 24 years for attempted murder, the Recorder of Leeds, Judge Peter Collier, said: “Your final savagery to each of them is almost beyond belief.”

He said: “Throughout that day you engaged in the most appalling and prolonged series of attacks on these young women. They were completely at your mercy.

“It is impossible to imagine the torment to which they were both subjected and the terror they experienced over those long hours.”

Green had used his victims’ phones to contact their families and friends to prevent them from going to the flat.

“Your behaviour and reactions with others, both during and after committing these dreadful offences is abnormal in its normality,” said the judge.

Green was a 2nd lieutenant in the Yorkshire Regiment but left the Army after he was court-martialled in April 2013 for stealing from fellow officers.

He pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder, committed on October, 20, 2013.


Victim’s family still struggling to come to terms with violent murder

NIKKI Waterhouse’s parents and three sisters cannot sleep or carry on their normal lives without medical help as they struggle to come to terms with their loss and the manner of her death.

Her youngest sister Chloe said: “Nikki had so much life to live.

“The man who took that away from her doesn’t deserve to live his life anywhere but behind bars.”

Her father John Waterhouse told Leeds Crown Court: “It is unbearable to think of the cowardly, mindless violence that she had to endure through no fault of her own.”

He said Nikki was the child he and her mother saw the most because she was the only one who lived nearby.

They could no longer face visiting the places in York they had been to with her, or her office, the last place he had seen her alive.

Danielle, Nikki’s middle sister, said she had had to change jobs. “I will always have three sisters.

“No-one will ever take that away from me, not even him,” she said.

Her oldest sister Simone, who had given birth to Nikki’s nephew only six weeks before her death, said Christmases and birthdays would no longer be events to look forward.

She spoke of how she wished that she could have protected her younger sister.

The night before she died, Nikki had enjoyed a happy and dignified first date with a new man, and she was due to soon meet her new nephew for the first time.


‘I will never forgive’

SURVIVOR Karen Browne told Leeds Crown Court she will “never forgive” Jeremy Green for killing Nikki Waterhouse and destroying her life and that of their families and friends.

“Green doesn’t deserve to look forward to any meaningful future,” she said in a statement read out to the court.

“I have had to go to hell and back to get where I am now.

“I don’t want my life to be over at the age of 24. I have lost my independence. I cannot even begin to think when I may get that back. I feel everything I had, he has taken.”

In agony and bleeding from the many wounds Green inflicted on her, Miss Browne was able to tell police who the attacker was as soon as she was rescued and later during the three months she spent in hospital, she gave police a detailed account of exactly what he had done and what she had heard him do in another room to her close friend.

Miss Browne had to move back to live with her family at Linton-on- Ouse when doctors declared she could leave hospital. Her left side, in which she has lost all sensation of pain or temperature, will never fully recover. She is permanently scarred physically and she also suffers emotionally and mentally.

Her mother Lisa said last night: “No sentence will bring Nicole back nor repair the mental and physical injuries Karen has suffered.

“Karen is one amazing brave girl, but so was Nicole. She fought for her life to the end; that takes a lot of courage. Karen has shown pure strength of character and determination, not only in the amazing recovery she has made but in making sure that the police had as much information as possible so that justice could be done, not only for herself and her family but for Nicole and her family too.”


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