Julie Birch

Julie Birch (formally Beulah Morline Birch) (born 1942) is a British killer. She killed her husband Paul Francis Birch, then aged 33, on Thursday 16 July 1987 at a flat in Horace Road, Kingston upon Thames. She wounded him in the thigh with a blast from a sawn-off shotgun and then stabbed him with a commando knife 13 times in the head, chest, and neck. Neighbours heard screaming and cries of "No, no, no. Oh my God". They called the police who, after they burst through the front door, found Julie Birch straddling her husband. Paul Birch was still alive and both were screaming.She turned the shotgun on herself and blasted away part of her shoulder. He had been stabbed five times in the chest and one wound had penetrated the heart. He was taken to Kingston Hospital where he died from haemorrhage and shock at 9.55 p.m. She was admitted to the same hospital under police guard and treated for several days.

The killing was premeditated. In a tape recording she made, she said, "It's the choice I have made. I have planned this for a long time and one thing I have decided is that the person who did this to me is coming with me. Killing Paul to me is like killing a slug." She had bought the shotgun and ammunition from an underworld contact for £200. She left her hair salon with a bag containing the dress in which she wanted to be buried. She lured her husband into the flat and started the attack at around 5.15 p.m.

In a police interview, she said, "If I could could do it again I would gladly. It was the greatest pleasure I have had in my entire life - pulling the trigger."

She appeared before magistrates on 27 July 1987 and was charged with her husband's murder. At her trial at Southwark Crown Court in August 1998, she pleaded guilty to manslaughter through diminished responsibility. Judge Gerald Butler committed her under the Mental Health Act to an indefinite period of treatment in the secure wing of Longrove Hospital, Epsom.

She appealed against her sentence. The three Appeal Court judges - Lord Justice Mustill, Mr. Justice Savill, and Mr. Justice McKinnon - ruled that indefinite detention was unnecessary.

Julie Birch was born in the West Indies. Before the killing she worked as a hairdresser at her own salon, B. Casual, in Piper Road, Norbiton. She had previously married in Canada and had three children by that marriage.

She met her husband during the mid-1970s in the then West Germany, where he was serving in the Military Police.

Paul Birch was born in Liverpool. At the time of his death, he was working as an embalmer for funeral directors Frederick W Paine at their mortuary also in Horace Road.

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