Shaye Groves, a true crime-obsessed woman from Hampshire, murdered her boyfriend, Frankie Fitzgerald, in a jealous rage after mistakenly believing he was messaging a 13-year-old girl.
Early years in Havant
Shaye Groves was born in January 1996 and grew up in Havant, in the south of England. By the time she was an adult, people who knew her could list a lot of hard things from her childhood. She went through physical and sexual abuse, and the damage from that followed her for years.
School wasn’t a break from it either. She was bullied for being “different” in more than one way. She was partially deaf and started wearing a hearing aid when she was around 11. Other kids noticed straight away and she got picked on for it. She also got labelled as a “goth,” because she liked dark styles and music. Instead of being left alone to enjoy her own look, she was called a weirdo and treated like an outsider.
By 13, she was self-harming as a way to handle depression that seemed constant. That led to her first mental health assessment. A psychiatrist diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. Around the same age, she also began using drugs and alcohol, not for fun at first but to numb what she felt inside.
People who knew her as a teen described someone who kept to herself a lot. She didn’t have a huge group of friends. Two names that stayed close were Lauren White and Vicky Baitup, with Lauren being the closest. Even back then, there were comments that Shaye could be manipulative and that she liked being the person in charge of the group.
On the outside, she leaned into the goth image: heavy metal, horror, and jewellery like pentagrams and chains. It matched the way classmates saw her: someone drawn to scary themes, and not bothered by how it looked to others.
A close friend of Groves from childhood: “We used to hang out. Shaye was quite strange. She was unique, the way she dressed, what she was into – she used to like Chucky dolls and was interested in them.”
Running away
In her mid-teens, Shaye ran away from home to escape her abusive situation. It wasn’t a clean escape where everything suddenly got better. Instead, she ended up moving from place to place, couch surfing, and staying with boyfriends. The relationships she found weren’t safe either. She had a pattern of abusive partners, getting thrown out and then searching for the next place to sleep.
During this time, her mental health stayed unstable. She kept using drugs and alcohol heavily and it fed the same cycle: feeling bad, getting intoxicated to cope, then feeling worse again.
At around 20, she met a man named Ashley. Compared with what came before, this relationship looked calmer and more stable. Details are limited, but it didn’t sound like the same kind of chaos. Shaye began to improve. Then she found out she was pregnant, and that pushed her to make bigger changes. She stopped drugs and stopped drinking because she wanted to protect the baby.
She also started getting proper mental health support and received another diagnosis: complex PTSD, on top of bipolar disorder. With her childhood history, it fit the picture of someone carrying long-term trauma.
In April 2017, she gave birth to a daughter. People around her said she did well as a mum and seemed to thrive with that responsibility. But not long after the birth, she and Ashley broke up. Suddenly she was close to homeless with a young child.
She first went to a women’s refuge. After that, she reconnected with her childhood friend Lauren White, who was also raising a baby girl. The plan was two single mothers with two little girls close in age sharing life and helping each other.
Eventually, Shaye and Lauren got council housing in Leigh Park, Hampshire. The girls became close, like live-in best friends. From the outside, it could look like a fresh start: stable housing, children settled and a routine. But the way Shaye handled relationships didn’t stay calm for long.
Life with Lauren
Living with Lauren did not turn into an equal partnership. Over time, Shaye’s need for control became a big part of the household. Lauren ended up doing things that went far beyond normal help between friends. She washed and folded Shaye’s clothes, rolled her cigarettes and even put Shaye’s socks on for her. It created a setup where Lauren was caring for her own child, Shaye’s child, and also Shaye herself.
“Lauren would do whatever Shaye wanted her to do. She was very manipulative – Lauren didn’t have many friends and Shaye used to be the one there for her.”
There were also reports that Shaye got physically violent with Lauren on a few occasions. The power imbalance wasn’t subtle. Lauren later spoke about feeling manipulated and scared, like saying no could lead to a blow-up.
One detail that stood out was surveillance. Shaye had CCTV cameras installed in the common areas of the house. That meant shared rooms were being watched, taking away privacy for Lauren and her daughter. Shaye also had a camera in her bedroom, and it wasn’t just for security. She used it to record sex, then downloaded the footage onto her laptop, and sometimes edited clips together.
When the pandemic arrived in 2020, Shaye’s interest in true crime grew into something constant. She stayed up late watching documentaries and reading. She reread a book about Charles Bronson again and again. The interest also showed up in her room. She had posters of serial killers displayed like fan art. The list included Aileen Wuornos, Charles Manson, Rose West, Richard Ramirez, Myra Hindley, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Peter Sutcliffe, the Independent reports.
Alongside that, she collected weapons. Many were decorative daggers, including Celtic-style ones. She also had other weapons like axes and BB guns. One knife was a flick knife she kept in her boot. Shaye said some daggers were used in Pagan rituals, because she identified as Pagan.
