Tragic tale of Gracie Spinks whose life was brutally cut short by her stalker ex-colleague after she turned him down...as her heartbroken family leave her bedroom untouched and blast police for 'partly killing her'

Gracie Spinks' bedroom has remained untouched since the day her life was so brutally snuffed out two-and-a-half years ago.

Her towel remains on the radiator where Gracie left it to dry the night before she was captured on CCTV leaving home for the final time, an empty crisp packet and a plate lie on the table beside her unmade bed.

Alison Ward told a sobbing inquest jury - who concluded on Thursday that Gracie was unlawfully killed by 'obsessed' former work colleague Michael Sellers - that she 'cannot bear' to move any of the belongings part-time model and artist Gracie left behind.

'Her water cup is on the windowsill and her handbag is where she left it and her clothes remain on the floor', she said. 'I cannot bear to touch anything', Mrs Ward said.

Gracie was stabbed ten times at Blue Lodge Farm in the village of Duckmanton, Derbyshire, as she tended to her beloved horse, Paddy, in June 2021. The fatal wound was to her neck.

The body of fun-loving Gracie, who loved playing and singing along to Adele hits on her piano, was discovered by a mother and child who were visiting their own horses. As they arrived at the stables just after 8am they saw a man running away.

A police dragnet was launched to find Sellers, with local businesses issued his description and a primary school placed into lockdown.

But by lunchtime, officers sent word that the situation had been 'resolved' – 35-year-old Sellers' body had been found under a bush on the edge of a field half a mile away. He is believed to have killed himself - the denouement of a six month campaign of harassment and stalking of Gracie which the Derbyshire Constabulary had failed to investigate.

Mrs Ward was at work when she received a shocking call informing her 'beautiful' Gracie had been found in the field, covered in blood.

She described how she 'dropped everything' and rushed to the scene in the village of Duckmanton, Derbyshire, wrestling with the possibility that one of the horses at the stable block had somehow injured her as she drove.

It was a scenario she only considered fleetingly though, because Mrs Ward was all too aware that Sellers had become fixated on her daughter after the pair met at an e-commerce firm where Gracie had started working.

The young horsewoman had only planned to work at Xbite's warehouse in Markham Vale, Derbyshire, for a matter of weeks while on a pandemic-induced furlough from her lifeguard job. But the court heard she 'progressed quickly' at the company and soon accepted a permanent position.

The coroner was told how Gracie initially thought Sellers was 'sweet and caring'. She had met up with him a handful of times outside work; at her home, the Sheffield house where he lived with his parents, or for walks or a meal.

But she called time on their two month friendship after an incident in December 2020 while she was self-isolating, when Sellers visited her home to collect something and was invited inside.

The court heard he 'started kissing her and got on top of her', and she had to ask her to stop.

Gracie sent him a text soon afterwards saying he was a 'great guy' but she didn't have time for a relationship. But the court heard he continued to try and engage with her and would ask other staff for information about her at work.

The following month Gracie made one of her regular trips to see Paddy but spotted Sellers waiting in an adjacent layby as she pulled up at the stables. Too scared to stop, she continued on to their workplace and reported 'creepy' Sellers to Human Resources.

Gracie described feeling 'anxious and scared' by Sellers' actions – which included buying VW Scirocco after discovering it was her favourite car - and told how he had other employees monitoring her social media for him.

Xbite had already received complaints about Sellers from other employees and he was dismissed for misconduct after Gracie was added to the list. Police investigations subsequently established that the loner and gym obsessive had harassed or stalked a total of eight other colleagues before her, with some reporting that they had quit their job and even moved house to escape him.

But with Sellers getting 'weirder and weirder', Gracie felt compelled to report him to police in February 2021 - four months before he killed her.

She told a 101 call handler Sellers 'became obsessed with me' after she called off their two-month friendship, and described how the layby incident 'scared me a lot'.

She said colleagues had told her that this Sellers had displayed similar behaviour with other women previously at work, and had got 'worse and worse' each time, to the point where he was now monitoring her on workplace CCTV.

Ms Spinks said she didn't want to pursue a prosecution but wanted something on record because she was worried that 'next time he could kidnap someone'.

Officers cautioned Sellers but did not request information from his employer about complaints against him or carry out a national database check, and categorised him as 'low risk' – even though he told a constable that he thought he was in a relationship with Gracie.

The Pc, Sarah Parker, also admitted she had never seen a key risk assessment form which all officers were supposed to complete in stalking cases – and agreed she was 'effectively left to her own devices' on such cases, having received no training from her force on stalking. Less than three months later, on May 6 2021, a dog walker discovered a chilling cache of weapons in a rucksack dumped in a farm track at Duckmanton and contacted police.

But again officers failed to investigate, even though the Nike bag contained hunting knives, an axe, a hammer, a packet of Viagra and a sinister note which read: 'Don't lie'.

One constable, Jill Lee-Liggett, told the inquest she thought the contents could be theatre props or for use in a sex act.

