The devastated girlfriend of a mentally ill woman who decapitated her mother says she still loves her partner and is determined to get her the help she needs.
Sharon O’Brien, 50, believes her partner, Odessa Carey, 36, who beat her mum to death before cutting her head off with knives and scissors, was neglected by mental health services in the run-up to the tragedy.
Carey, from Ashington, Northumberland, has now been detained at a high-security hospital after a jury ruled she was responsible for the death of the 73-year-old mother.
Sharon, who had been in a relationship with Carey for almost 15 years, has told how Carey’s mother, Odessa Carey senior, had been urged not to be alone with her daughter but refused to turn her away.
Sharon O’Brien, the former partner of Odessa Carey who decapitated her mother says she still loves her partner and is determined to get her the help she needs
A picture of Odessa Carey (left) and her partner of almost 15 years, Sharon O’Brien pictured in happier times. The couple have been in a relationship since 2006
Sharon paid tribute to Odessa Carey senior, who shared a name with her daughter, saying she was like a mum to her as well.
Sharon said: ‘She was a lovely woman.
‘She was always laughing and joking and always happy. She was always supportive of Odessa. She wouldn’t give up on her.
‘We told her mum not to let her into the house but she would never turn her back on her daughter. I’m grieving for the loss of both of them but I have got to keep going for Odessa.’
Sharon has known Carey, who she called ‘Dessa’, since she was a child growing up in Ashington, Northumberland.
Odessa Carey, 36, was let down by mental health services according to her partner Sharon O’Brien who vows to stand by her despite Odessa killing her mother and decapitating her
Sharon said: ‘This wasn’t the actions of the Odessa I know. I wasn’t scared of her, I still think I could get through to her.
‘I’ll never give up on her. I still love her to bits. I always will. I’ll always stick by her. Nobody else wants anything to do with her, but I can’t leave her.
‘The real Odessa is in there somewhere. It’s been really hard but I know it wasn’t her that did that.
‘Whatever has possessed her has made her do it. ‘
Odessa Carey senior, 73, was killed and decapitated by her daughter who then carried her head around and showed it to other people before stashing it in a cupboard of a friend’s house
When they became a couple in 2006, the mum-of-one did not know her partner had mental health problems as the symptoms at that stage were not yet severe.
Sharon said: ‘She was a lovely caring lass. There was not a bad bone in her body. She practically brought my daughter up from the age of nine.’
Years later Carey’s mental health and her behaviour began to deteriorate to Sharon’s alarm.
As Odessa Carey’s behaviour became more unsettling her son, who is now 18, went to live with his father.
Sharon also began to witness a series of increasingly terrifying incidents which made her realise her girlfriend was seriously ill.
Sharon said: ‘It would come and go. She would be fine for a while and you wouldn’t have known what was going on.’
Sharon O’Brien cradles a picture of her former girlfriend Odessa Carey who once held her, Carey’s mother and Sharon’s daughter hostage at Carey’s mother’s senior home
‘But it just got gradually worse.’
On one occasion Carey cut her own legs down to the bone, and on another she tried to smash her way through the wall of her home with a wallpaper scraper to get to her neighbours who she believed wanted to kill her family.
Carey was eventually put under the care of the Greenacres Centre, which is run by the Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust.
Sharon does not believe her partner ever got the help she needed.
When Carey briefly moved to Crook, in County Durham, she removed all the lightbulbs from her home, believing there were cameras inside watching her,’ said Sharon.
Sharon said: ‘She was just totally paranoid. She thought people were watching her.’
In 2017, Carey was sectioned briefly at a hospital in Sunderland after holding her mum, Sharon and Sharon’s daughter hostage at Odessa senior’s home, in North Seaton.
This screenshot from CCTV footage shows Carey carrying her mother’s severed head in a bag
In January 2018 police were contacted after Carey assaulted her mum with a bath-board, yet, Sharon still let Carey move in with her in late 2018 after she was thrown out of a hostel in Blyth.
Sharon continued: ‘I have never seen anything like it.
‘She would sit in the kitchen in the middle of the floor laughing hysterically and screaming.
‘When I asked who she was talking to she said: ‘Just the voices in my head.’
Sharon said: ‘Then just weeks before Carey killed her mum she killed her cat by breaking its neck before flushing its body down the toilet.’
Sharon O’Brien has been devastated by the loss of Odessa Carey senior who she regarded as a mother figure
Yet Sharon could never have imagined the horror that would follow. Carey is believed to have killed her mum by striking her over the head, before decapitating her then removing her brain from her head.
Carey then carried the head round in a bag and showed it to family friend, John Murray, at his allotment, before hiding it in a kitchen cupboard of a friend’s home.
Sharon called the police after Mr Murray told her what he had seen.
Sharon said: ‘I didn’t know what to think. My initial thought was that I had to go out and find Dessa.’
‘I didn’t believe it at first but I knew she had been at her mam’s.
Sharon O’Brien bore the brunt of Odessa Carey’s increasingly alarming behaviour and was once taken hostage by her partner until the ‘unthinkable’ event happened
‘I described her mam to John Murray, and that’s when I got my phone out and rang the police.’
Sharon tried to get into Odessa Carey’s home but was taken to a police station where her worst fears were confirmed.
She added: ‘I collapsed in the police station and I vomited. I thought I was living in a nightmare.’
Carey was arrested and charged with murder. But it was later ruled she was too unwell to stand trial and what is known as a ‘trial of facts’ was held at Newcastle Crown Court, where a jury this week agreed she did the acts of killing her mum.
Sharon visited Carey while she was on remand at HMP Low Newton, in Durham, but her girlfriend did not believe who she was saying she thought she was a ‘clone’ and the real Sharon had been killed.
Police at the home of Odessa Carey, 73, where her headless body was found in North Seaton, Ashington, Northumberland, in April last year
Sharon made contact with a close friend of Carey’s in Manchester who showed her messages from 18 months before the killing in which she said she believed her family and friends in Ashington were all clones.
Carey was moved to Rampton Secure Hospital, in Nottinghamshire, in October and Sharon did not see again until she gave evidence at the trial last week.
She said: ‘When I was in court I made eye contact with her and she wasn’t there.
‘Her eyes were black. It was like something had possessed her. It was her body but her mind was gone.
‘The person I love just wasn’t there. I believe there’s a demon took over her body and her mind.
Sharon continued: ‘But until she starts fighting back she’s not going to get any better.’
Sharon firmly believes mental health services let both Carey and her mum down and that her partner should have been sectioned long ago.
But she is now living in hope that doctors at Rampton will be able to do something to help. And she is now trying to arrange a visit.
Sharon said: ‘She needed really good professional help. I tried and tired. I just hope these psychiatrists at Rampton can get through to her.
‘If she had had the help in the first place maybe it wouldn’t have got so bad. I’m hoping for a miracle. I feel like going to the library and getting books on schizophrenia to see if I can help.’
‘I’ll never leave her. I’m going to try and see her.
‘I’m going to get in touch with Rampton and see what I can do. At least I know she’s safe now.’
Gary O’Hare, executive director of Nursing and Chief Operating Officer at Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘We would like to offer our sincere and heartfelt sympathies to Odessa Carey’s family and friends at this sad and difficult time.
‘We understand that NHS England will be commissioning an independent investigation to see what lessons can be learnt from this tragic event.
‘We have undertaken our own internal investigation which will feed into this process.’