The sense of injustice Ashley Dale’s mom nonetheless feels over her demise

Like any parent who worries about their child’s choice of romantic partner, Julie Dale heaved a sigh of relief when her daughter Ashley ended her relationship with her boyfriend, Lee Harrison.

Penniless, jobless and with friends, everyone suspected, in rather low places, he couldn’t drive. He didn’t even have a bank account. Neither Julie, nor her husband Robert, could understand what Ashley saw in him.

Nevertheless, Ashley, a beautiful, charismatic, 28-year-old ­university graduate, with a good job as an environmental health officer for the local council, was determined to help him turn his life around. ‘She was striving so badly for him to become something that he was never going to be,’ Julie, 47, recalls.

Then suddenly, three years ago, Ashley’s ‘lightbulb moment’ finally came. ‘She was heading for 30, she wanted to get married and have children, and she couldn’t do that with him. So she ended it,’ says Julie. ‘We were delighted.’

Sadly, their jubilation was short-lived. Within six months Ashley and Lee were back together, and eight months after that, Ashley was dead. Slaughtered, in cold blood, in a hail of bullets meant for her hapless boyfriend.

A balaclava-clad gunman stormed into the home the couple shared in Liverpool in the small hours, one morning in August 2022, armed with a submachine gun, seeking revenge over some gang-related slight.

Lee wasn’t even home when it happened. Undeterred, the ­gunman, James Witham, fired indiscriminately at Ashley as she desperately tried to flee.

It is hard to imagine the terror and helplessness she must have felt – and bewilderment. Ashley was no gangster’s moll, but a respectable young woman with dreams of starting her own family.

Her only mistake was falling in love with the wrong man.

Today, two years on, her grieving mother and stepfather, Robert Jones, not only have to come to terms with the fact that their daughter lost her life so senselessly, but also that her boyfriend has shown not a single drop of compassion or remorse at her death.

‘The police have been brilliant, but the fact is Lee is still strutting around, and my beautiful ­daughter is gone. It’s still hard to take in,’ says Julie. ‘We’ll never get over what happened.’

Last November, following a seven-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court, four men: Witham 41, plus his accomplices Sean Zeisz, 28, Niall Barry, 26, and 29-year-old Joseph Peers, were found guilty of Ashley’s murder and conspiracy to murder, and were sentenced to a total of 173 years in prison.

None of them will be released for another 41 years at the very least.

It is some consolation for Julie and Robert that justice has been served, although, of course, it will not bring Ashley back.

Their heartbreaking story – one which will surely send shivers down the spines of any loving ­parent – is told in a compelling four-part Channel 4 series, ­Merseyside Detectives: The ­Murders Of Ashley And Olivia.

The documentary examines the painstaking work of police in the shocking aftermath of the deaths of both Ashley and the unrelated case of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, another innocent who was killed in cold blood by a masked gunman in ‘ruthless pursuit’ of his intended victim, in a gangland hit.

The murders, within 24 hours and just a couple of miles apart, shocked the nation and today, at the Liverpool home Julie shares with Robert and their two daughters Nancy, 14, and nine-year-old Connie, disbelief still looms large.

‘Whatever we didn’t like about Lee, I don’t think anyone could ever remotely envisage what would happen. How can you?’ says Julie.

Mother and daughter were ­particularly close: Ashley was born when Julie was only 16 – still a child herself in many ways – and Julie worked hard to escape the low expectations that can accompany teen ­pregnancy, studying as a mature student and becoming a midwife.

In her late 20s she met her long-term partner ­Robert, a businessman, and he became a father ­figure to Julie’s friendly and popular little girl.

‘She was always very mature for her age, very level-headed,’ says Robert, now 39. ‘It’s bittersweet saying this now, but she always seemed to make the right decisions about things like her friendship groups.’

After A-levels Ashley ­ultimately went to Liverpool John Moores University to study environmental health, graduating in 2017, after which she was offered a job with the local council.

She’d been promoted to environmental health officer just before she died, and was described as a ‘rising star’ by colleagues. ‘We used to giggle as Ashley was so glamorous, but she had no problem ­getting her hands dirty, diving into bin bags,’ says Julie.

Indeed, as far as Julie and Robert were concerned, there was just one shadow over Ashley’s life – and that was Lee.

Ashley had met him in Liverpool on a night out the year she graduated. When she introduced him to Julie and Robert, they were underwhelmed to say the least.

‘He didn’t really have a job to speak of, although Ashley said he worked with his dad in the building trade,’ says Julie. ‘He was always respectful and never rude, but still, he was no match for Ashley.’

Robert felt the same. ‘I couldn’t see what she saw in him, but ­Ashley seemed content enough,’ he says.

By 2018, they’d set up home together in a house Robert had bought as an investment and which the family renovated together – notably without Lee lifting a finger.

Still, Julie and Robert remained puzzled by Ashley’s ongoing attraction, particularly as time went on and they began to ­suspect that he was on the fringes of the drug trade. ‘I don’t think I ever directly asked Ashley what he did for a ­living, but I knew he wasn’t a nine to five,’ says Julie.

‘Whatever he did it wasn’t big time. There was no Range Rover, no million-pound house. Ashley was funding him, paying the bills and for their holidays.’

Besides, as any parent to adult children will tell you, you interfere in their relationships at your peril. ‘I’d say, “I’m not happy with him at all” and she’d say, “Bobby, I love him”. It’s hard, but Ashley was a grown woman,’ says Robert.

