Jessie Wright – Family’s grief for the girl ‘who wasn’t flash, who just loved life’
Violent death of teenager leaves a mother cherishing memories of her make-up mad daughter and neighbours demanding to know why she fell victim to ‘a kid completely out-of-control’
Published: 15th April, 2011
by PAVAN AMARA
JOHANNA Ronayne has suffered the nightmare every mother fears. Her daughter, Jessie, was brutally raped and murdered at just 16 by one of her friends – a man called Zakk Sackett, 20, who lived and grew up on the same estate in Barnsbury.
This week, after the dramatic end of the trial which saw the public gallery of the Old Bailey erupt in cheers as Sackett was jailed for life, Johanna has opened her heart to the Tribune, and explained how she can never forgive the killer.
Nor, of course, will she ever forget her daughter, the memories of whom are still fresh at her home on the Bemerton estate, near King’s Cross.
“I have this canvas devoted to Jess, it’s in the hall [as you walk in the house], and it’s got photos of her all over it,” she says. “Every night, I kiss that canvas before I go to bed. It’s the next best thing to kissing Jess again.”
Johanna is clutching a cup of tea and a passport photograph of Jessie – taken when she had dyed her hair – because she loved her daughter’s hair when it was blonde.
Jessie’s sister Mollie, now 16, is in the comfortable living room, showing off phone photographs of Jess with blonde hair.
The teenager was saving up for blonde hair extensions when she was murdered in March last year – just five months after recovering from a dangerous brain disease.
It wasn’t that she was vain, her family explain, just that she was a typical 16-year-old.
“She was obsessed with make-up,” her mum says. “She used to say to her nan: ‘Can I put some mascara on you, nan?’ And she’d say: ‘No, of course not’, but she’d go ahead and insist anyway.
“The thing we’ll miss most about Jessie is seeing her foundation stains in the sink – because you know when teenage girls get their foundation everywhere? I used to say to her: ‘What the bloody hell have you done? You’ve got your foundation everywhere.’ And she’d turn around and say: “No, I haven’t’ and deny the whole thing as if it was never her who had the whole bathroom sink covered in her make-up. But we all miss seeing that now.”
Jessie’s nan and grandad are there, too, the day after the family sat in the Old Bailey and watched as Sackett was jailed for a minimum of 25 years. “During the trial he acted like he was the victim. Can you believe it?” Ms Ronayne adds. “He actually demanded that a screen be put up to hide him from us, because, get this, he said he was intimidated by us. As if we wanted to look at him. It would make me feel ill to look at that.
“Forget Jess being the victim, he tried to make out he was the victim and that’s what hurt so much. There are still people around here who will say: ‘Oh that poor boy, he had learning difficulties.’ If he said sorry to me it would be nothing. When he did it he thought nothing of it. He left my little girl’s body in the freezing cold and I hate him so much for what he did to her.
“Zakk was never the full ticket and everyone around here knew that. The big problem was that nobody ever stood up to him. The police were too scared. The young kids idolised him and the older people cowered away.”
Jessie’s nan, Marion, recalls the night the teenager died. “She said she’d gone out to see friends of hers. She kissed me, said: ‘I love you’ and went out the door. I ordered a Chinese, one for her and one for me for when she came back.
“She didn’t come back, so I tried phoning her. She didn't pick up, but I thought her phone battery had run out. It was always running out. I thought she must have stayed over at her friends, and I’m going to kick her arse when she gets home. I stayed awake until 2.30 in the morning.
“When I opened her bedroom door in the morning, her bed hadn’t been slept in. That’s when a bright red alarm bell started ringing.
“I wouldn’t even let that Zakk in the house. I didn’t trust him. He’d go round throwing eggs at people’s windows. He’d wait outside Jess’s bedroom window while she was doing her make-up and had her music on loud and he’d just stare for ages at her. I found it strange, obsessive.”
It is a poignant irony that just five months before she was killed Jessie had bravely faced up to death following long periods in hospital during her teenage years with a brain infection.
“She had her final operation for the brain infection in October 2009,” Ms Ronayne continues. “It was such a traumatic time for her and for us. It suddenly dawned on her that she could go, and she kept asking me: ‘Am I going to die?’
“She came home on Christmas Day. That was the last Christmas we spent together in this very room. She opened all her presents in here.
“I’ll never forget when she was in the hospital. She kept making us all run out for pizzas. Her nan would make her sandwiches and she was so picky. It was always ‘Oh nan, there’s not enough butter on this roll’ or ‘Oh, there’s too much butter on this roll.’ She was choosy. But then she got back to normal and was back in school, doing well in her GCSEs.
“Her favourite words were ‘Love you’. She said it to everyone. She had so much to give. She would kiss everyone. There were no barriers between her and everyone else.
“She was in the middle of buying loads of bikinis to go on holiday with. She wanted to go to Spain with her friends. She loved swimming in the sea with her friends. She wasn’t flash, she just loved life.”
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