It has now been nearly a quarter of a century since I last saw my little brother Stuart Campbell, on a muggy afternoon in August 2001.

Although as boys we had been incredibly close – born only 14 months apart – by then we had grown apart.

Back then, Stuart was a 44-year-old self-employed builder. But his personality? I didn’t really know him any more. Quiet, I suppose. Private. Didn’t drink alcohol. No close friends. He lived with his wife Debbie, who was expecting their first child, in a residential street in Grays, Essex. He worked locally, going from job to job in his blue Transit van.

By contrast, I enjoyed a more glamorous lifestyle in Paris as a fashion journalist. We had little in common – except for a difficult past that neither of us wanted to dwell on. The reason I had travelled to see Stuart was not for a long overdue catch-up, however, but because it had been 45 days since 15-year-old Danielle Jones – his wife’s niece – had disappeared.

And, to my horror, police suspected it was Stuart who had abducted her. It was a high-profile case, with Danielle’s school photo appearing all over the newspapers and TV, with missing posters everywhere near her home in East Tilbury, Essex.

The search for Danielle had lasted weeks, covering miles of terrain, with divers searching local lakes. Police were still hoping to find Danielle alive, locked away somewhere with food and water. And that, as his brother, I might get Stuart to reveal her whereabouts – or at least give some clues.

A school photograph of Danielle Jones released after she went missing aged 15

A school photograph of Danielle Jones released after she went missing aged 15

At first, unable to believe my brother could be involved in such a sickening crime, I’d hoped it would turn out to be a hideous case of mistaken identity.

After all, only five years earlier, Danielle had been a bridesmaid at Stuart and Debbie’s wedding alongside my own daughter Fiona – little girls then aged ten and eight dressed in matching pink satin gowns. But that day, when we came face to face, I noticed how Stuart lacked any of the outrage I’d expect from someone wrongly accused of such a terrible crime.

Instead, the overwhelming impression I got from him was self-pity. He seemed more concerned about his own stress levels than the disappearance of an innocent schoolgirl. I came away convinced of his guilt. It was devastating.

Afterwards, the police continued to piece together their case against Stuart, who refused to confess or disclose the location of Danielle’s body. Despite this, they compiled overwhelming circumstantial evidence that he had abducted, murdered and disposed of his niece.

In December 2002, Stuart was found guilty and jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years. But, as with any murderer, his release depends on the judgment of the Parole Board. He has since made two parole applications, the most recent just a few months ago.

Given his lack of repentance, his release is an appalling prospect. Particularly as he still refuses to reveal what he did with Danielle, cruelly depriving her parents, Tony and Linda, of the chance to lay their beloved daughter to rest and finally find some peace.

The introduction of Helen’s Law in 2020 places an obligation on the Parole Board to take into account an offender’s refusal to disclose information, such as the location of a victim’s body, when deciding on parole. So perhaps there’s still a chance Stuart will do the right thing.

The pain Danielle’s family have lived with since June 2001 is unfathomable. But what is it like to be the brother of a murderer?

Rightly, after a brutal murder, sympathy is with the victim’s family and friends. But few can appreciate the impact such a crime also has on the perpetrator’s family, who often feel tainted by association.

Then there’s the emotional impact. How do you cope when you discover your younger brother – the once bright and cherubic little boy who had a beautiful singing voice and went to private school – is a sex offender and a killer? And worse still, that the clues were there all along, but you had never realised.

Needless to say it upends everything you thought you knew – not only about him, but about yourself, too.

For a long time, my best course of action seemed to be denial – pretending not to know or care about Stuart.

In the aftermath of his conviction I tried to run away. And for a while I managed to escape. I moved to America, where I sometimes forgot I had a brother serving life for killing his teenage niece.

Eventually, though, the situation became intolerable. On the one hand, I couldn’t go on pretending that I didn’t remember, or that it was out of my hands, all in the past, or nothing to do with me.

On the other, even though I didn’t commit the crime, I felt certain it would radically alter how people saw me. I felt trapped.

As well as the shame, I felt a nauseating fear of being judged along with him. I began to wonder if we shared the same genetic predisposition, the same pathological tendencies. I was left wondering about DNA and genetic inheritance. What exactly makes someone a killer? Nature? Nurture? Or both?

