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Hi, beautiful people of the Internet. Welcome to episode two of I wish you were here. Also wanted to say in the off chance, I really doubt it, but in the off chance that you stumbled across this podcast and you don't follow me on TikTok, I've been doing this kind of content on TikTok for over a year now. So if you're ever waiting for a podcast episode and you're bored, go to TikTok. Or, like, don't if you don't want to. That's also an option. You do have free will. Today's story has been on my mind for a while now because of how conflicting I feel when I talk about it. You'll see what I mean when I get into it. And we've talked about stories like this before, but it's so conflicting when you could feel sad for a person, but also what they do is so messed up that you can't feel sad for them because they were responsible. I don't know. It's a hard one and you're gonna see exactly what I mean when we get into it. But that being said, I do have to give a massive mental health warning throughout the entire episode for this one. From start to finish. Pretty much, we're gonna be talking about mental health and how tough it can be and how hard it can get and all of the struggles and the things that come with it. So if you think that that's a trigger potentially for you, or you just don't think that would be best to listen to for your mental health, please SK I will see you in my next one. Nicola Edgington was from southeast London, I believe Greenwich specifically. She was an older sibling. She had two younger siblings, and they all lived with their mom. And at the time of this case in 2005, Nicola Edgington was a woman teetering on the edge. She had previously attempted to move out. She went to London, tried to make it in the big city on her own. But the reason why she was back living at her mother's place was because of how hard her battle that she was fighting with, with her mental health was. And in her 25 years of life, she really had been through it. At this stage of her life, she was caught between her past, her pain, a system that couldn't quite figure out how to help her. It would come to light after the first event of today's story that she was suffering from schizophrenia. But again, where we are now, at the beginning of the story, she unfortunately had not been diagnosed with that, meaning that she Wasn't receiving any of the care or any sort of treatment that she really did need. Because Nicola on medication and Nicola off medication were really, truly two completely different people. And one of them was very dangerous. Her life story so far had already taken several dark turns. The men that she was involved with, Relationships, situationships, and as well as the people that she surrounded herself with, Were terrible for her and to her. She couldn't hold down a job. She was very reliant on the people around her, Specifically on her mother. She had moved out on her own. She had tried living with different men, but every single time, it was almost like a pattern to her at this point. She would get caught up in these binges of hanging out with the wrong people, Going out, staying out late, partying, and it would throw off her priorities completely. I actually don't even know if I would say it would throw off her priorities completely. I would probably go as far as saying she didn't really have many priorities when she was in those benches that she would get in. She would go out, she would experiment with different substances. She would have one too many drinks, which, as you can imagine, in turn, only made things worse for her internally. And when Nicola was a child herself, she grew up in a very chaotic home. But the chaos always seemed to be louder inside of her head because, again, her internal struggles that she was facing Were so difficult for her. Her entire life, really, she was described as troubled, aggressive, attention seeking, and just a little bit disturbing to be around. She constantly f verbally, but also eventually physically with her siblings. Her mother. And her relationship with her mother, Marion, was a difficult one. Their relationship at best was a strange one, but it was a volatile one at worst. Their relationship revolved around constant arguments. And the arguments would present themselves from the mom's point of view as. As a mix of worry and concern because her mother really was worried about her. And she did try to do several things throughout her life to help her. And you could tell that she really did love Nicola. After all, she was her daughter. And you could tell that her intentions were always good. And. But as you can imagine, it's so hard to, one, try and help someone that doesn't want to be helped, and two, try to help when you don't even really know what the issue is. So alongside with the worry and concern also came a lot of anger and almost desperation for Nicola's behavior to get better. Marion, her mother, had previously called the hospital to try and get help, Medical help for her daughter. But for whatever reason, her mental health was Never taken seriously. And it should have been. I mean, I'm sure some of you guys know just how big of a presence mental health issues can have on one person. And because Nicola felt always like there was something off in her head the entire, entire time that she was growing up, she could feel like there was something, I hate to say wrong with her, but she just didn't feel right in her mind. She didn't feel safe in her own head basically. And she didn't know what to do. She wanted help, but she didn't know how to ask for it. And that of course not only affected her, but it affected her relationships with people and every single person around her, really. In her teenage years, she was constantly in trouble with the law. She would get kicked out of places for behaving erratically. She would get arrested for things such as shoplifting. One time when Nicola was only 17 years old, so not even a legal adult yet, she took herself to the ER claiming that she was hearing voices in her head