Portrait of a private school savage: What on earth could have driven this 17-year-old from an elite school to kick a man to death - without a flicker of remorse?
By Paul Bracchi and Tamara Cohen
Last updated at 8:30 AM on 21st December 2010
Guilty: Ruby Thomas arriving at the Old Bailey where she was convicted of the manslaughter of a gay civil servant
Here we reveal the chilling story of Ruby Thomas's killer father and her descent into 'gangsta' violence...
She turned up in court looking like the former public schoolgirl she is, with her hair fashionably straightened, make-up just so, and a glossy women’s magazine tucked neatly under her arm. Could anyone who saw Ruby Thomas strolling nonchalantly towards the Old Bailey last week have had any inkling of what she was really capable of?
Her homophobic attack on gay civil servant Ian Baynham, 62, in the middle of Trafalgar Square was the kind of nihilistic crime we normally associate with shaven-headed, bull-necked Neanderthals, not a pretty, smartly dressed teenage girl — especially not one from a seemingly comfortable background who has enjoyed the benefits of an expensive education.
It is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this deeply troubling case.
‘F***ing faggots,’ Thomas screamed as she and two friends (one of them also female) singled out Mr Baynham, who was holding hands with another man.
Moments later he had been punched to the ground, and Thomas was kicking his head as casually as if it was a football. According to one eyewitness, Ruby Thomas was ‘smiling’ broadly as she kicked and stamped on her victim on that night 15 months ago. Mr Baynham never regained consciousness.Thomas was 17 then. She is 18 now. Yet her conviction for manslaughter last week — she will be sentenced on January 24 — is only the latest, albeit the most chilling, entry on her shameful CV.
The story of Ruby Thomas, though — revealed in full today — is also the story of a type of girl for whom violence and thuggery has become the default setting, just like many of their male gangland counterparts. Sometimes beneath a cap or hoodie, it is hard to tell one sex from another any more — girl from boy, or boy from girl.
Unlike Thomas, however, most of these ultra-violent young females didn’t go to £12,000-a-year Sydenham High School For Girls, and few, surely, could have displayed such a sociopathic lack of remorse.
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Minutes after leaving Mr Baynham for dead, Thomas was captured dancing and giggling on CCTV.
Even as her court case approached, she was still displaying the same insouciance.
On her Facebook page, just a few days before she was due to stand trial, she jokingly asked one of her friends to come and see her in court. ‘COME SEE ME IN DA DOCK BABE,’ she wrote casually, as though she was inviting someone for a drink, instead of facing justice over the death of an innocent man.
In other posts, Thomas boasts about how the Press coverage is making her ‘famous’.
So what on earth could drive a girl to such a Clockwork Orange mentality of extreme violence?
Provocative: A Facebook pose of Ruby Thomas aged 17
The search for answers should begin with her family background. Ruby’s father, Richard Thomas, was a carpenter. He was also a violent alcoholic who ended up stabbing his neighbour to death in 2002.
Thomas was waiting for Brian McIntosh (the two had been involved in a series of petty quarrels) outside his flat in Streatham Hill when he returned from a nightshift at the Imperial War Museum.
Mr McIntosh tried to escape, but fell over in the street. Thomas was last seen crouching over him. ‘Enough,’ Mr McIntosh pleaded after Thomas began plunging a knife into him, stabbing him 28 times.
But Thomas was overheard telling him: ‘It’s not enough, you haven’t had enough, you have never had enough.’ Mr McIntosh died from appalling injuries to the chest and abdomen. He left a wife and young child.
Thomas stood trial for the crime at the Old Bailey, the same place where his daughter would stand in the dock just seven years later. Like her, Thomas was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for just two years. The parallels are haunting.
Ruby Thomas was only ten when her father killed Brian McIntosh and 11 when he was imprisoned.
By then, he had separated from Ruby’s mother, Louise Lovely. The couple, who also had a son — William, now 21 — had been together for more than a decade, but had never married.