I came back again and again to that time, many years earlier, when a vicious row with a girlfriend had got physical and I slapped her back, leaving her with a black eye.

I wondered how I could ever have raised my hands to a woman; wondered how deeply I had suppressed that memory, and if there were others even more shameful about to bubble up. And, worst of all, I wondered whether there’s a latent predator in my psyche, like Stuart, just waiting to be triggered.

After all, Stuart and I not only shared the same genes but we experienced the same intensely violent childhood in Tilbury.

Our Scottish father Alec Campbell, a chef in the Merchant Navy, had pursued our mother Molly after they met in a pub. But Alec was not the stable, loving provider that this warm and gentle woman deserved.

A heavy drinker, he regularly and savagely beat her, though she refused to be cowed. As Stuart and I got older we became targets, too.

It was one of the many things that made us so fiercely loyal to each other. But there were differences between us, too. For a start, we didn’t look at all alike. Stuart had the pretty boy looks – the thick, wavy hair and softer features of my mother – while I inherited my father’s straight, dark hair; hooded eyes; and high cheekbones.

Our temperaments differed, too. Stuart was charming and daring, I was awkward and cautious. But being so close in age, at school Stuart and I always defended each other against numerous bullies.

When I was 11 and Stuart was ten, Mum found the courage to divorce our father. She hoped it would herald a more positive future for both of us, but at secondary school our paths soon diverged.

I passed the 11-plus and got into grammar school. Stuart didn’t.

He began rebelling at school and got into serious trouble with the police after shooting a kid with an air rifle. Random violence was an everyday hazard in the rough end of Tilbury where we grew up, but Stuart had shot this child in the forehead at close range. The police began talking about prosecution for GBH and an approved school.

Instead Mum, ever resourceful, found Eccles Hall, a boarding school for ‘bright but maladjusted’ boys – mostly the offspring of foreign diplomats and civil servants

These parents normally paid a small fortune to offload their sons, but the school had a placement system for smart lads from the worthier end of the working class.

Against all odds, she gained what she thought would be a superior education for her fiery younger son, in a nurturing environment.

Killer Stuart Campbell, second left, poses for the camera with his bride Debbie, his mother and brother Alix, and Danielle, then aged ten

Killer Stuart Campbell, second left, poses for the camera with his bride Debbie, his mother and brother Alix, and Danielle, then aged ten

But it didn’t work out for Stuart. In the holidays he came home as someone cold and arrogant. From then on we started to grow apart – and eventually to fear and mistrust each other. By our mid-teens we were both quick to throw a punch, but Stuart took things further. Soon I realised he was carrying knives and, at one point, even an axe.

Still, by 2001, the year of Danielle’s death, I thought of Stuart as a once-troubled boy who’d finally gone straight and settled down.

Yes, he had been violent as a kid but, like me, he’d grown out of that.

I’d got lucky. Aged 18, I befriended a married couple called Pete and Viv, young teachers who also worked part-time at the local youth club.

They treated me like a smart and funny kid, as opposed to a nasty yob. I began spending evenings at their flat where we’d talk about books and art. They encouraged me to apply to art school, setting me on the path that led to me becoming a journalist and writer – and adopting my mother’s maiden name along the way to break with my past.

In 1996 I moved to Paris, living a raffish, hedonistic lifestyle in the French capital, where I wrote about fashion and the glamorous set. Stuart, meanwhile, had become a thief and served multiple prison sentences from the age of 18. But he’d served his time and – what’s the cliche? – paid his debt to society.

He had never hurt anybody, never committed any crimes of gratuitous or sexual violence. That was what I believed, anyway.

It was only after his arrest – after Mum had called in tears to tell me the police wanted to speak to Stuart about a missing teenager, and I realised with horror that she was talking about Danielle – that I learned the truth about his spells in prison.

For the first five years I wrote to him in prison in the hope he’d tell me where Danielle’s body was – and give her parents some peace. But he never responded

During one of my chats with the police, they asked if I knew about Stuart’s history of sexual violence towards underage girls. I was astounded. I’d always believed the first time he went to prison, in 1977, aged 19, was for handling stolen goods.

