Parole board make decision on paedophile child killer Dominic McKilligan

Dominic McKilligan, a paedophile who murdered an 11-year-old boy while he was a teenager, has been denied release by the Parole Board. The convicted sex offender, now 44, killed schoolboy Wesley Neailey in Newcastle in 1998 and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1999.

Following an oral hearing on September 16, the Parole Board announced on Thursday that it had also declined to recommend transferring McKilligan to an open prison. Nine months prior to Wesley’s death, McKilligan, who was 18 at the time of the murder, was released from Aycliffe Young People’s Centre in County Durham, where he had been sent for a series of sexual assaults on young boys in his home town of Bournemouth in 1994.

McKilligan was not eligible to be placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register because his sentence, a three-year supervision order, ended one day before the provisions of the 1997 Sex Offenders Act came into force. Previously described in local authority reports as a danger to children, McKilligan went on to befriend the 11-year-old and attacked him at the garage of his home in Wingrove Road, Newcastle, less than a mile from Wesley’s house.

Wesley was missing for a month before his body, partially enclosed in plastic bags, was found discarded on a grass verge in the Northumberland village of Healey. McKilligan was imprisoned for the killing in July 1999, but his conviction for rape was overturned at the High Court in 2000.

As a result, he will not be subject to the Sex Offenders’ Register if he is eventually released.

The Parole Board has denied Dominic McKilligan's fourth bid for release since the end of his initial minimum jail term in July 2018. The board, detailing their decision, pointed out that McKilligan "had maintained his innocence of murder, though he accepted he had caused his victim’s death" and also highlighted that there was "insufficient evidence of significant risk reduction at this point".

A spokesperson stated: "We can confirm that a panel of the Parole Board refused the release of Dominic McKilligan following an oral hearing. The panel also refused to recommend a move to open prison.

"Parole Board decisions are solely focused on what risk a prisoner could represent to the public if released and whether that risk is manageable in the community.

"It is standard for the prisoner and witnesses to be questioned at length during the hearing which often lasts a full day or more. Parole reviews are undertaken thoroughly and with extreme care. Protecting the public is our number one priority."