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Dale Cregan Gets a Whole-Life Term for Murdering Two Greater Manchester Police Officers and a Father and Son

Cregan admitted all four murders during an 18-week trial at Preston Crown Court. Four co-defendants received 33 to 35 years over the Shorts' killings.

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Illustration of a brick crown court building in the rain, with a police officer in a high-visibility jacket and media vans outside. Not the actual court.

Dale Cregan killed two Greater Manchester police officers in 2012 after two killings tied to a family feud. On June 13, 2013, a judge ordered that he never be released.

Mr. Justice Holroyde passed the whole-life sentence at Preston Crown Court at the end of an 18-week trial, during which Cregan admitted murdering PCs Fiona Bone, 32, and Nicola Hughes, 23, and father and son David and Mark Short, as well as three attempted murders. The judge said Cregan had shown "a cold-blooded and ruthless determination to end the lives of PCs Bone and Hughes." The jury cleared him of attempting to murder a woman whose home was attacked minutes after David Short was killed, but found him guilty of the attack itself.

Mark Short, 23, was shot dead at the Cotton Tree pub in Droylsden on May 25, 2012, after a decade-long feud between families. Cregan was arrested in June in connection with that killing and released on bail; in August, he and two other men killed David Short at his home in Clayton, and Cregan went on the run. On September 18, 2012, he lured the two constables to Abbey Gardens in Mottram with a fake burglary report, killed them and then walked into Hyde police station. Four other men received sentences of 33 to 35 years for their roles in the Shorts' killings, and a fifth was jailed for seven years for assisting an offender.

A BBC report on the verdicts said Cregan lured the officers to Mottram on September 28, while a photo caption in the same report and the BBC's 2012 coverage gave the date as September 18.

Sources