Ashley Dale was killed when James Witham kicked down the door of her house and shot her in 2022. Photo / Merseyside Police
Ashley Dale was killed when James Witham kicked down the door of her house and shot her in 2022. Photo / Merseyside Police
Hundreds of voice recordings recovered from the phone of a young woman gunned down in her home allowed her to “tell her own story in court” and bring her killers to justice, detectives have said.
The device, belonging to Ashley Dale, was discovered next to where police found her lying fatally injured in the garden of her house in Liverpool.
The 28-year-old died after being shot with a Skorpion machine gun by James Witham in a botched gangland hit on August 21 last year.
The shooting occurred just one day before another high-profile fatal shooting in Merseyside last year – that of 9-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel.
At Liverpool Crown Court on Tuesday, four men were convicted of Miss Dale’s murder.
Witham, 41, previously admitted to manslaughter, but jurors also found him guilty of her murder, along with fellow “foot soldier” Joseph Peers, 29.
Niall Barry, 26, and Sean Zeisz, 28, were also convicted of murder after the jury heard they organised the attack from a nearby house.
(Top row, left to right): Barry and Zeisz. (Bottom row, left to right): Witham and Peers. Photo / Merseyside Police
The court heard the hit was ordered following a feud between Dale’s boyfriend Lee Harrison and Barry that was re-ignited when Zeisz was assaulted at the Glastonbury music festival last year.
The court heard Harrison, who has not co-operated with police since the shooting, was the intended target.
Messages and voice notes sent between Dale and her friends dating back from the day of her death to June, when she attended the festival, were analysed by police after the killing.
Jurors heard Dale’s own voice describing events in the weeks leading up to the shooting as many of the recordings were played in court.
‘It is quite unprecedented’
Speaking after the verdict, senior Crown prosecutor Olivia Cristinacce-Travis said: “It is quite unprecedented to have a narrator, essentially, telling her own story.”
She added: “We all do text messages and WhatsApp, but it was the amount of voice notes that she used, which I suppose shows the realities of being in 2023.”
She said the recovery of the phone led to a “very modern prosecution”.
Voice recordings made in the weeks leading up to Dale's death were played to the court. Photo / Merseyside police
Detective Chief Inspector Cath Cummings said hearing Dale’s voice in court was “the most compelling and emotional” part of the trial.
She said: “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the evidence of the murder victim play such a crucial role in a court case.”
“Ashley was narrating her own story and events that led to her death.
“There was barely a dry eye in the courtroom as her increased fear and anxiety was played out through recovered voice notes from her phone.”
She added: “It’s Ashley that’s actually brought these offenders to justice, because overlaying that with the evidence that we’ve been able to gather, she’s told us the story herself.”
Dale’s stepfather Rob Jones said her phone had been a “massive part” of the conviction of her murderers.
In one message, a clearly shaken Dale told friends she had a “bad, bad feeling about everything”.
Speaking on August 1, almost three weeks before her murder, she said: “My nerves are gone - when I am out in the car with Lee, [it feels] like I’m looking over [my] shoulder all the time.”
Dale’s mother cried as the jury returned the first guilty verdict at 2.30pm on Monday.
Julie Dale, 46, said she was still “very, very angry” at Harrison, who had been in a relationship with her daughter for roughly five years before her death.
She said: “Some days I feel like I’m more angry towards him than I am to the person who’s actually killed Ashley, because without Lee Harrison, this wouldn’t have happened.”
She added: “The way he’s acted since this has happened has been absolutely despicable.”
“He still carries on going about his life, leaving the country, going on holidays - lording it up, shall we say, like nothing’s happened and nothing’s changed for him, and it’s absolutely disgusting, it really is.”
She said her daughter’s boyfriend had shown no remorse and had been away on holiday in Dubai on several occasions since the murder.
Dale’s stepfather added: “The problem we keep coming back to is: Ashley fell in love with the wrong boy.”
A fifth defendant, who was also accused of organising or encouraging the killing, Ian Fitzgibbon, 28, was found not guilty of murder.
