A woman who helped her boyfriend to cover up the murder of his step-sister has been released from prison after serving just half of her 17-year sentence.
The victim who was just 16 was killed in a sexually motivated kidnap plot in 2015.
Hoare’s then boyfriend, Nathan Matthews, suffocated Becky before the pair engaged in a macabre plot to cover it up by chopping up Becky’s body with a circular saw in their bathtub, and stashing her body parts in suitcases.
Her remains were found 12 days later after a huge missing person search was launched.
Becky’s mum was told yesterday (Friday) about the release and said: “I don’t want her to feel like she’s free to walk down the street without a care in the world, after what she did. I think she’s cold and evil.
“The worst thing for me is that Becky trusted her and what eats away at me is when I remember all those times when I would ring Becky and Shauna would answer and she was so sweet and for a few seconds sometimes I would mistake her for Becky.
“Becky liked her and trusted her and she betrayed Becky’s trust, and it is hard when I think of how she smiled at the camera in the police station when she was arrested. She’s not even 30, she’s got her whole life ahead of her and she’s got a future, whereas when we go to talk to our daughter, we’re talking to the ground.”
Hoare was 21 at the time and spent seven months in custody on remand awaiting her trial which counts as part of her sentence.
She has now spent just eight and a half years in custody and was released on Friday.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said: “We know this will be an incredibly difficult time for Becky Watt’s loved ones and our heartfelt thoughts remain with them.
“Offenders like Shauna Hoare face some of the strictest licence conditions and can be put back behind bars if they break the rules at any point. We’ve also since changed the law so the most heinous offenders face longer than ever in prison.”
During the trial at Bristol Crown Court in 2015, Hoare denied all knowledge that her then boyfriend had murdered his stepsister while she was in Becky’s family home in St George, loaded her body into the back of their car, driven it to their flat in Barton Hill and, over the course of the next few days, dismembered it.
On November 11 2015, after deliberating for three hours and 27 minutes, the jury found Matthews guilty of murder and Hoare guilty of manslaughter.
Both were also convicted of conspiracy to kidnap, perverting the course of justice, preventing the lawful burial of a body and possession of two stun guns.
Two men, James Ireland and Donovan Demetrius, were cleared of assisting an offender, which related to the moving and storing of packages containing Watts’s remains.
Demetrius’s brother Karl and his girlfriend Jaydene Parsons, who owned the shed where the remains were stored, had admitted the same charge at an earlier pre-trial hearing, though both insisted they did not know the true contents of the packages. On February 5 2016, Karl was sentenced to two years imprisonment and Parsons was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment.
