The Musclebound Murderer

Gary Vinter was a powerfully built railway worker from Teesside in northeast England. In August 1995 he stabbed his co-worker Carl Edon to death inside a small trackside building near the Grangetown depot, then turned himself in to police. He was convicted of murder in 1996 and given a life sentence with a minimum term of 10 years.

Vinter was released on licence in 2005. In July 2006 he married Anne White, whom he had gotten to know through letters and visits while still a prisoner. He was recalled to prison after a New Year’s Eve pub fight in 2006 and freed again in December 2007. On February 10, 2008, only weeks later, he attacked Anne at his mother’s home in Normanby, near Middlesbrough, strangling her and stabbing her to death. He pleaded guilty to murder.

In April 2008 a judge at Teesside Crown Court imposed a whole-life order, and the Court of Appeal upheld it in 2009. Vinter then took his case to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in July 2013 that whole-life sentences without a clear review process breached the European Convention. English judges later found the existing system lawful and refused his further challenge. In prison he attacked child killer Roy Whiting in 2011 and fellow inmate Lee Newell in 2014, earning further sentences, including another life term.