Edna Phillips was a 70-year-old woman who was murdered on 16 July 1992 by two teenage girls, one of them her next-door neighbour, at her home on a council estate in Penywaun in South Wales.
The details of the crime were made public soon after the start of the trial of the two boys who murdered two-year-old James Bulger in Merseyside, which contributed to the resulting moral panic in the United Kingdom.
"[1][4] Late in the evening of 16 July 1992, under the influences of cider and drugs, Maria Rossi and her friend, Christina "Tina" Molloy, both 17, saw Phillips, who was then 70 and partially sighted, calling for Chum to come in; they forced her back into her house, where they strangled her with the dog's chain, slashed her 35 times in the face with a utility knife, scissors and a piece of broken glass, stabbed her 86 times and stamped on her chest, breaking five ribs, broke her nose and attempted to scalp her, and broke eggs over her body.
In sentencing, Judge Baker described them as "evil products of a modern age"[1][6] and said: "If as youngsters some discipline had been imposed upon you, whether in the home, at school or through the courts, you might not be standing in the dock for this dreadful offense.
[2] It contributed to a moral panic in the UK concerning young killers,[7][8] who, the sociologist Colin Hay said in a 1995 article, were particularly disturbing since they did not constitute a clear "folk devil".