WARNING, GRAPHIC CONTENT: Kelly Higgins was just seven years old when her mum Bernadette McNeilly took part in the torture and murder of 16-year-old Suzanne Capper in Manchester
Kelly Higgins was just seven years old when her mum participated in the torture and killing of a 16-year-old girl — and she can still recall hearing the screams.
Suzanne Capper was burnt alive after being held prisoner for several days by Kelly’s mum, Bernadette McNeilly, and her five other gang members, ages ranging from 16 to 29 at the time, in Moston, Manchester.
Kelly knew Suzanne and she said the childminder showed her and her little brother, James, nothing but kindness and love.
But speaking about her recollections of her murder, Kelly said: “I just remember her screaming. They’ve removed her hair. They’ve removed her fingernails. They’ve pulled her teeth. She’s been injected, she’s been drugged.
“They’ve shaved her pubic hair. They’ve sexually abused this girl.”
Suzanne was tortured at McNeilly’s home before being moved to a different address — and Kelly can even remember hearing scratches on the wall.
After the abuse that lasted one week, Suzanne, who was briefly released after three days to pick Kelly and James up from school, was eventually killed.
This was after being forced into a car, driven to woodland, where McNeilly, aged 24 at the time, and her “satanic cult” burned her alive after she was doused in petrol.
Kelly, who said Suzanne’s killers played the Chucky theme tune as she was being tortured in the days before, told LADbible Stories: “Bernadette attemps to set Suzanne on fire, it didn’t work. Jean (Powell) attempts to set Suzanne on fire, it didn’t work. So then the 16-year-old, he’s the one who set Suzanne on fire. She luckily, it is incredible, manages to pull her own body out.”
She added: “Let me just say though, Bernadette walks away, so my mother walks away from a 16-year-old child who is on fire and sings ‘Burn Baby Burn’. She’s that psychotic.”
Suzanne somehow managed to survive long enough to tell police who her attackers were.
This resulted in McNeilly, along with Jean Powell, Glyn Powell and Anthony Dudson being imprisoned for murder. The two other members of the cult, Jeffrey Leigh and Clifford Pook, were sent to prison for false imprisonment.
According to reports, McNeilly and Dudson had been angry at the time Suzanne was killed, after they both became infected by pubic lice. They both concluded that Suzanne, who often slept in the bed they shared, must have passed it on to them.
Kelly meanwhile, who was born in Blackpool, has revealed what it was like living with her mum before she became a killer.
She claimed she and her brother James, who was two years younger, were “constantly beaten and tortured” by their mum who would allegedly strike them with belts and tie them to chairs.
However, according to Kelly, the wicked mum would even allow her friends, the twisted individuals mentioned above, to come over and participate in the abuse.
She recalled: “They brought a swan into the house. A swan to a child is massive. I mean, it’s massive to an adult, but you can imagine being little in that house. This swan came in. They’re laughing. They’re talking about what they’re gonna do.
“And then we’re just made to stand in the room, and they chop its head off. When you chop an animal’s head off, the animal will still move. It still runs. Its feet was huge, it was just running around, blood.
“Its neck spins, so there’s no head on it so it’s just spinning. There’s blood. They just enjoyed every minute of causing that weird reaction from them children to be feared.
“As a mother, there were no protection, there were no love.”
Everything shifted after the murder of Suzanne who Kelly had encountered on numerous occasions and described her as being more of a mum to her than McNeilly was.
She said Suzanne was an incredibly reassuring person and she and James were in the house while the teenager was being tortured.
And after her mum was imprisoned in 1993, Kelly, who went on to live with caring foster parents and was terrified of McNeilly, had to visit her behind bars, because she still retained some parental control.
Offering an insight into the prison visits, she said: “The odd thing is, for a child who’s visiting a mother who has been so evil, and psychotic, and horrendously dark, when you’re in this prison, this mum’s everything you wanted her to be.
“So you’re walking in, she’s open armed, she’s loving, she’s, ‘Oh my baby girl. My beautiful baby girl.’ You’re getting everything that you never had.
“So even though you don’t wanna go through that door cause you don’t wanna see her, cause you don’t wanna see this person, you’re scared to death of her, but you go in, you get this lovely version, you then don’t wanna leave. It’s horrible for a child. It’s horrible.”
Kelly, now 40, has cut ties with her mum who was released from prison in 2015 after serving 25 years for Suzanne’s murder.
She has been advocating for a change in the law that would mean abusive parents lose the right to see their children.
Despite the trauma she and James experienced, both managed to move on and find joy, something Kelly is immensely proud of.
And as for her message to her seven-year-old self, she said: “I’d tell her I’m proud of her. I’d tell her not to panic because she’s gonna be a good mum. And I’d tell her not to worry because she’s not gonna have a bad bone in her body like her mum has, and she’s not gonna represent evil.
“She’s just gonna be a good person.”
Kelly now has an “amazing husband” and three wonderful children and she said they enjoy a “beautiful life” together.
And continuing her advice to her younger self, she concluded: “Just say to her that, you know, you get to live that childhood that you never had anyway through your children.
“You get to use your imagination with your own little girls. And I still got to play with dolls, and I’ve still got to, you know, run around the park, and be on adventures on holidays, and still be childlike. Me and James still say, we’re the kids that never grew up.
“So yeah, just reassure her that she’s loved, she’s safe, she’s a good person.”