A woman who stabbed her ex-partner in the heart on Christmas Day after seeing his Tinder profile has been found guilty of his murder.
Kirsty Carless, 33, plunged a knife into the heart of 31-year-old Louis Price in the early hours of 25 December 2024, in an attack “motivated by anger and jealousy and fuelled by cocaine and alcohol,” after a friend sent her a picture of his Tinder profile, Stafford Crown Court heard.
Carless had been on police bail for strangling Price the month before.
After about a day of deliberations on Wednesday, a jury of seven men and five women found her guilty of murder and possession of an offensive weapon by unanimous verdicts regarding the fatal stabbing.
Carless was also found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in connection with an incident in November 2024. She was cleared of intentional strangulation in relation to the same incident.
Carless, of Cannock, Staffordshire, had been at the pub drinking double vodka and cokes with a male friend on Christmas Eve, the trial was told.
She had sex with the male three times at his home before a female friend sent her a screenshot of Price’s Tinder profile at around 1.30am on Christmas Day, which the court heard made her angry.
Carless took a taxi back to her house, picked up a kitchen knife, and got another taxi to Mr Price’s parents’ home in Norton Canes, where she expected to find him with a woman.
CCTV footage captured her sprinting up the front path into the house and then following him through the garden, before he was later discovered with a single stab wound to the chest on the conservatory floor.
Carless made 45 calls to Price between 2.15am and 2.44am while waiting for a taxi. She only briefly paused what the prosecution described as a “barrage” of calls to contact the taxi company and check on its arrival.
After arriving at the address around 3am, Carless asked the taxi driver to wait outside while she went into the property.
The taxi driver reported that about 30 seconds after Carless entered the property with a key, he heard a “very loud and prolonged” scream.
Carless was “anxious and sweating” as she got back into the taxi less than two minutes after arriving. She asked the driver to take her to her parents’ home, where she confessed to what she had done, and the police were called.
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Price, a father of six children, was considered by police to be “at very high risk of domestic abuse,” and Carless was on police bail at the time of the fatal stabbing, after strangling him in November 2024.
During this incident, Price called 999 to say Carless had poured bleach over expensive tracksuits, after putting them in the bin, had thrown a glass candle holder at him, pulled him down the stairs, and choked him.
Police body-worn camera footage showed him in tears, telling an officer, “It’s f****** embarrassing… this can’t keep happening, man.”
In a witness statement following the incident, he described the relationship, which began in 2021, as “generally abusive,” saying she prevented him from doing activities he enjoyed, like playing football, and had physically assaulted him.
Police were also called to several previous incidents, including one in March 2023, when Carless claimed that Price had punched her and had been violent. He was arrested, but Carless later retracted her statement.
On another occasion, a neighbour recalled seeing Carless strike Price in the ribs with a metal pole outside her house.
In her testimony at the trial, Carless said she had no memory of stabbing Price, insisted she was “not a violent person,” and stated she had only gone to his address because she believed he had taken money from a card she kept at her home.
Carless stated that she grabbed a knife to destroy the caravan where he was staying in his parents’ backyard, that she “panicked” after stabbing him, and then fled.
Judge Justice Choudhury said Carless would be sentenced on Thursday.