and the voices in her head were telling her very scary things. She claimed that these voices would tell her the steps and the things that she needed to do in order to end the life of other people. And sometimes the voices in her head would tell her that she needed to unalive herself. And that was so scary for her, as you can imagine, it would be for anyone. So she took herself to the hospital, she went to the ER to ask for help, which is actually so responsible. Think about it for a 17 year old, what like I was in high school when I was 17 years old. I don't know that I was emotionally mature enough to be like, something is wrong with me, I should go to the hospital. But she was, and that's, that's huge. Anyways, like I said, she wasn't diagnosed with anything. They did help her through the episode or whatever it was that she was experiencing. But after she was feeling better, she was just released. At 19 years old, Nicola gave birth to her first child. And that wasn't planned. But for a second it seemed like maybe having a baby would be the wake up call that she needed and it would be the thing to turn her life around and to set her priorities straight. But unfortunately that didn't last long because she wasn't stable enough to take care of herself. And now she had another little baby, human that would be solely responsible on her care. It was almost like, and again, this is really sad, but she felt incapable of taking care of herself. She wasn't stable in any way, shape or form. And apart from that, she was also unpredictable, aggressive and sometimes violent. And something about Nicola as well is that when she got in these episodes or whatever they were, there was no calming her down. You couldn't talk her down and get her to relax a little bit because it was like she wasn't in control of what she was doing, almost. She was very explosive, maybe is the word. Not long after the birth of her first baby, she moved to London. She actually found a really nice man, they got married, had a second baby, but that relationship eventually ended as well. Eventually, the second baby went to go live in Jamaica with the baby's father, and the first baby was taken out of her care by social services. By the time that she reached adulthood, Nicola had sadly attempted to unalive herself in more than one occasion, and she had spent time in and out of psychiatric care. November 4th of 2005 was a Friday. And that day started off from the moment that she woke up. Nicola, it was gonna be a bad day. And honestly, you guys, these kind of stories are sometimes hard for me to say because I can explain what happened, the timeline of events and the events leading up to them, but it hard for me to sit here and say, she was feeling this. She was feeling exactly like this. This is what she was thinking. Because I don't know what she was thinking or feeling, because at the end of the day, I'm not in Nicola's head and I can try and kind of put together a story and kind of have a best guess as to how she was feeling at the time based on things that she has said after the fact in her own words. But at the end of the day, it does make me feel a little bit weird to be like, she was feeling this. This is exactly what she was thinking, because I don't know, because I'm not in her head. But all I can do is try to explain it to the best of my ability with the information that I do have. But just keep that in mind because sometimes it does make me feel a little bit weird saying that, because I don't want to sound like a know it all. Is that weird to say? I don't know. Sometimes it, like, feels wrong coming out of my mind saying she was feeling this, this and that, because I don't know. But anyway, sorry about that rant. I just think about that often. Regardless, it is highly believed that that day Nicola Edgington was in a state of psychosis. She woke up feeling extreme paranoia, hearing voices in her head. Loud voices, commanding voices, terrifying voices. She felt like she was in danger, like she was being watched or followed. And like there was something evil around her. She thought that something or someone was coming to harm her. And the entire day, really her behavior was odd. She went out with her two siblings and she just looked like a person who was scared. But at the same time she was behaving disturbing and kind of aggressive, almost as if she was in fight or flight mode. And Nicola could feel something burning inside of her, but she didn't know what it was. She could not put her finger on it. She couldn't understand it. She found herself back at her mother's house. It was only the two of them home towards the end of the night and they were just arguing. But it was routine for Nicola and her mother to argue. Her siblings were used to hearing it, the neighbors were used to hearing it. But that night something was different and things were escalating quickly. Nicola became convinced that her mother was evil, that her mother was a threat to her. And in her disordered mental state, that felt like reality for her. Nicola believed that the only way to protect herself from her mother was to end her life. From the kitchen, she saw the sharp knives in the room with her. She grabbed one and immediately turned to her mother. She stabbed her directly to the chest and continued to stop her, her over and over and over, a total of nine times. By the time that Nicola got up from the floor, looked at her 60 year old mother lying in a pool of her own blood and saw what she did, realized what she did, Marion was already gone. It was too late. Her life ripped away from her at the hands of her own daughter. Nicola fled the scene. And when her two siblings got home from the pub, they walked in into the most gruesome, horrific crime scene. But they didn't just find their mother. On the kitchen counter was also Nicola's journal. And it was opened up to a page. On that page was a list of people, just people's names. And the title was Condemned people. It was just names, but one of the names was her mother's name, Marion. And that one had been struck through, almost