What EastEnders actress was murdered? The two cases, three years apart, and the convictions that followed

The question has two answers, and both sit within the same grim stretch of the 2010s. Gemma McCluskie, who played Kerry Skinner, was killed in March 2012. Sian Blake, who played Frankie Pierre, was killed in December 2015 — along with her two young sons. Both were murdered by men close to them, and both cases ended in convictions. Here are the facts of each.

Gemma McCluskie, 2012

McCluskie played Kerry Skinner across 41 episodes between October 2000 and February 2001. On 1 March 2012 — hours after attending the opening ceremony of the new Royal London Hospital — she was killed by her brother Tony after a row at the home they shared in Bethnal Green, east London. CCTV captured him leaving the house the next day carrying a suitcase; it contained her remains, which he dumped in the Regent's Canal. The body was recovered and identified within days, and Tony McCluskie was charged with her murder on 10 March 2012.

Sian Blake, 2015

Blake played soul singer Frankie Pierre in 56 episodes across 1996 and 1997, then walked away from the soap after receiving hate mail over her character's affair storyline — viewers, she said at the time, struggled to separate fact from fiction. She later retrained as a sign language teacher and interpreter. On 11 December 2015, she was diagnosed with terminal motor neurone disease. Two days later, she and her sons — Zachary, eight, and Amon, four — were seen alive for the last time.

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Her partner, Arthur Simpson-Kent, spoke to police on 16 December, the day the family was reported missing, and flew to Ghana on 19 December. From there:

• 3 January 2016 — Blake's car is found in Bethnal Green.
• 5 January 2016 — police search the family bungalow in Erith, south-east London, and find three bodies buried in the garden. All three died of head and neck injuries.
• 9 January 2016 — Ghanaian police arrest Simpson-Kent in the coastal town of Butre, carrying a knife.
• 12 February 2016 — having agreed to return voluntarily, he lands at Heathrow, where he is arrested and charged with all three murders.

Blake's sister told the BBC in January 2016 that Sian had wanted to leave Simpson-Kent "a long time ago".

The convictions

Tony McCluskie admitted manslaughter, claiming a "loss of control", but denied murder. The jury didn't accept it: he was found guilty on 30 January 2013 and sentenced to life with a minimum of 20 years.

Simpson-Kent pleaded guilty to all three murders on 10 June 2016. He claimed the killings were part of an agreed murder-suicide pact prompted by Blake's illness; prosecutors said there was no evidence any such pact existed. On 5 October 2016, Mr Justice Singh handed him a whole life order at the Old Bailey — no minimum term, no parole.

Met Police DCI Graeme Gwyn called it "a violent and completely senseless act of murder", noting that Simpson-Kent never gave a reason for what he did.

What came after

The Metropolitan Police referred itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission on 6 January 2016 over its handling of the Blake missing persons inquiry, having identified issues with how the case was graded in its first weeks. Simpson-Kent took his sentence to the Court of Appeal in July 2017; he remains under a whole life order. Both cases were later covered in Channel 5's 2017 documentary The EastEnders Murders: True Crime, Real Tragedy.

For the record: Blake's final credit arrived in 2015, shortly before her death — a voice role, Yugiri Mistwalker, in the video game Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward.

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