Mark Brown

1 day ago | theguardian.com | Mark Brown

People still lay flowers at the granite memorial stone close to the place in Birkenhead where Diane Sindall met her horrific, shocking death. It reads: “Murdered 2.8.1986 because she was a woman. In memory of all our sisters who have been raped and murdered. We will never let it be forgotten.”On Merseyside, the killing has a legacy that is still felt today. For nearly four decades, many assumed justice had been served and the right man had been convicted.

5 days ago | irishtimes.com | Mark Brown

Two friends who embarked on a “moronic mission” to fell the Sycamore Gap tree in northern England with a chainsaw have been found guilty of “mindless” criminal damage. Daniel Graham (39) and Adam Carruthers (32) cut down the cherished tree, next to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, as Storm Agnes raged in the early hours of September 28th, 2023. They saw it as a “bit of a laugh” and afterwards “revelled” in their infamy as the crime made headlines around the world, a jury was told.

5 days ago | theguardian.com | Mark Brown

“It was just a tree,” said a mystified Adam Carruthers, one of the two men who illegally cut down the tree at Sycamore Gap in the early hours of a stormy night nearly two years ago. “It was almost as if someone had been murdered.”Carruthers was right about the reaction to the felling. Many likened its loss to that of a good friend or relative. Its destruction prompted feelings of sadness, grief and then blind fury. Some people wept. Carruthers was wrong to see it as just a tree.

5 days ago | theguardian.com | Mark Brown

Two friends who embarked on a “moronic mission” to fell the Sycamore Gap tree with a chainsaw have been found guilty of “mindless” criminal damage. Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, cut down the cherished tree next to Hadrian’s Wall, in Northumberland, as Storm Agnes raged in the early hours of 28 September 2023. They saw it as a “bit of a laugh” and afterwards “revelled” in their infamy as the crime made headlines around the world, a jury was told.

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Mark Brown

A man who denies felling the Sycamore Gap tree has said his interest in the story was because he could not understand why it was making so many headlines, “almost as if someone had been murdered”. Adam Carruthers, 32, told a jury: “It was just a tree.”Carruthers and his former friend Daniel Graham, 39, are jointly charged with criminally felling the tree and damaging Hadrian’s Wall, where it had stood for more than 100 years.