As ‘queer’ murderer Shaye Groves, 27, begins her life sentence, former schoolmates have reflected on how her fetish for true crime, masochism and BDSM play led her to where she is today.
The mother-of-one who wore a satanic jacket and smiled as she was sentenced for the brutal murder of her lover of 25 years, Frankie Fitzgerald, whose throat she slashed with a knife before stabbing him 22 times, has sentenced herself to a life of isolation while his young son grows up without a mother.
A close friend of Groves since childhood has spoken anonymously about the warning signs for Groves, who nicknamed childhood friend Lauren White, ‘Chucky,’ after a murderous doll she says was always ‘ quite strange’.
She said: ‘We used to hang out. Shaye was pretty weird.
“She was unique, the way she dressed, what she liked, she liked Chucky dolls and was interested in them.”
Groves, photographed as a child, was described as “manipulative” by her old friends.
In her late twenties, Groves developed a taste for bondage and machismo.
Killer doll: The terrifying ‘Chucky’ from the 80’s horror classic Child’s Play
“When I was younger, it was different than it is now: it was more feminine.
‘But she was never like a girly girl and always stood out in a crowd.
‘We would all be in bright colors and she would be the one wearing dark clothes, even at that age.
“She didn’t wear what she wore now, she wasn’t goth, but she was always unique.”
It’s always been a bit weird.
According to the former friend, in recent years, Groves did not socialize much and spent more time with Ms. White and Vikki Baitup, who reported her to the police after video calling her and showing her the body of Mr. Fitzgerald.
“She didn’t use to go out much, she used to hang out with Lauren and that Vikki Baitup,” she added.
Speaking about Groves’ friendship with White, he added: ‘Lauren would do whatever Shaye wanted her to do.
“She was very manipulative, Lauren didn’t have many friends, and Shaye was often there for her.”
Earlier this month, jurors at Winchester Crown Court convicted haunted serial killer Groves on the charge of murder after a five-week trial in which she had tried to present herself as his victim.
The revelations included in the trial ranged from the shocking details of the couple’s sex life to the chillingly nonchalant way Groves reacted to being arrested: coldly smoking a cigarette in a pink bathrobe in the kitchen of her home decorated by a murderer. in series in Havant.
Throughout the arduous course of proceedings, the tragic and twisted story of Groves’ life began to emerge.
Old friends of the murderer Shaye Groves have said that she was always an “odd” person.
In images as recent as 2019, Groves can be seen smiling as she bakes cakes with her young daughter.
She looks comfortable with motherhood and calm, happy.
In a post to her daughter before she started elementary school, Groves wrote of her pride in growing up to be a “beautiful independent girl with a lot of attitude” and vowed to “always be here to guide you.”
The doting mother of yore shows a decidedly different image now: swollen with tattoos and piercings, her face apparently wearing a permanent leer in her mugshots.
Another woman, who met Groves once at a Popworld nightclub through her friendship with Ms. White and also wished to remain anonymous, said: “Shaye used to bully Lauren and make her do things.”
“I’ve been clubbing with her and Shaye was a bit weird.”
Regarding his tattoos, he added: “It must have been two years ago that he got the one on his throat, but he didn’t have the big line on his face.”
And I used to have a lip piercing, but not all those others.
“She started dressing a bit ‘Goth’ about two years ago when she was going Goth – weirdo.”
Before the gruesome murder, Groves had developed an unhealthy obsession with true crime.
In the house he shared with his young daughter, the walls were lined with photos of famous assassins, from Jeffrey Dahmer to Ted Bundy.
While her daughter played with dolls, Groves played with the decorative Celtic daggers she kept on her coffin-shaped bookcase.
Groves smiled as she was sentenced to life in prison.
His gloomy house was decorated with portraits of serial killers.
Groves kept ceremonial daggers next to his bed on a coffin-shaped shelf.
He even had coffee mugs decorated with movie killers.
Groves kept many knives scattered around the house.
In the evenings, Groves binge-watched true crime documentaries and reread his collected books on gangsters, including the notorious prisoner Charles Bronson.
He even had serial killer mugs.
This sick obsession, allied with a sexual fetish for heavy BDSM involving dominance and machismo, reached a climax when he was introduced to 25-year-old Frankie Fitzgerald in a pub in January 2022, whose bedroom performance made Groves He was violently possessive.
Over the course of their 6-month relationship, the two pushed their sexual appetites to the absolute limit, using four ‘decorative’ knives with depictions of movie villains Chucky, Jigsaw and Pennywise to ‘play with knives’, but as their taste It grew wilder, a line was fatally blurred.
On July 17 last year, Groves flew into a jealous rage after seeing Frankie allegedly talking to a 13-year-old girl on Instagram, a claim that turned out to be false.
That night, while he slept, she took her twisted revenge and slashed her lover’s throat with a Celtic ritual dagger before madly stabbing him through the chest 22 times.
When he was dead, the crazed crime obsessive began formulating an insidious plan to get her way, using the tricks of the trade she had learned from her television shows.
Frankie Fitzgerald, 25, was Groves’ lover and tragic victim.
Knowing that she would be a suspect in Frankie’s murder, Groves set about changing optics and tried to present herself to her friend, Vicky Baitup, as a victim of Mr. Fitzgerald’s sexual violence.
In the gruesome videos of the two having sex, Groves had clumsily edited the footage to make it look like rape, a ruse the prosecution uncovered.
She also called a friend ‘laughing’ after killing her lover, showing her body and saying ‘I’ve done it’.
But after all her lies and trickery, she ended up like she always does with the people in the true crime documentaries she ate.
Sentencing her to life in prison with a minimum term of 23 years, Judge Kerr told Groves that she was not a “cold-blooded murderer” and that the murder was a “crime of passion,” telling her “you loved the man you killed, and you killed the man you loved.
This will be little comfort to her family or Groves when she begins one of the life sentences she read about in her gangster books.