(Brian Blackwell. Picture credit: Liverpool Echo)
*Please be aware that some of the details shared in this post will be quite disturbing. If you have any comments about this post that you would like to share with me in confidence, please email me at jocaledoniankitty@gmail.com.
When Brian Blackwell was born, his parents Sydney and Jacqueline could not have been more over the moon. He was to become their only child together (although Sydney had two grown up children from a previous relationship who didn't live with him) but they completely adored him and had worked so hard to give him everything he wanted and needed. Brian was born into a loving family home of two very intelligent and successful parents. Jacqueline had been an antiques dealer and his father, Sydney had (who's nickname amongst friends and relatives was 'Brain') been an accountant. Brian lived with his parents in an affluent area of Merseyside, Liverpool known as Melling.
As a child, Brian wanted for nothing, his parents saw to it that he had everything he set his eyes on. As Brian got older it was clear that he had a talent for tennis and was doing really well at school. He was really bright and his parents couldn't have been more proud of him. His teachers were impressed with him and he had a good circle of friends around him, everything looked like the future was bright for Brian Blackwell but underneath his perfect son image was something sinister lurking. Some people would say he was just a spoilt brat, others believe it to be pressure his parents were beginning to place on to him, but Brian began to distance himself from his parents and arguments were becoming a regular occurrence. As he moved into his teenage years, Brian would later claim that his parents were becoming more controlling to the point of suffocation. He had dreams of studying medicine and going to University but there was constant arguments on which university Brian was going to go to. Brian wanted one thing and it seemed like his parents wanted the other and at the end of the day he had to go along with what they said because they paid the bills and he didn't want to disrespect them.
Brian's relationship with his parents began to further widen when he met and fell in love with a girl called Amal (I haven't included any pictures of Amal in this post because I feel that it wouldn't be fair to her. Amal had no knowledge of what Brian Blackwell was going to do or was any part of what he had eventually gone on to do. I'm sure the relationship with him as well as everything that happened, have affected her deeply and caused her no end of trauma. I hope she's doing well today). Amal was the beautiful daughter of a Doctor. To say 18 year old Brian was besotted with Amal is an understatement, she was just as in love with him and the pair seemed to be inseparable. Brian did whatever he could to impress Amal and that involved him telling little lies at first but soon enough he was telling her the most ridiculous stories about how he was being sought after and sponsored by professional tennis companies. He told her he was about to hit the big time and bought her incredibly expensive gifts. Amal and her mother were shocked about these expensive gifts and Amal's mother was suspicious but Brian gave them a story that he was doing these professional tennis tournaments and they were going to make him a star despite the fact that in reality, Brian could only play a decent game of tennis, he wasn't a seasoned professional but in his head he was.
He began living in a dream world where he was a rich, successful sportsman with Amal by his side. The reality was that his parents were trying to direct his education, his career and romantic life. Arguments between Brian and his parents reached boiling point when they found out that he'd been using their money to buy very expensive jewelry, dinners at posh restaurants and a car for Amal. Brian was trying to portray to Amal that he was a successful sportsman and showered her with expensive things secretly using his parents' bank cards.
His spending was getting out of control and his parents found out what he'd been doing and threatened to put a stop to everything. On the lead up to the 25th of July 2004, Brian had been promising Amal the trip of a lifetime to America where they were going to live like celebrities whilst he did his tennis tournament. He booked two tickets for business class which was flagged up straight away to his parents. What exactly happened with his parents nobody knows except Brian, but his parents confronted him about him stealing their money and they knew that he had booked two expensive plane tickets. His parents were not going to let him go and they were not going to give him money that they felt was best used for his college career.
Some small parts of this case do remind me of The Menendez Brothers which I wrote about here on this blog in May of 2023.
On the 25th of July 2004 after Jacqueline and Sydney confronted Brian about stealing their money and forbidding him from going to America, Brian flew into a rage and hit his father over the head with a clawhammer, he then proceeded to stab his own 72 year old, elderly father repeatedly with a carving knife. The scene was horrific, blood all over the place and hearing all of the commotion, his terrified mother came rushing into the room to see her husband covered in blood on the floor and she screamed out, asking what he had done. Brian grabbed his mother and began stabbing her repeatedly. Both of his parents laid on the floor in a pool of their own blood whilst Brian scrambled around packing a suitcase and organising money from his parent's bank accounts so that he and Amal could still go to America and have the trip of a lifetime.
Once his suitcases were ready, Brian Blackwell closed the door behind him and put the key in the lock, knowing fine well that his parent's bodies were laid just a few feet away beginning to decompose. Brian rushed to be with Amal and pretended like nothing happened as he sat with the girl of his dreams, sipping champagne in business class which his parent's stolen money paid for.
Brian and Amal were in America for a couple of weeks and money was no object. They stayed at the best hotels, drank champagne and had dinner in expensive restaurants, had rides in helicopters, visited famous landmarks and shopped like crazy in every designer store you could think of. Amal was dressed from head to toe in designer clothing and accessories, Brian was the same. At one point they had spent over $7000 on room service whilst they stayed in the presidential suit of a hotel.
They had a video camera and recorded various points of the holiday. Amal was having the time of her life with who she thought was the perfect guy. Brian smiled in the pictures, laughed and joked in the videos and in the whole time he was with Amal he was upbeat, happy, not a care in the world but the whole time he had murdered his parents and their bodies were just left like trash on the floor in their home.