‘We had to wait for her to see it ­herself because the more you try and control someone, the more she’s going to slip through your fingers and then you’ve got zero relationship.’

The police later confirmed they did not think Ashley had any idea as to the extent of her boyfriend’s criminality.

Then, in the spring of 2021, it seemed Ashley had finally come to her senses. She broke up with Lee, and even dated a couple of other men.

But by December that year, to Julie and Robert’s dismay, ­Ashley revealed that she was ­accompanying Lee to London on a birthday trip.

Julie tried to reason with her, but was just brushed off.

Over the subsequent few months, Ashley worked hard to set her partner on a straighter path. ‘She’d got him a bank account, she was trying to get him to drive, she was encouraging him to go and get a proper job and he had an interview at a factory,’ says Robert.

Whether or not he got the job Julie and Robert will never know, because two days later, four gang members were dispatched to her house, looking for Lee.

They would later learn it was the result of an historic dispute over stolen drugs between rival Liverpudlian gangs which had been rekindled at the 2022 Glastonbury Festival. Ashley had gone to the festival with Lee, where he’d got into an altercation with someone from his past.

‘As far as we are aware, the ­reason why this happened stems back to something that took place years ago, and related to stolen drugs,’ says Julie. ‘Lee didn’t steal them, but he stuck by the lads who did steal them, and that’s why this has happened: that’s the crux of what came out in court.’

The altercation unsettled ­Ashley enough for her to tell friends in a series of voice notes – later played at trial – that she feared for Lee’s life. ‘I just have a bad, bad feeling about everything,’ she said in one. In another, she said she had asked Lee to be ‘honest about everything’ so she could prepare for ‘the worst’.

Ashley did not confide in her mother about her worries. ‘I now wonder if she was trying to ­protect me,’ she says.

On the night of August 20, Lee was out for the evening and Julie and Ashley were exchanging text messages, as they commonly did.

‘Ashley texted about 10.30pm, saying something had spooked the dog, maybe a rat, which was a little bit of a running joke with us, because she was terrified of them, even though she had to deal with them all the time in her job,’ says Julie.

Later, Ashley also messaged her mum to say her car alarm had gone off, set off, she assumed, by the torrential rain outside.

Only later did Julie and Robert learn that the alarm had actually been prompted by two gang ­members slashing Ashley’s car tyres in an attempt to lure Lee – who they did not realise was not in – from the house.

‘I’ve tormented myself with why she didn’t go out and look – maybe things would have been different. But why would you? You’re on your own, your car alarm’s going off, it’s bouncing down with rain, you’d just have a quick look out the window and that would be it,’ says Julie.

After a final exchange of text messages, Julie went to bed around midnight, to be woken at 3.45am by two police officers knocking at the door with the worst news imaginable.

‘They said there had been an incident at Ashley’s property and she had died. And all I could think of was there had been a fire,’ says Julie. ‘And then they said she’d been shot.’ She pauses, tears in her eyes. ‘You can’t really ­comprehend it.’

Only later would Julie and ­Robert learn the full horrifying facts: 45 minutes after her tyres were slashed, Witham kicked the door down before entering the house and firing 15 shots from his submachine gun.

Footage from police bodycams shows the myriad bullet holes in the walls, while one detective describes how she had never seen a scene where someone is so determined that no one escapes alive. Chillingly, Julie and Robert were told how Witham had even fired five shots into the spare ­bedroom where Nancy and ­Connie routinely slept over. ‘They had been there the week before for a sleepover with their big sister, that was their bedroom,’ says Robert, his head shaking in disbelief.

In the initial bewildering aftermath as the couple grappled to confront what had happened, one thing stood out: Ashley’s boyfriend Lee – the intended target – could barely have been less ­emotional or less willing to help.

Moreover, when Julie and ­Robert visited Lee ten days after Ashley’s murder – Lee has not elected to visit them once ever since – he spun a load of lies about what could have happened to his ­innocent girlfriend.

‘He sat on the sofa saying he’d heard it was a burglary gone wrong, or a psycho ex-boyfriend,’ says Robert.

This was what he also told police when they asked him in for ­questioning. ‘He knew full well the reasons behind what had ­happened, but he didn’t sit there in silence – he was actually ­giving them wild goose chases to go on,’ says Robert. ‘He lied and lied and lied.’

Those lies were quickly ­unravelled, and arrests made. Julie and Robert attended every day of the eight-week trial, during which none of the accused showed a smidgen of remorse. ‘They were smirking in the dock, and there was one instance where we heard them singing on the way up from the cells,’ says Robert.

Lee was not called as a witness, and didn’t bother to attend court.

Understandably, the heartbreak of hearing Ashley’s voice from beyond the grave in court in those haunting WhatsApp messages was also an ordeal for them both. ‘We were warned, but it was hard, really hard,’ says Julie.

Nine months on from the trial, and two years since Ashley lost her life, the impact remains ­devastating. ‘Nancy and Connie went to bed as normal little girls, then they woke up in the morning and their big sister had gone,’ says Robert. ‘Their whole lives will be shaped by her absence.’

As, of course, are her parents’. ‘It’s with you all the time,’ says Julie. ‘It’s not necessarily those big birthdays, anniversaries, it’s the little things – all the times I would have just picked up the phone to her.’ All gone, for the heartbreaking reason that, as Robert says, Ashley ‘fell in love with the wrong boy’. 

Merseyside Detectives: The Murders Of Ashley And Olivia is on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight, and for the next three days.