Unruly: Ruby Thomas at a school party, aged 14
Louise Lovely was a good woman by all accounts, who managed to send her daughter to Sydenham — a private girls’ day school — on her salary as a legal secretary. It was Ruby Thomas’s chance to escape her traumatic family history, to make something of herself. It was a chance that was utterly squandered and, instead, marked her descent into violence, promiscuity and drink.
Ruby was bright and excelled at maths, but rebelled almost from the moment she joined Sydenham — a school which prides itself on attracting pupils from a wide range of backgrounds — and had a reputation as a bully and a troublemaker.
‘She hated everything about Sydenham,’ said one contemporary, who asked not to be named. ‘Pupils were not allowed make-up or short skirts, but Ruby always broke the rules.
‘She had a really nasty attitude. She would calls other girls ugly and laugh hysterically if she made them cry. She bunked off all the time and was always swearing and talking back at teachers. Most of us tried to steer clear of her because she was just so rude.’
But Ruby Thomas was also undergoing a more alarming transformation. She began emulating the language and mannerisms — or, at least, what she and others mistakenly perceived as the language and mannerisms — of black urban youth culture.
‘She talked as if she was black and never realised how completely ridiculous she sounded,’ said the former Sydenham pupil. ‘She would call herself a “gangsta”. She was almost obsessive about it.’
Indeed, when a friend told Thomas that she looked ‘mixed race’ in one of her Facebook photographs (in fact, the result of copious amounts of fake tan), she replied: ‘WhoooooHooo.’
But the ‘ghetto culture’ she had become obsessed with is also intrinsically associated with violence and sex. Her photo album charts her transformation from sweet youngster to a teenager in provocative poses that were trashy, brash and displayed an aggressive sexuality.
Convicted: Joel Alexander, 20, of Thornton Heath, was found guilty of manslaughter over the attack on Ian Baynham while Rachael Burke, 18, of Upper Norwood, was found guilty of affray at an earlier trial
The 62-year-old died 18 days after the drink-fuelled assault in the square in central London.
Rachael Burke, 18, of Upper Norwood, southeast London, was found guilty of affray at an earlier trial.
Thomas, we have been told, had a string of boyfriends, and suffered an ectopic pregnancy some time after she was expelled from Sydenham, aged 16. By then, she had also gained a conviction for possessing a knife and assaulting a bus driver in Trafalgar Square on December 12, 2007.
On that occasion, she drunkenly attacked her victim, Aasim Shah, and spat at him. When he told her to stop, she kicked and punched him in the back of the head. As she would do two years later, she fled the scene, but the incident was witnessed by police who arrested her a short distance away. She admitted the attack at a youth court and escaped with community service. Nearly two years later, Thomas was to set upon Ian Baynham in almost exactly the same spot. With her on that night were her friends Rachael Burke, 17, and Joel Alexander, 18.
Thomas, who had been drinking vodka and cranberry juice for several hours, had earlier started a fight with a group of youths outside the National Gallery, but had been pulled away by Alexander. Then she began intimidating gay men as her two friends ‘egged her on’.
When Mr Baynham and his friend walked past as the teenagers sat on a wall outside the South African Embassy, Thomas confronted them yelling: ‘F***ing faggots.'
Victim of homophobia: Ian Baynham suffered fatal head injuries in the attack in Trafalgar Square, central London, on September 25, 2009
Tragic attack: Ian Baynham, photographed with his sister Jenny, was brutally assaulted by Ruby Thomas, Joel Alexander and Rachael Burke
Mr Baynham, a civil servant, reprimanded her, but she reacted by kicking him and hitting him over the head with her handbag. She also kicked his friend in the groin.
During the confrontation, Mr Baynham was punched — by Alexander — and he fell backwards, hitting his head on the pavement.
The jury was shown CCTV images of Thomas repeatedly kicking the man’s head with such force that it jerked from side to side.
‘I saw the girl stamping on him repeatedly with force, probably four or five times,’ said Jill Shukla, who witnessed the brutal assault. ‘She [Ruby Thomas] was smiling.’
Remember, also, that the attack took place, not in a back street or some godforsaken inner-city ghetto, but in the middle of a capital city landmark, Trafalgar Square.