The officer, who is also a member of the Great Britain women's bobsleigh squad, said she could see no evidence of blood on the weapons. They were logged as lost property after her sergeant dissuaded Pc Lee-Liggett from investigating a receipt in the bag which would have led officers to Sellers' door.

Gracie's father, Richard, 68, a local radio DJ who formerly worked as a broadcaster on the QE2, said he only found out about the weapons haul being discovered when he read about it on Facebook on the day his daughter died. 

Mr Spinks said he would have 'taken every step to keep her safe', had he known. In the early hours of that morning, the killer was seen on his own security camera loading a box containing the murder weapon into the back of his VW.

Following the murder and apparent suicide of Sellers, police interviewed his mother, who told officers she had seen knives in her son's bedroom two months before the murder. She told him to dispose of the blades, adding that Sellers had gone on a 'downward spiral' after losing his job for harassing Ms Spinks. The inquest also heard that Sellers' mother also found a bag of carrots and apples in his bedroom the day before Ms Spinks was killed - and became concerned the next day when she noticed the bag had gone, because she remembered Ms Spinks had a horse.

She reportedly went to search for her son - heading in the direction of Duckmanton - to tell him to 'come home', but found the village cordoned off and so returned home. In the final days of the three-week inquest, Detective Superintendent Darren De'ath, who leads Derbyshire Constabulary's public protection team, formally apologised to the Spinks family and told the court the force 'should have done better'.

Mr De'ath said he was 'appalled' at the way the force had 'failed' to record and retain information in connection to Gracie's report of stalking in February 2021, and the dog walker's report about the bag of weapons. Coroner Matthew Kewley told jurors there was only one conclusion they could come to because of the nature of the evidence. But although he acknowledged that Derbyshire Constabulary had accepted its failings, he told jurors it was not for them to 'consider whether if any of these failings had not happened, the outcome might have been different.'

Instead, he instructed jurors to reference the failings in their conclusion, so 'there is a clear record of the fact that there were serious failings by the police'.

Outside court, Mr Spinks and Mrs Ward, 52, accused officers of giving 'absurd' evidence to the jury, adding: 'If this is the prevailing culture of Derbyshire Constabulary, then this is not just a handful of bad apples but the entire rotten orchard.'

At a disciplinary meeting held by the force last November following an investigation by the police watchdog, two constables were found to have breached standards of police professional behaviour for duties and responsibilities, and received written warnings in relation to the failure to investigate the bag of weapons properly.

No action could be taken against a sergeant because he had retired.

Potential breaches of professional standards by a constable and sergeant were found not proven at a separate hearing in relation to Gracie's stalking report.

The disciplinary meetings provide little comfort to Gracie's devastated family.

Gracie's brother Tom - who had successfully applied to become a police officer with the Derbyshire force, until becoming 'completely disillusioned' after his sister's death and turning the job offer down - today said the force had contributed to the death of his sibling and 'best friend'.

Tom said: 'People I have spoken to have said that if that is the standard of policing in Derbyshire, no-one is safe at all.

'The whole point of us speaking out is to try to make sure this doesn't happen again.

He spoke at the family's semi-detached house in Old Whittington, Derbyshire, where a figurine of a horse's head still sits on Gracie's windowsill and where she was once the 'life, soul and energy of the house'.

The 24-year-old described Gracie's room as 'sacred ground'.

He said: 'We have put some things in there –cards from her funeral, and a memory box – but we haven't taken anything out of her room at all.

'There is still rubbish in her bin, and a can of her favourite cocktail that I bought her is still on her windowsill.'

He said police 'played a massive part' in Gracie's death, adding: 'In my eyes they partly killed her. 'He (Sellers) was the one with the knife but they killed her by letting her down on so many different opportunities when they could have intervened.'

He added that if the family had known a bag of weapons was found just yards from where Gracie tended to her horse, 'she would never have gone on her own anywhere.'

Mrs Ward said the coroner wasn't allowed to ask the jury to consider whether police failings contributed to Gracie's death - for the simple fact they failed to act at all.

She added: 'Because the police didn't actually do anything whatsoever or investigate the case, it meant the jury couldn't be asked if they'd failed. It is a bit of a legal loophole, but they couldn't go for causation.

'We were really disappointed the coroner couldn't instruct them legally to go for causation, but we understood why. I think that if he could have, he would have. He was very good throughout the inquest at questioning the witnesses.'

She agreed that her daughter would still be alive if police had done their job, adding: 'You encourage your daughter to do the right thing and ring 101. You put your faith in the police.

'Little did we know the police would do absolutely nothing, nothing at all.

'We do believe as a family that had the police acted differently, she would still be here.'

She said that once the family recover from the 'traumatic inquest' they hope to bring changes nationally, possibly through talks at police training centres about their experience.

She said: 'Unfortunately a lot of it is common sense. If you asked Joe Public what you thought of that bag, they'd say it was sinister.'

Mrs Ward added: 'We will never know, but hopefully we have already helped save lives by keeping Gracie's story alive and out there.

'If we can just save one person's life, it will be worth it.'