‘Life but should mean life but my son’s killer will soon be paroled’

Subscribe for free for twice-weekly true crime articles or become a paid subscriber to get premium content – https://totalcrime.substack.com/

By Chris Summers 7 April 2025

It was a broiling hot summer evening in 2006 and Michelle Jeacock stayed up past midnight because her 16-year-old son Julian had told her he was on his way home from a friend’s house.

“I didn’t worry about him because he was at a friend’s house in the garden and he was on his way home,” Michelle told me in 2016.

In today’s Substack I caught up with Michelle again, 10 years later, and found her bracing herself for the day, which is soon coming, when her son’s killer gets parole.

On 15 July 2006 Julian Knight – known to all as Buster – was walking home through Thamesmead in south-east London with two friends when he was ambushed by a man on a mission.

Stelios Paraschakis, 19, had been drinking at a party when his furious mother, Theresa Beverley, called him, spitting feathers.

A teenager had set fire to some cardboard she had left out in her garden for recycling and the flames had damaged her garden fence.

She was hell-bent on finding out who did it and called up her son, who owed his exotic name to a Greek father.

Paraschakis dashed home with his pliant girlfriend Amy Curran and another friend, Paul Spouse, armed himself with two knives and began patrolling the estate seeking someone to blame for the fire.

Buster was hit over the head by one of his assailants with a baseball bat, fracturing his skull.

Seconds later Paraschakis (pictured below) stabbed him in the neck with one of the knives.

The blade hit his jugular vein.

Despite his horrific injuries Buster tried to run home but collapsed in an alley.

The first Buster’s mum knew about what had happened was when one of his friends came to her house and told her Buster had collapsed in an alley at the bottom of her road.

In 2016, when I interviewed her, she told me: “I ran down the road, turn the corner and saw my son covered in blood. He was lying on the floor. A couple of neighbours were trying to resuscitate him. But he had lost an awful amount of blood. He had not just stabbed him, he had put the knife in and twisted it. So there was a gaping hole in Buster’s neck.”

The ambulance was delayed by 10 minutes because it was obeying a protocol that, if a gun or a knife is involved, the crew should wait for a police escort.

Ms Jeacock will never know if those minutes would have made a difference.

She told me: “Ambulances shouldn’t be waiting while somebody is lying there fighting for their life. People have survived after being stabbed in the jugular but they need urgent care.”

Ms Jeacock said: “I was telling Buster to wait, to stay with me until the ambulance arrived. He was very fit and very brave.”

But Buster lost his life, devastating his family.

Paraschakis immediately fled the country to Greece, where his father lived.

He was extradited and eventually jailed for life with a minimum terms of 18 years.

At his trial he tried to claim both self-defence and provocation, although neither were true.

It emerged at the trial the two teenagers Buster was with that night, Brian Long, 19, and friend Martin Gardener, 19, had set fire to the fence of Paraschakis’s mother.

Long had been engaged in a petty feud with Paraschakis.

But Buster had nothing to do with it.

Curran, who had been armed with a beer bottle, was jailed for 18 months for her part in the attack and for covering up for Paraschakis after he fled the country.

Spouse, who was 28, was cleared of grievous bodily harm with intent and wounding with intent and walked free from court.

Sentencing Paraschakis, Judge Giles Forrester said: “The carrying of knives in public places is a menace which blights out streets and makes law abiding citizens fearful. The streets become dangerous places when young men carry and use knives as you did.”

The judge said: “Julian Knight was aged 16 years and his untimely death has had a devastating effect on his family.”

When I interviewed Mrs Jeacock, in 2016, said: “I think about him every day. He was taken away so suddenly.”

She said she, and her youngest son – who was 12 at the time – had undergone counselling.

“It was devastating for him to lose his older brother. They used to do everything together. He had no-one to look up to and take guidance from. Buster would have been a good role model. It was very difficult for him,” she told me in 2016.

After his death Mrs Jeacock set up a football team – the JB Knights – in memory of Buster, who loved the sport and was a big Arsenal fan.

The team’s shirts were emblazoned with an anti-knife crime message.

It started off as a memorial match that his friends organised but it carried on for nine years, finally winding up in 2016.

Last night (3 April) I spoke to Michelle again and asked her how she had coped for the last 10 years.

She said: “It’s like a cloud over your head the whole time and that is how you live your life. He will get his parole and lived his life. I’ve not been able to live my life.”

Michelle said of Buster’s brother, “He’s not too bad but that stays with you forever. You’re never the same person. It changes the course of your life and has far-reaching consequences.”

Buster would have celebrated his 35th birthday on Monday (March 31) if his killer had not lashed out over something as trivial as a charred fence.

Michelle says the sentencing guidelines changed in the years after her son’s death.

She told me: “When we went to the trial at the Old Bailey in 2007 the minimum term for murder with a weapon was just 15 years and the ‘offender’ received 15 years plus three years for aggravating circumstances.”

“This was changed in 2010, so the minimum term or starting point for murder with a weapon became 25 years. The murderer in our case got off very lightly and a few years later would have received a much longer sentence,” Michelle added.

Michelle told me: “I truly believe life should mean life. We see on the news that a murderer has received a life sentence but that could literally mean any length of time, it would give a clearer message to anyone thinking of committing murder to know how long they would serve in prison if they committed that crime.”

She said: “The murderer actually said in court that he thought he would plead self-defence and be out in a few years. I believe the government is sending out the wrong message by not making the sentencing clearer and they could start by really sending this message home to anyone thinking of taking a knife out on to the streets.”

Michelle said at the time Buster was killed, such an incident was “shocking” but she said: “But so much goes on nowadays, nobody say anything any more.”

She mentioned the murder, in January, of 14-year-old Kelyan Bokassa on a bus in Woolwich, and said: “Kids can’t travel about without that fear. Violent crime has gone up 50% under Sadiq Khan. That should be his top priority.”

Michelle said having served his minimum term, Paraschakis – who she never identifies by name, preferring to call him “the murderer” or “the offender” – was due to be released on 17 July 2024.

But, having breached the conditions of being in an open prison, he had been sent back to a closed prison for a time.

Paraschakis is now back in an open prison and will probably be paroled in the next 18 months.

Michelle resents the lack of information she is entitled to, from the Prison Service.

She told me: “They don’t give you any information at all. I’m not allowed to know what prison they are in, they keep you out of the loop. His rights seem to be paramount.”

“At the end of the day he did this to Buster and I didn’t do anything to him,” Michelle told me.