Facing jail: Ruby Thomas will be sentenced in January
Mr Baynham was taken to hospital but never regained consciousness. He died 18 days after the attack from brain injuries.
Yet far from regretting the appalling consequences of her actions, Thomas couldn’t have cared less.
She is the only one of the three teenagers involved in the killing who has shown no remorse whatsoever. This is chillingly apparent from her outpourings on Facebook, which continued right up until her trial.
The day after the attack, she boasted about what had happened, ending the post with: ‘ha, ha ha.’
Following her arrest, Thomas was bailed to her aunt’s home in the Midlands, where her outrageously insensitive online insults continued unabated.
When police ordered her to stop, she simply changed her Facebook ‘name’ to ‘Ruby Blue Eyes’ (or blueyes) and continued where she had left off.
In one message she made light of her impending trial. ‘Ruby Blueyes IS SO HAPPY.’
In another post (the dreadful grammar and spelling alone tells the story of a wasted education), she moans to a friend about the fact she has been electronically tagged. ‘Yeh babe im all good/how are you good. Good I hope/ cant wait til I come off fing [electronic tag] so we can get down/ love you.’
Totally unperturbed about her date at the Old Bailey, she reveals how she is even going for a job interview and is watching The X Factor on TV, paying special attention to boy band One Direction (‘AAAAAHHHH MY FUTURE HUSBANDS’).
Ruby Thomas will be sentenced over the death of Ian Baynham in January. Whether this occasion will be enough finally to bring home to her the enormity of her crime, and the way she has squandered her life, is another matter altogether.
Explore more:
- People:
- Richard Thomas
- Places:
- London,
- National Gallery,
- Imperial War Museum
Add your commentsComments (142)
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'But Ruby Thomas was also undergoing a more alarming transformation. She began emulating the language and mannerisms (...) of black urban youth culture.'
Sorry, but why is that more alarming than the previously-mentioned behaviour: truancy, bullying and abusive behaviour towards others?
- Jennie, SW London, 21/12/2010 11:27
"..Ruby Thomas will be sentenced over the death of Ian Baynham in January. Whether this occasion will be enough finally to bring home to her the enormity of her crime, and the way she has squandered her life, is another matter altogether."
I suspect the "enormity of her crime" will only be in 'stark contrast' to the Sentence; as typified by the 'state's' earlier "dealing" with her father...
- Kevin, South York's, England, 21/12/2010 11:27
if only she could be sterilised..another generation of murderers on the horizon.
- JohnShouldn't need to be sterilised, should be put away long enough to be way past being fertile!
- JD, The Frozen North, 21/12/2010 11:26
Obviously inhereted her dad's psychopathic DNA......it's in the face, cold, hard face no emotion in the eyes! People readily choosing to blame 'gangsta rap,black youth culture', should re-read the article and note that at overwhelmingly 'white' Sydenham private school, she was a diruptive bully,who enjoyed upsetting other girls,often truanted and was given a wide berth by the other pupils.Evil people will always seek out others with the same grudging,negative,hateful attitude to life!
- Angeleyes, London,UK, 21/12/2010 11:24
Sadly, she probably did this just to get herself some "form" and in her eyes and those of her idiot gansta friends, some kudos and street cred. Let's hope that the reality of life inside - where she'll meet women far "harder" than she will ever be - will bring this deluded fantasist back to reality.
I feel for her mother who must have spent half of her salary on the private education in the hopes of giving her a good start to life.- Sindy, NW England, 21/12/2010 11:24
2 years for stabbing a man? Thats premeditated. A bar room fight with a killing due to one blow can be described as "manslaughter" not a sustained attack against someone unable to defend himself. Thats the PS wanting a quiet life- they let him plead to that to save the time of a trial. 50 years ago that would have been a straight death penalty
- andy, bogus, 21/12/2010 11:24
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Tuesday 21 December 2010
Portrait of a private school savage: What on earth could have driven this 17-year-old from an elite school to kick a man to death - without a flicker of remorse? | Mail Online
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