All of this mattered later, because her bedroom didn’t just hold the imagery. It held real blades, recorded footage and a camera that captured conversations and actions police would eventually rely on.
Relationship with Frankie Fitzgerald
In February 2022, Shaye met 25-year-old Frankie Fitzgerald at a pub. She approached him first because she found him attractive. They clicked quickly. They lived close to each other and they both had children—Shaye had her daughter and Frankie had two kids. That shared background helped them bond fast.
From the start, the relationship had a heavy mix of drinking, drugs and violence between them when intoxicated. A big part of their connection was kink and BDSM, including rough sex. They talked about it as something they both wanted and in the early stage it was described as consensual.
Prosecutor Steven Perian KC: “Their sex life involved bondage, dominance submission and masochism – BDSM. It is likely she was obsessed with Frankie Fitzgerald because of his performance in the bedroom.”
Around the time she met Frankie, Shaye returned to drugs. She had stopped when she was pregnant and after becoming a mum but now cocaine became part of life again. People around her said she began declining quickly. She used more often than before and pulled away from friends. The relationship itself was short—about five months—but it packed in constant conflict.
As time went on, the line between agreed rough sex and real abuse started to blur. Consent wasn’t always clearly asked for, and wasn’t always clearly given. Shaye and Frankie also fought outside the bedroom. Jealousy and control showed up in everyday life, with both of them trying to read each other’s phones and accusing the other of cheating.
The bedroom camera captured some of their conversations. In one incident, Frankie switched sex acts without checking first. Shaye told him she didn’t like it, but she didn’t scream or cry, and she used soft language, so he didn’t take it seriously. Later, Frankie said, “It was a bit rapey wasn’t it?” Shaye replied that it wasn’t rape, but it was “as close to non-rape rape as I can get.”
The CCTV also recorded a moment where Frankie noticed a dagger that Shaye kept under her pillow. During sex it slipped into view, and he asked if she was going to stab him in the throat with it. She told him no, the knife was for protection against intruders.
Cracks in relationship
By June 2022, the relationship was getting worse instead of settling down. Cheating accusations became more specific. Frankie accused Shaye of seeing her ex, believed to be her child’s father, because of how much time they spent together. Shaye accused Frankie of cheating with another girl he met at the pub.
Shaye also believed Frankie had given her thrush and treated it like proof he’d been with someone else. Friends later described her anger toward him as extreme in this period. She talked about ways to hurt him, not just by arguing. One idea was using the bedroom CCTV footage. She discussed editing the sex videos to make them look fully non-consensual, then releasing them to ruin his life. She also spoke about attacking him or calling on a male friend to beat him up.
Another major event in these months was a lie that pulled other people in. Shaye sat down Frankie and Lauren and told them she had been diagnosed with serious cancer. It wasn’t true. But at the time, they believed her. They helped with money, childcare, and emotional support until it became clear it had been a manipulation tactic.
Shaye’s mental health slipped again. She became depressed and started self-harming. The relationship’s violence didn’t stay contained. It was not only happening during sex, it was showing up in regular fights too.
They broke up and got back together, and the cycle repeated. After one breakup, Shaye called her ex-boyfriend to come over. Together they packed up Frankie’s belongings from Shaye’s room and dumped them on the front lawn of Frankie’s ex-girlfriend’s house. Frankie later collected his things, then still ended up back with Shaye.
On 14 July 2022, Frankie went through Shaye’s phone and found texts and sexts showing she was seeing her ex again. He confronted her, threatened violence, punched walls, and left. It was a big explosion, but not the end. Two days later, Shaye called him back to the house, and the last night began.
The message that set it off
On 16 July 2022, Shaye’s daughter was not home. She was staying with her dad. Shaye was at the house in Leigh Park, and Frankie came over after she asked him to. Even after the fight on 14 July, both of them still returned to the same pattern: trying to talk, then falling into the same chaos.
Once Frankie arrived, they drank heavily and took cocaine. The atmosphere was tense. They argued, checked each other’s phones, and circled the same topics again—cheating, control, and anger. Frankie begged Shaye for money to gamble, and she gave it to him. Nothing in the night sounded calm or steady.
At some point, Frankie went into Shaye’s bedroom and fell asleep on her bed. Shaye stayed awake, still intoxicated, and scrolled through his phone. That’s when she found messages between Frankie and a girl who claimed she was 13. Frankie was 25. Shaye read it and believed she had just found proof her boyfriend had been messaging a child.
Later, it was found the girl was actually 17, and that Frankie blocked her when he believed she was 13. But in that moment, Shaye did not see it that way. She saw “13” on the screen and felt rage.
Her reaction was tied to more than jealousy. With her own childhood history of sexual abuse, the idea of a young girl being involved hit hard. She was also already angry about Frankie cheating and about their constant abuse toward each other. With alcohol, cocaine, and lack of sleep in the mix, her emotions spiked.
