Everything we know about Bobbi-Anne McCleod’s ‘merciless’ murder
‘She was kind, funny, and loyal. She was the best daughter, the best sister, and the best friend to so many people. Everybody who knew Bobbi loved her,’ says family
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Bobbi-Anne McCleod’s hopes and dreams were cruelly robbed from her last November when the 18-year-old was snatched from a bus stop and beaten to death in Plymouth.
New details about the harrowing case emerged on Thursday as Cody Ackland, a 24-year-old guitarist who confessed to her killing in April, was sentenced at Plymouth Crown Court to life in jail with a minimum term of 31 years.
Here’s what we know about her serial killer-obsessed murderer and why he chose her as his victim.
What happened to Bobbi-Anne McCleod last November?
Ms McLeod, who was only 5ft tall and looked young for her age, vanished from a bus stop in Leigham on Saturday 20 November last year. She was grabbed off a street near to where she lived by Ackland, who used violence to force her into his Ford Fiesta car.
Putting the semi-conscious teenager into the footwell of the vehicle, he drove her 20 miles to the Bellever Forest car park on Dartmoor where he killed her with a hammer. Ackland burnt her handbag and loaded her blooded body into his boot before driving 30 miles back towards Plymouth to Bovisand where he dumped her naked body in undergrowth.
He later threw away her clothes in an allotment before spending the next 48 hours socialising with friends.
On the Sunday afternoon, a day after killing Ms McLeod, Ackland enjoyed a pizza with friends, joined a rehearsal with his band Rakuda and drank into the small hours at a pub lock-in.
People who knew him well described him as “happier than usual”, saying the only time he was usually so joyful was when he was preparing for a gig.
He would later tell a psychiatrist the feelings of depression he had felt before murdering Ms McLeod had now gone and he was not feeling the same resentment as before “as if this violent act as rid him of these feelings”.
Ms McLeod’s body was discovered in undergrowth on the outskirts of Plymouth only after Ackland went to a police station to confess his crime and tell the authorities where he left her.
Who was Bobbi-Anne McCleod?
Speaking to The Independent earlier this week, Elle Butcher, an 18-year-old who knew Ms McLeod from school, described her friend as a “really gentle person”, adding: “A really kind person. We went to school together. She was a friend of mine.”
In a statement released on Thursday via Devon and Cornwall Police after the sentencing, Ms McCleod’s family described the teenager as “a beautiful girl who lit up our lives and the lives of everyone she ever met”.
The statement continued: “She was kind, funny, and loyal. She was the best daughter, the best sister, and the best friend to so many people. Everybody who knew Bobbi loved her.
Bobbi-Anne was so loved and had so many life plans; he cruelly ripped that life away from her and us. We can’t even contemplate a future without her in it.
“We have been robbed of our beautiful girl in the worst possible way and our lives will never be the same without her.
“I want Cody Ackland to know that he has taken away our world. We will never see her beautiful face or hear her laugh, see her get married or have the children she so wanted. So many everyday things have been taken away. Her not being here is still unimaginable.”
The teenager’s family said her death has “forever” altered their lives as they explained they were robbed of their chance to say goodbye to her.
“We can only imagine the things he did to her - the thoughts are continually going around in our minds,” her family added. “Why Bobbi-Anne? Why make her suffer? To know her final hours were spent being tortured destroys us inside.”
The statement went on: “Bobbi-Anne was so loved and had so many life plans; he cruelly ripped that life away from her and us.
”We can’t even contemplate a future without her in it. There will never be anything the justice system can impose that will ever come close to what he deserves.”
Who is Cody Ackland?
Ackland went to the same school as Ms McLeod – a mixed comprehensive called Tor Bridge High – but he was six years older than her.
He was the lead guitarist in a Plymouth-based indie band called Rakuda, who released their first EP in August last year. While the members of Rakuda announced in November they would disband “with immediate effect”, weeks later they announced they would be taking a “short hiatus from the music scene” with plans to re-form in the spring of 2022.
In court on Thursday, Richard Posner, prosecuting, told the court Ackland was leading “a double life” and harboured a fascination with serial killers in the UK, Australia, US and Russia.
Mr Posner said Ackland had conducted extensive searches about “their crimes, the aftermath of such crimes, and the bodies left behind in days leading up to Bobbi-Anne’s death”.
He said he had also been searching the web pages of DIY stores for “hammers, crowbars and cutting tools”.
In a police interview, Ackland presented a prepared statement taking full responsibility for the murder of Ms McLeod, the court heard.
The statement said: “I am fully responsible for the death of Bobbi-Anne, I have never met her before Saturday evening and I did not know her name, I took her from the bus stop on Sheepstoor Road.”
He said there was “nothing sexual about this attack”, emphasising that he had not touched Ms McLeod sexually “in any way”.
Mr Posner said Ackland “held such an unhealthy fascination and desire to imitate serial killers. His fascination was to become an unimaneagable wicked reality for Bobbi-Anne”.
Ray Tully QC, representing Ackland, said his client “grew up feeling angry, an anger that was turned inwards - what he perceived as his own inability to get on in the world and he struggled to articulate that but he tried”.
”He had sufficient insight to be worried about the path he was on.”
Mr Tully said Ackland had approached his GP, saying he did not feel “right, the same as other people”.
He said Ackland viewed the murder of Ms McLeod as “the culmination of everything that has gone on his life, stemming from childhood”.
Mr Tully added that psychiatrists describe him as “leading a sad and isolated life from a young age, someone who is self absorbed but not in a narcissistic way, it is not self-loving we are dealing with here, it is self-loathing”.
“He grew up to hate himself, angry with the world, angry with everything, and he did at time seek assistance and help about that, but it wasn’t particularly forthcoming.”
In the week before killing Ms McLeod, Ackland carried out further searches for serial killers, Ted Bundy, Fred West and “Fred West’s house”.
He also looked up Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento, and “Richard Chase bodies”.
Mr Posner, prosecuting, said: “His interest in the macabre presents as deep-rooted; a fascination with death, murder and murderers and the means to commit murder.”
After he handed himself in, investigators went on to discover more than three thousand images of the bodies of murder victims, murder weapons and bloodstained clothing.
What did the judge say about the case?
Judge Robert Linford, sitting at Plymouth Crown Court, told Ackland: “On November 20 last year you subjected Ms McLeod to a prolonged, savage and merciless attack.”
He continued: “She was a young, popular and much-loved person, you caused outrage and fear in this part of the country and with good reason, it was utterly motiveless.”
Judge Lindford told Ackland that he would remain indefinitely a “highly dangerous person”, adding: “There is a strong possibility you may never be released from prison.”
Additional reporting by wires
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