Now, I learned Stuart had been convicted of beating up a 16-year-old girl and stealing her purse. He hit her so hard that he left her with two black eyes. And then he sexually assaulted her.

And that was just the start of it, the detective continued.

For the next ten minutes he recounted the ugly, brutal crimes my brother had been accused of down the years. Some that he had been convicted of, others he’d managed to walk away from. None of which I’d known about.

After Stuart was arrested and his photo appeared in the media, the officer told me numerous women came forward claiming he had either assaulted, stalked or harassed them.

His unhealthy obsession with underage girls had seen him set himself up as a photographer – advertising his services producing ‘portfolios for new and established models’ as a ruse to take indecent photos of them.

It emerged Stuart was sending Danielle – his 15-year-old niece – inappropriate texts such as ‘Hi, sexy legs’. On the morning of her disappearance, Danielle had been seen talking to a man in a blue Transit van just like Stuart’s.

Alix and, left, his younger brother Stuart when they were growing up

Alix and, left, his younger brother Stuart when they were growing up

In the loft of his house, police found blood-stained stockings with both his and Danielle’s DNA on them. They also found her lip gloss. Mobile phone location evidence disproved his alibi – he said he’d been at a homewares store when Danielle went missing.

An analysis of text messages supposedly sent to Stuart by Danielle revealed they were almost certainly written by Stuart. In December 2002, at the end of an 11-week trial, the jury took less than eight hours to find him guilty of Danielle’s abduction and murder. Reading the reports from Paris, I felt thankful it was over, but no relief. Instead I was numb, a throbbing mass of dull misery.

Today, my brother is still incarcerated in HMP Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Western Europe’s largest maximum-security prison, it houses more than 700 of the UK’s most dangerous offenders. Apparently, even the guards call it Monster Mansion. For the first five years, I wrote to him, more than anything else in the hope that he’d tell me where Danielle was. But he never responded.

Today, I have no idea what he thinks or feels, or whether he has ever felt the slightest remorse.

So I ask myself: ‘How could Stuart become so evil?’

While researching my book, My Brother The Killer, I learned the retired headmaster of Stuart’s private boarding school had been convicted of sexually abusing young boys at precisely the time my brother was a pupil. By then this headmaster was in his late 70s. Facing a lengthy prison sentence, he’d committed suicide.

Stuart never mentioned any abuse, and it’s not an excuse, but I’ve often wondered if that might explain how he turned out.

We will likely never know what tortured combination of nature and circumstance turned him into such a monster.

For my own part, after years of living with grief, shame and anxiety, I found some kind of catharsis in writing about this terrible tale. Telling our story has allowed me to escape the cage of guilt by association. The book details many of Stuart’s worst secrets, exposing the lies he constructed to deceive his wife and her family, as well as his own. I’m sure Stuart didn’t like the book, but I’m certain his vanity would have compelled him to read it.

Stuart and I shared a traumatic childhood, so I dedicated My Brother The Killer to my mother, daughter and wife, because they all helped me to understand and process that trauma. My wife Sarah in particular, whom I met in 2005, has helped me to heal many deep wounds.

I wonder sometimes if I was simply a lot luckier than Stuart, given we took such very different paths. For what it’s worth, I still can’t believe he set out to kill Danielle. I still want to think it was a confrontation that got out of hand and that he panicked and tried to cover up his horrible crime.

Our mother still loves Stuart, the way only a mother can. Even though she’s now 92, and despite all the pain he has caused her, she still worries about him.

It breaks my heart that he doesn’t have the decency to think of her. When my book was published, he stopped writing to our mum, stopped sending her birthday and Christmas cards. It was petty and vindictive, but it doesn’t surprise me. Even after all these years, it seems Stuart is still thinking primarily about himself.

Our brotherly connection means I still cannot say I hate Stuart, though obviously I can never love him as I once did.

For Danielle’s relatives, however, all that matters is that they can say goodbye to their daughter. Almost 24 years on from her death, I still hope that one day Stuart does the right thing and tells them where she is buried.

Extracted from My Brother The Killer: How A Boy Became A Murderer by Alix Sharkey (£16.99, Mudlark) © Alix Sharkey 2021. To order a copy for £8.99 (offer valid to 17/05/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.

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