as if that list was a list of her victims. And because she had successfully attacked her mother, successfully ended her life, she had been checked off. It was chilling, it was scary and it was telling. Nicola's siblings, of course, called police immediately after finding their mother dead on the kitchen floor. And when police were made of the situation, they knew they needed to find Nicola immediately. This was a high priority search because they knew about her mental health history and obviously they knew now just how dangerous it could be. They were worried about where she might. What she might do, where she was headed to next. There was a person out there who had been responsible for ending the life of her own mother in a violent way, in a very clearly unstable way. And they needed to find her before she hurt anyone else or before she hurt herself. But authorities would not be able to locate her for 16 days. When they did eventually find her, they found her on public transportation. She was arrested and taken into custody. And after she was seen, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. That was for the very first time when things kind of started to make sense for Nicola. And by the way, when I say that I feel like a little bit sad for her maybe at times, it does not excuse what she did. I think that what she did was a very serious and horrible thing. And I do think that she deserves to be punished for doing something like that. But I'm just trying to explain when she was diagnosed that was a little bit of like, oh, this is. This is the voices. These are the voices that I've been hearing in my head this entire time. And it kind of started to click a little bit. It was the explanation that she had been looking for her entire life. And it was finally when she was able to pinpoint, oh, this is what's happening in my brain. When the trial occurred a year later, she was found guilty of manslaughter. But instead of being sentenced to prison, she was sent to a psychiatrist pediatric unit where she would be put in a long term rehabilitation program, which is where she needed to be. It's where she had been needing to go for years. And it is heartbreaking and horrific that it took her ending the life of her mother for her to finally get the help that she needed. Because again, I can't quite emphasize how many times throughout her life she had been asking for help because it wasn't like she was keeping this secret. She was very actively aware that she needed help. And it was a positive thing that she was finally getting it by this point as well. I don't think her dad was ever really in her life. But her siblings had completely cut her off. And you can't blame them. All they saw when they looked at Nicola's face was the face of their mother's murderer. And that was something that rocked their entire world, obviously, and it was something that they were never going to forgive her for. Long story short, they wanted absolutely nothing to do with her. In the hospital, Nicola was described medications that she needed to minimize all of her symptoms. And it did sound like they were helping. So much so that after only three years in the hospital, the staff was satisfied with Nicholas treatment. They thought that she got the help that she needed to get her back to a good place. And they thought that she was stable enough to be released back into society. And she was. She was released. Which, in my opinion, too soon, Way too soon. I mean, like, even the doctor said that there were signs of her mental health declining throughout her entire life from when she was a kid. She had at least 15 plus years of horrific mental health. She did the worst thing that you can do to a human being. But then three years, she was deemed to be safe back out into the public. I don't know. In my opinion, three years is not enough for anyone that showed the behavior that Nicola showed. It's not enough. But then a couple years passed and it seemed like she just went right back to the headspace that she was in before she ever received psychiatric care. She wasn't doing well. She had reached out on more than one occasion to her person, her caretaker, whoever the person was who was in charge of kind of keeping tabs on her, making sure that she was doing all right. She had communicated to them that she wasn't doing well, that she was lonely, the scary thoughts were coming back, but again, nothing was done to help her. She even reached out to one of her siblings on social media to let him know that she was unwell, that she wanted help, but that she wasn't getting the help that she needed. But her siblings, as we know, wanted nothing to do with her. Around this time as well, Nicola was getting really into religion, but not in the way that you might think her religious things came into play mixed with demons, witchcraft, dark magic, etc. She once ran into a church, ran into the building, claiming that she knew Jesus and that she knew that Jesus was scary and dangerous. She claimed that the demon sat on the throne with God and she genuinely believed in her mind that she needed to warn people about it. She thought demons were in the souls of many people, including people of the church and police officers. Officers. And on top of that, which is already too much for one person to handle, in 2011, Nicola had also moved in with a boyfriend. And he was awful to her. Awful to the point that Nicola was scared of her own safety. And she wasn't only scared because of the thoughts that she had about herself in her mind, but more so of this terrible guy that she was living with that she felt was a very, very dangerous person to be around October 10th of 2011 was a Monday. That day, Nicola had made multiple urgent calls to emergency services and mental health professionals, explaining that she was very mentally unstable and that she needed help. She called the cab requesting that they take her to the hospital. A cab did come and pick her up, but then something switched and Nicholas head and she started acting out pretty erratically and decided that she didn't