The Murder of Mitchell Harrison
Mitchell Harrison, 23, was a convicted pedophile serving out his sentence at HM Prison Frankland, County Durham, UK. Harrison was viciously murdered by disembowelment and slit throat in a prison cell #C22, by two fellow prisoners, Nathan Mann and Michael Parr.
Mitchell Harrison
Despite being in a stable family, Mitchell Harrison displayed sexual inappropriateness at an early age. At 13-years-old, Harrison assaulted a seven-year-old girl and was given a formal warning by local authorities. At 15 years-old, he was formally charged in court for threatening to rape a 15-year-old fellow school student.
In 2009 in Kendal, Cumbria, Harrison, 23, was convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl twice. He had met her while she was walking down the street and had started a conversation. He lured her into his apartment with the promise of getting money to purchase alcohol for them. Once inside his apartment, he forced her to strip naked and raped her twice. When another man arrived, it gave her the opportunity to escape by running out into the street naked while holding her clothes. In January 2010, Harrison was given an indeterminate sentence with a minimum of at least 4 1/2 years and required to list on the sex offenders registry for his lifetime. The judge stated at the time of sentencing that he believed Harrison was a substantial risk to future offenses.
The Crime
On the morning of Saturday, October 1, 2011, Mann and Parr invited Harrison into the #C22 prison cell. The two men overpowered Harrison. They pinned Harrison down while covering his mouth to stifle any potential noise he would make. The men had a homemade knife, which had been fashioned by melting a razor blade into a toothbrush handle. They attempted to break Harrison’s neck, which was unsuccessful. Mann slit Harrison’s throat and further stabbed him in the eye while Parr held down Harrison’s legs. When they were certain Harrison was dead, they slit his stomach open, disemboweling him. Their plan had been to cannibalize Harrison’s liver, but once they had reached that point, they weren’t able to follow through with it.
According to sources, Mann and Parr finished their breakfast before notifying guards that there was a dead man in the prison cell. When guards had gone to check on the cell, they found Harrison lying on the bed with his throat cut and his small intestine protruding from a gash across his lower abdomen.
Later in the investigation, authorities would learn that Mann and Parr wanted to experience cannibalism because they thought it would add to their dangerous reputations. They chose Harrison because they had found him annoying and arrogant. On the morning of his death, the men had said that Harrison had been bragging about his crimes against his 13-year-old victim.
The Outcome
During the trial, the court heard about the cannibalistic fantasies that the men shared, which included beheading. It was also shared that Mann had told prison officials that he would kill again. He was described as a “classic, cold, callous and homicidal psychopath.” Parr had once told a psychiatric nurse that he had fantasies of beheading fellow prisoners and cutting open their stomachs.
Mr. Justice Openshaw stated during sentencing, “I consider this to be a murder of peculiar and unusual brutality. Because of the risk these prisoners pose, I cannot envisage the circumstances where either of them is ever released. They will face the fact that they may well end their lives in prison.”
On July 12, 2012, Mann was sentenced an additional 16 years when he pled guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The 16-year sentence is to run concurrently with the life sentence he is already serving. His initial sentence was a result of being convicted in 2010 for breaking in through a window at a nursing home and murdering two elderly female residents.
Michael Parr had an additional minimum of 32 years added to his life sentence when he pled guilty to Harrison’s murder. He was already serving a life sentence for an attempted murder of a hospital psychiatric patient in 2003.
In a final twist, on August 7, 2020, Prison Guard Alan Johnson received a settlement of 125,000 EUR ($131,740 USD) for post-traumatic stress as a result of witnessing the gruesome murder of Mitchell Harrison.
2 Comments
Anonymous
The girl’s mother and grandmother arranged the meeting, saying he looked 13 to them. He died because that girl’s family made him guilty of something they did to get their 5 minutes in mass media. He was a drug addict and an alcoholic, didn’t even know what was going on until he sobered up in jail.
JFK
Was he a drug addict and alcoholic and didn’t know what was going on at 13 when he assaulted a 7 year old girl? At 15 when he threatened to rape a 15 year old girl? Or just at 23 when he did rape a 13 year old?