Amal was oblivious to everything, she was only 18 herself and believed everything he had said. In her mind, he had all of this money so he must have been a successful tennis player.
So Amal and Brian continued on with their romantic holiday but there was always going to be that moment when they would have to return home and that time had come.
Brian was beginning to get a bit nervous on the plane back to England. Suddenly in his mind, the party was over and now he was trying to figure out how he was going to cover all of this up and get rid of his parent's bodies. When he got home, he went inside the property where his parents had been lying for a couple of weeks and the condition of the bodies was utterly horrendous. Brian was able to ignore the bodies and the blood on the floor and had the nerve to take a bottle of wine from his Dad's collection to give to Amal's mother. He spent some time staying at Amal's house and never once did he display any sign of upset or worry. He claimed that his parents had gone away on holiday and he would go back and forth to his parent's house to collect clothes and other items, all the while he would pass their bodies as they laid there and the smell and the flies were becoming overpowering. It's a horrible description of the scene but that's exactly how it was.
Another frightening fact about this chilling case and an insight into the dark mind of Brian Blackwell is that he was so evil that he could not only steal money from his parents but also murder them in a very brutal and gruesome way, he could spend days on holiday smiling, having fun, spending their money without a care in the world and then return back to England, see the state of his deceased parents and the house...and still carry on his sick performance. Thinking about Amal and her mother during this time, one wonders how it must have been for them looking back over these horrendous events. To think that the whole time Amal had been around this sick and evil person and that he had been staying in their home whilst his parents bodies were still in that house for weeks and weeks.
Brian was still trying to come up with some sort of plan to get rid of his parent's bodies. He knew he would have a gruesome task on his hands of attempting to remove the bodies because they had decomposed so badly that there was so much fluid on the floor, He tried to find a bunch of young guys who he had heard were from the wrong side of the tracks (if you know what I mean) and offered them money to burn the house down, he claimed the home belonged to a drug dealer. The young guys didn't believe him and suspected that because of his nice clothes and posh accent, he must be an undercover policeman so they refused to help him. Brian was at a loss of what to do. It seemed that all he cared about truly was not losing Amal at all costs. His plans on what to do next were suddenly taken out of his hands when a nosy neighbour (and thank goodness sometimes for nosy neighbours) noticed that there was a pile of letters piling up at the Blackwell house.
Instead of the neighbour taking the word of Brian that his parents had just not returned yet from holiday, this neighbour together with a friend decided to get a closer look at the house and tried to push some of the letters through the letterbox. On further inspection they noticed a horrendous smell coming from the letterbox and there was so many maggots and flies crawling all over everything. Utterly horrified as you can imagine, they had a look at both windows of the house and saw flies all over the place. When they looked inside they saw what looked like a big mass of dark liquid and endless flies. The police were called and the gruesome discovery was made.
Brian played the part of the shocked and devastated son but he was fooling nobody. He thought he was smarter than the police but the game was up, they knew what he did and why he did it. Brian ended up bursting out into tears, confessing and claiming that he didn't know it was that 'easy' for someone to die. All of this despite the fact that he hit his own 72 year old father over the head with a clawhammer and stabbed him repeatedly over and over and over again. He then turned his attentions to his mother and did the same to her. What he did to them was overkill, it was rage and he left them on the floor covered in blood. He then used their money to fund a holiday for himself and his girlfriend whilst his parents (who did everything for him) laid on the floor whilst flies and maggots covered them. What sort of mind does that? No care, no remorse, no tears at all. The only time Brian Blackwell cried was when he'd confessed and he knew that he was heading to the slammer and there was no way in hell Amal was going to be seeing him again.
So he was found guilty obviously and sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge at his trial even commented that it would 'unlikely ever be safe to release him'' (Brian was also diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder). Fast forward to 2026 and I have to inform you the sickening news that Brian Blackwell was released on parole in 2016 and has been out there somewhere all this time. Nobody knows where he is but it's frightening to know that a person who was capable of doing what he did to his own parents and his actions afterwards is beyond words. I can't get my head around the fact that he did what he did and then went back to the house several times whilst the bodies were in the state that they were with flies crawling everywhere and he was able to return to Amal's family home and have dinner with her and her parents like nothing happened.
Brian Blackwell is around 40 years old now, still young to have a real go at life and who knows what he's been up to all these years but is it really justice? Life should mean life should it not? He murdered two people, stole from them and his care-free actions after the murders and he's no longer in prison? Does it seem fair to you? It doesn't seem fair to me. I think about the Menendez brothers and some of the similarities between the cases. With the Menendez brothers there was proof of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Witnesses, even family members came forward to say that the boys had been through a lot with their father. They have been in prison for over 35 years with no sign of being released. What do you think should have happened with Brian Blackwell? Should he still be behind bars or do you think he has served enough time? Let me know in the comments below or email me in confidence at jocaledoniankitty@gmail.com
RIP Sydney and Jacqueline.
Further Reading & Sources:
- Brian Blackwell: Article | The Guardian
- Brian Blackwell: Article | Liverpool Echo
- Brian Blackwell | Crime + Investigation
- Narcissistic Personality Disorder | Mayo clinic
Thank you as always for joining me in another disturbing true crime case. I hope you will check out my next post, in the meantime I hope to see you on my Socials
Please stay safe, until next time x
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