A man who horrifically and brutally murdered his pregnant girlfriend and their preborn baby has had his prison sentence reduced.
In 2022, Liam Taylor attacked his girlfriend, Ailish Walsh, who was 22 weeks pregnant with a baby girl. During the trial, at which Taylor pled guilty, prosecutors said he killed Walsh because he was angry about her pregnancy; he had wanted a boy, as he was already the father to two girls.
So, in a frenzied attack, Taylor stabbed Walsh over 40 times using a pair of scissors, specifically targeting her abdomen and genitals. Prosecutors believe he was trying to ensure their baby girl was killed in the attack, too. After stabbing Walsh, he smashed her face several times using a dumbbell, which, Judge Nigel Lickley KC said during sentencing, was an attempt to disfigure her.
“Ailish had told more than one person that the defendant was upset about the pregnancy because he wanted a a boy,” prosecutor Jane Osborne said. “Some of the injuries were deliberately aimed at the unborn child.” Yet prosecutors chose not to charge him with child destruction, because Walsh was within the legal abortion limit.
Walsh’s unconscious body, covered in blood, was discovered by her father. Though officials tried to resuscitate her with CPR, it was too late.
Judge Lickley described the attack as “sadistic” in nature, and also as “sexual,” as Taylor targeted Walsh’s genitals during the stabbing spree. After pleading guilty, Taylor was sentenced to life in prison, to serve a minimum term of 27 years. Yet because Lickley described the attack as sexual in nature, Taylor has just had two years of his minimum sentence reduced.
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Justice Justine Thornton agreed with attorney Andrew Morris, who argued that the attack was neither sadistic nor sexual, and that using those words were inaccurate, because there was “no factual basis that his conduct was sexual in nature.” Morris also said Taylor didn’t attempt to kill his preborn daughter, despite repeatedly stabbing Walsh in both the genitals and the abdomen.
“This was not just an attack on a pregnant woman, but an attack on a pregnant woman to kill both her and the fetus she was carrying,” Osborne argued in return.
Thornton acknowledged the savagery of the attack, yet still chose to reduce Taylor’s sentence. “This was a brutal, savage assault,” she said. “The attack had elements that were sadistic in nature, and possibly Ms. Walsh knew what was happening to her.”
Walsh was the mother to four other children, and the father of those children, Matthew Perry, had previously given an emotional impact statement about the loss of his children’s mother, including their fear that Taylor will one day go free.
“You have subjected innocent children to a lifetime of asking questions,” he said. “No person deserves to be subjected to that torture. You are worse than a monster. Untold devastation has been inflicted by you on our family. My children are terrified that one day you will be given the opportunity to leave prison.”
