The murder of Tia Sharp

The murder of Tia Sharp

Tia was born on June 30th 2000 in Croydon (London) to her teenage mother Natalie Sharp and her father Steven Carter.

She was absolutely adored by her mother and her grandmother, a teenage mom herself. When Tia was born, her mother was 18 and her grandmother was 33. Her parents split up shortly after (not sure when), he wasn’t really in the picture. Natalie later got togheter with David Niles and had 2 more kids.

Tia was a fun, loving 12 year old, 4`5″ girl. She loved films, music and singing and would often pretend her BlackBerry was a microphone. On Saturday nights, she would be glued to the television for The X Factor; one day, she said, she wanted to be an actress herself. She already had one star billing: above her bed her name was spelled out in giant letters on the wall in her favourite pink.

We now know, however, that Tia had a less‑than-perfect home life with her mother and stepfather.

In fact, Davit and Natalie, who have two young sons — Tia’s half-siblings — were investigated by social services three times in recent years, twice in relation to Class A drugs and once over an argument at their flat in Mitcham, South London, when the police were called.

Tia, who was sometimes absent from school, was never placed on the at-risk register, but sought refuge with her grandmother in Croydon — which brought her under the same roof as paedophile Stuart Hazell. Tia had even expressed a wish to move in with her grandmother permanently once she turned 16. 

Her grandmother lived with Stuart Hazell, who had briefly dated Natalie in 2002 but the reationship lasted only a few weeks. After that. in 2003, he was jailed for around 3 years. Christine and Stuart got togheter in 2007, and it didn’t really bother Natalie, since their relationship was so short-lived.

On thursday, August 2nd 2012, Tia asked her grandmother if she could stay over for a few days, Christine was ok with it, but said she had to work night shifts, so Tia would be spending time with mostly Stuart, and she was excited about it. She loved her “grandfather” Stuart, she even choose to invite him as her special guest for her birthday party. Stuart was still young, not your typical grandfather, so she enjoyed spending time with him.

Tia took the train to New Addington, south-east London, where Stuart was there to pick her up, and togheter they went to buy some food. That night, Christine called to see how they were doing, and Stuart said they were playing the PlayStation togheter and having fun, Christine could hear Tia laughing in the background.

The next day, friday August 3rd, Christine got back from work and asked where Tia was, Stuart said she left at around midday to go shopping for shoes at Whitgift Centre in Croydon with a friend. Cristine tried to call her but her Blackberry was left behind at the house. At around 6pm, Cristine and Stuart became worried and called Natalie, to see if maybe Tia went back home, but she wasn’t there. They called her closest friends but nobody had seen her that day, so they went out to look for themselves, and when they couldn’t find her, they decided to call the police and file a missing person’s report. Stuart was believed to be the last person to see her, but later on a neighbour said he saw Tia leaving the grandparent’s house that day, confirmint Stuar’s story.

The family pleaded on TV for her return, begging her to come back if she ran away. Police searched the local woods and watched a lot of CCTV of the shopping centre, subway stations etc to see if they were able to see Tia, but nothing was found. They started to become suspicious as they realised she left the house without her phone and with little to no money.

Wednesday, August 8th, Police took a German Shepherd dog into Tia's grandmother's house, where it was believed she was last seen.

Volunteers and members of the local community continued to hand out posters, wear Find Tia t-shirts and conduct their own searches. Metropolitan Police area commander Neil Basu announced that police officers have been redirected from Olympic duties to form part of an 80-strong team involved in the hunt for Tia. Mr Basu said Scotland Yard has received more than 300 calls and 60 reported sightings of Tia.

Stuart was led from his house by two men in plain clothes and voluntarily questioned by police.[3]

Friday, August 10th, on this day police were scheduled to come and check the house, for the fourth time. When Cristine woke up, Stuart told her he was leaving to buy the newspaper, Cristine got up and immediately noticed there was a terrible smell in the house, she went to clean the fridge but found nothing. As police arrived, she told them about the smell, and police started to look around the house. Then, in the loft, wrapped in plastic bags, police found the decomposing body of Tia Sharp. At this point they also started to notice that Stuart hadn’t come back yet, and he was supposed to only be out for an hour or so, and he became a suspect immediately.

Stuart’s face was everywhere in the news, and that same night, at around 8:30 pm, someone recognised him and called the police, he was arrested at Cannon Hill Common, Morden, for suspicion of murder.

It was later announced that two further arrests had been made: Christine Sharp, on suspicion of murder, and her neighbour, Paul Meehan, on suspicion of assisting an offender. A post-mortem on the body was begun on 10 August, and paused later that day. By 16 August, the post-mortem had still not been completed, but at an inquest into the death, which opened that day, it was confirmed that the body was that of Tia Sharp. The post-mortem later concluded without establishing the cause of death.

The confession and conviction: Stuart initially pleaded not guilty, saying Tia fell down the stairs and hit her head, he was drunk and passed out, and noticed she was dead when he woke up, he panicked and hid the body.

There were a lot of pictures recovered from the house, many were of Tia doing things like rubbing lotion on her legs, sleeping etc. all pictures were taken without Tia’s knowledge. It was found that Stuart liked to watch very brutal porn, and the actresses were all similar to Tia.

Pictures of Tia’s dead body in sexual positions were also found, and once Stuart realised that they would be shown in court, he decided to change his plea to avoid trial. So he admitted that he had murdered Tia after the jury heard days of devastating evidence against him. This included forensic evidence that he had violently sexually assaulted Tia after he killed her on 2 or 3 August.

Christine was later let go with no charges, as there is no evidence pointing towards her having any knowledge of this. The neighbour had to spend some time in prison for lying to the police when he said he had seen Tia leave the house on that day. Hadn’t he said that, her body could have been discovered way sooner.

Stuart Hazell was jailed for a minimum of 38 years for the murder of Tia Sharp.

If you are interested i highly reccomend watching Eleanor Neale’s video about this. THE TIA SHARP CASE. Continue reading