The mother of the murdered nine-year-old Stacey Lawrence said today that she mistook her daughter’s killer for a Prince Charming, but he had proved to be a beast.
Stacey’s body was found on Saturday in the bunk of a white Spar delivery lorry parked in a layby in Warmington, Northamptonshire.
She had been on a delivery run with her mother’s partner, Darren Walker. It is thought that Walker, 40, strangled Stacey then hanged himself in nearby woodland.
Speaking today, Roxanne Lawrence, 38, said she had gone from loving Walker — her partner of one year — to hating him.
She said: “I thought he was my Prince Charming. I never would have imagined this.
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“He was brilliant with the kids, brilliant with myself, a family man. He did everything, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. He would never have been with me if I had ever had an inkling that he could do anything like this.”
She said that she could not believe that the man she had loved had been capable of such an act.
“On Friday morning I loved him. Now I just hate him for what he has done. The man I loved is not the man that did this. Obviously the man that did this is an animal, a beast. No sane-minded person could do that to an adult or a child.”
Yesterday police released CCTV images of Stacey and Walker at a service station on the A47 in Peterborough just before 3pm on Friday. It is believed that they made a short stop before going on to Warmington, where Stacey was murdered.
The footage showed the pair browsing the aisles of the services, seemingly comfortable together and happy.
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Today Mrs Lawrence, who sat with her eldest daughter Emma Hammond, 17, fought tears as she described how they used to call her daughter the “baby trucker” because she enjoyed going with Walker on his trips. She paid tribute to Stacey.
“She thought of others all the time. If she had some pocket money she would go to the shop to buy me a present,” said Mrs Lawrence. “At Christmas she didn’t want a present, she wasn’t interested in presents for herself, she wanted to adopt an animal from the zoo.
“She always had her head in a book, she was always reading.”
Her daughter Emma said: “You could be here all day if we described how brilliant she was. She could have done so much in her life, and it’s a shame someone as evil as that has taken it all away from her.”
Mrs Lawrence said that there had been no inkling of anything amiss when she spoke to Walker on Friday evening, shortly before Stacey was killed.
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“They were waiting to watch EastEnders,” she said. “I had a normal conversation with him. She had been with him about four or five times before.”
Mrs Lawrence and her daughter both said that they had never felt uncomfortable around Walker. “He was just a normal family man that seemed like they cared for their family and would protect us,” Emma said.
Her mother added: “He was there in times of trouble, when Stacey was in hospital he was there, he took time off work. He was a hard-working man. I met him because he was a friend of the family.”