A man has today been jailed for life for murdering mum of two Katie Kenyon.
Andrew John Burfield, 51, was told he will have to serve a minimum of 32 years in custody before he is eligible for parole.
The 33 year old , was reported missing from Padiham on April 22, this year.
Concerned family members had gone to Burfield’s home believing something was amiss after they had received cryptic text messages – sent from Katie’s phone – saying she had “gone away to work on herself”. Those messages had been sent to Katie’s children. He also sent a message to himself, purporting to be from Katie.
In those messages, which Katie’s family rightly suspected had been sent by Burfield, the word while had been misspelled, as had the name of Katie’s dog.
Police digital forensic experts would later recover drafts of the messages backed up in the notes section on Burfield’s iPhone, which showed he had written them at least three weeks before the day they were sent out.
Rather than try to allay Katie’s family’s fears about where their loved one was, Burfield – Katie’s ex-boyfriend – called the police claiming he was being threatened and a man was trying to force his way into his house.
Officers returned to Burfield’s home in Burnley the following day (April 23) and noted the log burner was on. We later discovered that he had put Katie’s iPhone in the fire in order to destroy incriminating evidence.
Burfield showed officers a message on his iPhone which he claimed had been sent to him by Katie. It was in fact a message Burfield had sent to himself from Katie’s phone before he put that iPhone in the fire.
Later that same evening, Burfield messaged a woman he was dating, saying that he was concerned for Katie and her safety.
Thirty minutes after sending that message Burfield was arrested on suspicion of Katie’s kidnap, with our officers still working under the premise that she was alive at that stage.
During an initial urgent interview Burfield told our officers that he had no idea where Katie was, a lie he would repeat during subsequent further interviews.
Footage obtained during the early part of the investigation showed Burfield’s van heading towards the Forest of Bowland on April 22 with Katie sat in the passenger seat. An image of the van was released to the media.
Police were contacted two days later by a woman who Burfield had been carrying out some building work for the previous day. She had seen the appeal and was rightly worried for Katie’s safety. When we searched a wheelie bin at the property, our officers found blood-soaked bags containing the flipflops Katie had been wearing the day she disappeared. Also contained in the bag was paperwork containing Burfield’s name and address. We also found a spade which he had taken from a family member’s house the day before Katie’s murder.
Footage obtained during the course of the investigation showed that Burfield had gone up to the Forest of Bowland the day before Katie’s murder. During a period of around an hour and a half he had dug a deep and complex grave.
When Burfield was later arrested on suspicion of murder, he told officers that he had taken Katie to the woods for a picnic. During that time, he falsely claimed she had challenged him to knock a can of Coke out of her hand with an axe he was using to chop wood. He said that he had thrown the axe at a tree but it had bounced off and hit her in the back of the head.
A post mortem examination would later show that Katie had been struck 12 times to the head.
After he had killed Katie, Burfield buried her in the pre-dug grave and systematically placed back the layers of earth so it appeared the ground had not been disturbed. He also covered the grave with a root and foliage in an attempt to conceal it.
He then sent the pre-written text messages to Katie’s family members, even responding to the victim’s daughter in a callous attempt to make it seem like her mum was still alive.
Experts would later find two different types of footwear marks consistent with Burfield, which proved he had been in it more than once.
Burfield also tried to cover up his crime by washing the clothes he was wearing on the day he murdered Katie. However a spec of her blood was found on the seal of his washing machine.
With the overwhelming weight of evidence against him and following consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, Burfield was charged with Katie’s murder on April 27. However, Katie’s body had still not been found at that stage.
The following day police found the axe Burfield had used to murder Katie in the cellar of his home in Todmorden Road, Burnley.
On April 29 Burfield was produced from prison and taken to the murder site. He walked to the grave site and kneeled down at the exact spot where Katie was buried. The decision to produce Burfield because the complexity of how the grave, made it extremely challenging for it to be identified. There was also a strong desire to find Katie’s body for her own dignity and for that of her family,
Yesterday (November 16), on the third day of his trial at Preston Crown Court, Burfield pleaded guilty to Katie’s murder.
Detective Chief Insp Al Davies, of the Force Major Investigation Team, said: “My thoughts remain with Katie’s family at this truly distressing time and I hope today’s sentencing will finally give them some sense of closure and allow them to finally grieve the mother, daughter and sister who was taken from them in the most barbaric circumstances.
“Andrew Burfield is a wicked, deceitful bully who sought to isolate Katie from her family so he could control and manipulate her. When it became clear that she was no longer seduced by his fanciful lies he set himself on an abhorrent course of conduct which would eventually lead to the pre-planned murder of a kind, loving mother-of-two. He first sent bailiffs to her house, revelling in the distress that it caused her. He then sought to rekindle the relationship, all to lure Katie to the woods where he would murder her in the most heinous of circumstances.
“No sentence will ever make up for leaving children without their mother and family and friends facing the most unimaginable grief, but I welcome the life sentence handed down to Burfield. I hope Katie’s family can take some solace in knowing this dangerous monster is now behind bars for a significant period of time.
“Again, I would like to place on record my thanks to all the officers involved in this case who worked tirelessly to secure justice for Katie and her family. I would also like to thank colleagues from the CPS and KC’s David McLachlan and Emma Kehoe
“As a force we will continue to prioritise violence against women and girls, to target those who prey on them and to make our communities safe for all.”
