True Crime Collection

Tia Sharp

Tia Sharp was born 30th June 2000 in Croydon, London. Stuart Hazell, Tia's grandmothers boyfriend, told police that Tia had left the house on 3rd August 2012 to travel to Croydon, 5 miles away, to buy shoes in the Whitgift Centre.

On 7th August, Tia's uncle, David Sharp, made a televised plea for her safe return. 55 sightings were reported by members of the public, but none were substantiated. 80 police officers were assigned to the search,  and 800 hours of CCTV footage were collected. On 9th August, Stuart gave an interview to Mark Williams-Thomas for ITV News, denying that he had done anything to Tia and praying for her safe return. 

On 10th August, a body was discovered in a black bed sheet in a black bag in the loft of the home of Tia's grandmother, after police visited it for the 4th time. Police launched a search of Stuart, and arrested him on suspicion of murder that evening at 8:25pm at Cannon Hill Common, Morden, after a tip off from a member of the public. It was later announced that 2 further arrests had been made: Tia's grandmother, Christine Bicknell, on suspicion of murder, and Christine's neighbour, Paul Meehan, on suspicion of assisting an offender. Christine and Paul were subsequently bailed. Commander Neil Basu, the officer in charge of the investigation, apologised to Tia Sharp's mother for the delay in finding her daughter's body. He blamed human error and said that a review would be undertaken "to ensure such a failing is not repeated". Shortly after Stuart's arrest, memory cards were recovered from Christine Bicknell's residence. One was particularly well hidden in a door frame on the ground floor of the property. Police were able to recover images and videos, some of which had been delated. Some of the files portrayed Tia in sexual positions, believed to have been taken post mortem, whereas others were voyeuristic images of when Tia was still alive, for example videos of Tia applying moisturiser to her legs, or of Tia asleep in her bedroom. It has been suggested by Forensic Psychologist Dr Keri Nixon that Stuart may have kept these images for later sexual gratification. 

In the early hours of 12th August, Stuart was charged with the murder of Tia. He appeared before Camberwell Green magistrates' court on 13th August via video link. No plea was entered and the case was committed to the Old Bailey for trial, with a first appearance on 15th August, also via video link, with a preliminary hearing set for 19th November and a provisional trial date set for 21st January 2013. He was remanded in custody to Belmarsh Prison where he was kept in isolation for his own safety. 

A post mortem on the body began on 10th August, and paused later that day. By 16th August, the post mortem had still not been completed, but at an inquest into the death, which opened that day, it was confirmed that the body was that of Tia Sharp. The post mortem later concluded without establishing the cause of death. Experts told This Is Croydon Today that the delay in finding the body made it much harder to establish the cause of death, and that without a cause of death the prosecution would find it much harder to build a case. However, detectives suspected, and it was widely reported, that Tia Sharp was smothered, although this was not officially proven to be the cause of death. It has been suggested by Forensic Psychologist Dr Keri Nixon that Stuart may have made sexual advances towards Tia, and murdered her when she rebuffed him and threatened to tell her mother. 

On 23rd August police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe addressed his force's failure to find Tia's body. He said the error could not be attributed to a single officer, and that he wanted to "understand what processes and management decisions we've made that led to that failure." 

Tia Sharp was cremated on 14th September, after a private family funeral. 

It was announced on 26th November 2012 that Stuart would face trial in May 2013. On 7th December, the Metropolitan Police announced that Christine Bicknell would not face charges. On 5th February 2013, neighbour Paul Meehan was charged with wasting police time. He appeared at Croydon magistrates' court on 28th February 2013, where he denied the charge against him and released on bail for a 1 day trial on 29th July. 

Stuart pleaded not guilty to murder when he appeared in court on 8th March 2013.  The trial of Stuart began on 7th May 2013 before Mr Justice Nicol. On 13th May, Stuart changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment on 14th May with a minimum term of 38 years, meaning he will be 75 years old before he is eligible for parole. 

On 5th August 2013, Paul was found guilty of wasting police time and sentenced to 5 months in prison.

In June 2013, Tia's biological father, Steven Carter, announced that he was going to be a father again, as his girlfriend was pregnant. In July 2013, Steven said he backed a plan for websites to be told to block certain search terms and warn people when they try to view illegal content. 

In June 2013, the home of Christine Bicknell and Stuart Hazell, where Tia Sharp was murdered, was demolished and in mid 2014, work began on new houses being built on the site. 

In November 2013, partly in response to the murders of Tia Sharp and April Jones, the search engines Google and Bing modified their systems to block results from searches aimed at producing child abuse images.

In March 2014, the murder of Tia Sharp was featured in CI Channel's series, Britain's Darkest Taboos, as the first episode of Series 3, broadcast on 16th March 2014.