Shaye Groves: “I was straightaway angry, upset and confused… it tipped me over the edge”, per BBC.
Shaye slammed the phone down and went straight to the bedroom where Frankie was asleep. She grabbed one of her decorative daggers from her collection.
The first stab was to his neck. It cut a major artery and damaged a major vein, injuries so severe that he would have died even if emergency help had been called immediately. Shaye didn’t stop after that. She kept stabbing, aiming at his neck and chest.
In total, Frankie was stabbed 22 times. It was not a single strike in panic. It was a repeated attack while he lay on the bed.
When she finished, she sat beside him and watched as he stopped moving. She later described hearing gurgling from his throat, and said it stopped before she stopped stabbing.
Cover-up attempts
After Frankie was dead, Shaye did not call an ambulance. Instead, she shifted into planning mode. She had watched huge amounts of true crime, and she acted like someone trying to build distance between herself and what had just happened.
She started setting up alibis through texts. She messaged her ex-boyfriend asking if he wanted to come over that night. He didn’t come, but the message existed. She also texted Vicky Baitup to say that Frankie had just left the house. On a normal day, that kind of text would mean nothing. In this situation, it worked like a timestamp meant to suggest he had walked out alive.
Then Shaye went to Lauren White’s room and told her directly that she had killed Frankie. Lauren came to Shaye’s bedroom and saw the body on the bed. From there, the two women discussed what to do next. They considered burying him in the garden. Shaye also mentioned trying to make it look like suicide, even though the injuries made that unrealistic.
They began cleaning. Bleach was used, and blood was scrubbed. They laid bin bags on the floor. At one point, they moved Frankie’s body off the bed and onto the bin bags so they could clean the mattress area.
During this clean-up, Shaye pressured Lauren hard. She told Lauren she was an accomplice now because she had helped move the body and wipe up blood. Shaye made it sound like Lauren would go down too if police became involved. Lauren later said she was scared of Shaye and felt trapped. The fear wasn’t only legal. It was also physical, like refusing could put her in danger.
Even with the cleaning, Shaye still hadn’t removed the body from the house. Time was passing, and the situation was breaking down.
Shaye and Lauren also involved their third friend. Shaye FaceTimed Vicky and showed her Frankie’s dead body up close, from different angles. Vicky reacted with shock and panic. Shaye, instead of acting frightened, was reported as smiling, giggling, and making jokes.
Once the call ended, Vicky reported what she had seen to police. That decision brought the investigation to the front door in less than six hours after the murder.
Ms Baitup: “She [Groves] said to me ‘it’s really big, you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone. That’s when she went upstairs, went into her room, pointed the camera at [Mr Fitzgerald] and said ‘I’ve done him’.”
Trial and Conviction
Police arrived at Shaye’s address the same morning. When Shaye opened the door, she appeared calm, wearing a pink fluffy dressing gown and holding a cigarette. Officers were hit with a strong smell of bleach, which suggested cleaning had been happening.
They told her they were investigating a report of a murder and that someone had been shown a dead body at the address. Shaye let them in. Inside, the clean-up had made some difference, but it hadn’t solved the biggest problem: Frankie’s body was still there.
In Shaye’s bedroom, police found Frankie Fitzgerald’s corpse lying on bin bags. In the bathroom, they found a washed dagger left in the sink. It stood out because it wasn’t in its usual decorative place with her other blades. That dagger was treated as the likely murder weapon.
Both Shaye and Lauren were arrested at the scene. Police could not know right away how involved Lauren had been. During questioning, Shaye admitted killing Frankie but claimed self-defence.
She said they had fought after she found the messages, and that Frankie had pinned her by the neck until she started losing consciousness. She claimed she grabbed what she could reach and struck him, only realising it was a dagger after it went into his neck.
She also explained the repeated stabbing by saying she heard him gurgling and thought she was ending his suffering.
“I tried to stop the bubbling. I stabbed him in the heart to try and stop the heart, stop the bubbling.”
Investigators did not accept the story, because the evidence pointed to Frankie being asleep when the attack started. The number of wounds also did not match a single desperate moment.
Lauren initially faced charges linked to helping after the murder and for refusing to give her phone passcode, which slowed the investigation. Those charges were later dropped when police concluded she had not taken part in the killing and had acted under pressure.
She agreed to give evidence, and Shaye also said Lauren was not in the room when Frankie died.
About seven months later, Shaye went to trial still holding onto self-defence. CCTV clips were shown that were said to prove Frankie had assaulted her, but it was found the videos had been edited, with sections removed that changed the context. Lauren and Vicky testified about Shaye’s behaviour after the killing and what she said while trying to cover it up, The Economic Times reports.
The judge rejected the self-defence claim. Shaye Groves was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 23 years before she can be considered for release.