want to go to the hospital anymore. She argued and argued and argued until eventually she started kind of realizing what was happening inside of her head again. She started saying things such as, I haven't slept for weeks. It's all in my head. I need help. I need help. Help. Eventually, the cops were called, and a cop did pick her up and took her to the hospital to be seen. But in the hospital waiting room again, Nicola was still going back and forth on, okay, yes, this is where I need to be. I need help to get me out of here right this second. She would want to stay, she would want to be there. But then she would get up and tried to run away again, showing signs of just how mentally unstable she was, how agitated she was, and how desperate she was. At one point, she walked up to the receptionist or whoever was at the front desk and said that she needed help right now, she needed help immediately. She couldn't wait any longer. She needed to seen right then and there. She was asking them what it would take for them to take her in right that second, for them to evaluate her. She even told them, I have killed someone before. Is it going to take me killing someone again to finally get help? But again, I sound like a broken record. All she was told was to go and sit down, settle down, and to wait in the waiting room. She called 999, which is like 911 in America, pleading for help. She called them a total of four times because she could feel herself getting bad again. She was pleading with police officers and local mental health services to physically detain her under their leg powers because she felt the scary thoughts coming back. And she was saying that she had killed someone before. And the more scared and paranoid she became, the more dangerous she could feel herself getting. She asked 999 on the phone, do you want me to hurt someone here? And she said that she was going to, not because she wanted to, but because she couldn't physically stop herself. And again, not an excuse at all for what she goes on to do. But she couldn't help her brain, and she was spiraling. She was asking for help. I mean, what more could she have Done honestly, she told more than one person, I have done this, I'm scared that I might do it again, please help me. And nobody did anything which I literally cannot grasp my mind on because. What do you mean? It wasn't like she was sitting in the corner quietly, calmly, by herself. She went up to the staff, she called police again and again and again from the waiting room and all she was told was to wait. What do you mean? That's crazy. Finally she was taken in to get assessed. She was escorted by psychiatric staff, but then she said that she needed to make a phone call and they allowed her to step away. They allowed her to step out of the building with no supervision and Nicola Edgington ran away. She left the hospital, she ran to the bus stop, she took two buses and was off to find her next victim. The bus took her to Bexley Heath where she stepped out, walked into a supermarket and she only purchased one thing, a knife. She checked out with a knife, she walked back over to the bus stop and that's where she saw 22 year old Kelly Clark. She was also just standing there waiting for her bus. Nicola saw her and launched herself at her with a knife, attacking her. Kelly was caught so off guard, of course she was. This poor girl was just waiting for her bus and she immediately started to try and fight Nicola off of her. She could tell that Nicola was dangerous and obviously she could tell that she had a weapon in hand and Kelly was fighting. The two of them were struggling to push one off of the other until eventually Nicola was on the ground. Kelly managed to get up, she took the knife out of Nicholas possession and she told her, you are insane, you are crazy, get out of here. And Nicola did, surprisingly, she just got up and walked away. But she was making her way to a butcher's shop. She walked in and when the person at the butcher shop counter looked away, Nicola reached over the counter, grabbed the knife and ran, ran out of there. She ran and ran outside until she saw 58 year old Sally Hodkin and attacked this innocent lady the exact same way that she had just attempted to attack Kelly. She stopped her over and over again so many times, ending her life and nearly decapitating her. And when Nicola heard police sirens, she ran away from the scene of the crime minutes after. Thankfully it didn't take long, police were able to locate her. She was arrested and charged with the attack on Kelly and the murder of sale Kelly. On February 7th of 2013, despite pleading not guilty, Nicola Edgington was found guilty and convicted by the jury of attempted murder of Kelly Clark and the murder of Sally Hawkins. She was sentenced to life with a minimum of 37 years. Do you see what I mean about the conflicting emotions? Because it's never going to be an excuse for what she did. What she did was awful. She ruined so many people's lives and left so many people heartbroken. But she asked for help so many times. She got. She asked the police. She called the police on herself and she went up to hospital staff begging them for help, and nobody did anything. Anything. It's insanity to me. When I was researching this and I had to type over and over, she asked for help. No one helped her. She asked for help. No. I was like, oh, my gosh. Anyway, that is all I have for today's story. Thank you for spending time with me today. If you do have a request for a podcast episode, message me on Instagram, because I check those messages more than I do any other social media, to be honest. But yeah, I hope you guys are having the best day. If not, go do something to make it the best day. Make somebody happy. And I will see you in my next video. Massive kiss on the forehead to every single one of you. Thank you guys so much for listening to episode two of I wish you were here. You can listen to this podcast anywhere you get. Your podcast video version is also available on YouTube. Love you guys. And I will see you in episode three.