Man jailed for rape and murder of pregnant teenager

They were queuing to get back into court when it was announced that the jury was returning. There must have been more than 70 relatives and friends of Nikkita Grender who eventually made it into the public gallery to listen to the verdicts. When they came, there were audible sighs of relief from across the room. Many of those present wept upon hearing the word ‘guilty’ repeated four times.

Carl Whant looked straight ahead as the judge, Mr Justice Griffith Williams, passed sentence. The normal starting point for a murder such as this, he said, would be a minimum of 30 years. However, there were two aggravating factors: Whant had not only destroyed the life of Ms Grender’s unborn baby, he had also – by setting fire to her bed – “destroyed large parts of her body with the consequence that her parents and [boyfriend] Ryan Mayes were denied the opportunity of seeing her face for one last time.”

Bad influence

At about half five in the morning of 5 February last year when Nikitta Grender’s neighbour heard her smoke alarm and dialled 999. The teenager’s body was found in the burning flat on the Broadmead estate in Newport. At first it was thought she and her unborn daughter had died in the fire. But a post mortem revealed she had been stabbed.

The night Miss Grender died her boyfriend and father of her unborn child, Ryan Mayes, had been out drinking with friends. Among them was his second cousin Carl Whant. During the trial at Newport Crown Court, the prosecution QC Gregg Taylor told the jury that Carl Whant raped and murdered Nikitta before setting her bedroom alight to cover it up. It was alleged that Miss Grender did not like Carl Whant, a cocaine user who she considered to be a bad influence on her boyfriend.

At her funeral Miss Grender was described as a lively young woman expecting a much loved and much-wanted baby with her boyfriend Ryan Mayes. They’d already named the baby Kelsey May.

Job done

During the early stages of the trial proceedings there had been angry scenes as Mr Whant was driven away from court in a custody van.

On Wednesday, after passing down a sentence of life imprisonment with a minimum of 35 years to be served, the judge thanked those in the public gallery for showing “restraint” in court. He had earlier requested “absolute silence” while acknowledging that this was a matter of “extreme tension”.

Outside the court, friends and relatives of Nikkita’s embraced. I overhead one remark simply “Job done”, before they gathered en masse before the steps of Newport Crown Court to hear a statement read out on behalf of Ms Grender’s family. Whant was described today by the judge as a “calculating, vain and devious” individual who had gone to Nikkita’s flat armed with a knife with the intention of raping her.

“The explanation for these terrible crimes”, Mr Griffiths William told Whant, “lies, in part, in your vanity.”