Cat-killing woman guilty of murder of man as he walked home from night out

A cat killer obsessed with violence and death has been convicted of murdering a man who she deliberately targeted before brutally attacking him and leaving him to drown in a river.

Scarlet Blake, 26, singled out Jorge Martin Carreno, 30, as he walked home from a night-out in Oxford in July 2021.

She led him to a secluded riverbank where he was hit to the back of the head with a vodka bottle, strangled and then pushed into the River Cherwell where he drowned, Oxford Crown Court heard.

The defendant, of Crotch Crescent, Oxford, denied murder but was convicted on Friday. Blake showed no emotion as the verdict was returned.

Trial judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, will sentence her on Monday morning.

Prosecutors said Blake killed the BMW worker because she had a “fixation with violence and with knowing what it would be like to kill someone”.

His murder came four months after Blake live-streamed the sadistic killing of a cat.

Blake told the family pet: “Here we go my little friend. Oh boy, you smell like shit. I can’t wait to put through the blender.”

After the violent killing, Blake dissected the animal, removed its fur and skin, and placed its body in a blender.

During the horrific video, the New Order song True Faith plays in the background, which the court heard was in homage to the Netflix documentary called Don’t F*** with Cats in which a man kills kittens before filming the murder of a human.

Blake “boasted” about the killing with others and “her desire to open up a person like her ‘little cat friend’”.

Prosecutors said Blake had an “extreme interest in death and in harm” and got sexual gratification from violence and killings.

Jurors watched a disturbing video of Blake consensually tying a ligature around her then partner’s neck from behind and pulling it tight until she appears to fall unconscious.

During the trial, the court heard Mr Martin Carreno had been out with work colleagues in Oxford city centre and was trying to get home when Blake found him sat down in the street.

She was captured on CCTV prowling the streets of Oxford looking for a victim wearing a heavy military-style hooded jacket, face mask and carrying a rucksack.

Prosecutors suggested she was carrying a “murder kit” in her rucksack, including a garrotte and leopard print dressing gown cord, which she rejected.

Giving evidence, Blake denied she was looking for a victim that night and instead had gone for a walk because she could not sleep.

She said she walked with Mr Martin Carreno to Parsons Pleasure and left him there alive to go home.

“I don’t know how he died. I assumed he drowned. It wasn’t something I did. As to how, I still don’t know, I wasn’t there,” she told the jury.

It was suggested Mr Martin Carreno may have taken his own life, but any hint he was suicidal was rejected by his friends.

An empty bottle of vodka was found in the river and the bottle top was nearby on the bank, which had traces of the defendant’s DNA on it.

Home Office pathologist Dr Brett Lockyer said he did not believe it likely the Spanish national could have died accidentally.

He ruled out the possibility he died immediately after being strangled with a broad ligature or neck hold and said he drowned.

The court heard Blake confessed to former partner Ashlynn Bell, who lives in the US, that she had killed Mr Martin Carreno with a homemade garrotte before throwing his body in the water.

The defendant told jurors she had made up the details of the killing because Miss Bell wanted her to kill someone after making her live-stream the killing of the cat.

“I wasn’t interested or willing – it was an awful thought to me,” she said.

“In the interest of keeping her happy, because I wanted her to kill me one day, because it’s sexually stimulating for me, that idea.

“She was wanting to make me do this thing and I was pretty much… well at a limit after going through the killing of the cat.”

During her evidence Blake claimed she had a fragmented personality, which included being a cat, and meowed at the jury to show how she would interact with friends.

“There’s a part that is just a cat, which is strange and that seems to me what the happy part of me is. In that they come out when I am happy,” she said.

“With friends I know quite well who are aware of this part of me I meow at them in greeting.

“It is quite strange it is very prominent when I am expressing certain emotions.

“For example, the cat has a pretty strong association with joy, and I suppose the innate goodness. It is a kind of childhood innocence.”