Marcie Reid, 30, was just three years old when her mum’s brother stabbed her biological dad, Graham Binks, to death inside her home in Croxley Green, Herts.
A beauty queen whose violent father was killed by her uncle is determined to prove that her harrowing childhood won’t dictate her destiny. Marcie Reid, now 30 and residing in York, was merely three years old when her mum’s brother fatally stabbed her biological father, Graham Binks, in their Croxley Green home in Hertfordshire.
She and her three petrified siblings cowered together in bed as a vicious brawl erupted downstairs between the two men, who had been out on a drinking session. Ex-security guard Binks had an extensive record of brutality towards Marcie’s mother Shirley – once shattering her jaw and routinely battering her until she was black and blue.
The father-of-four had demanded his wife terminate the pregnancy when they discovered she was expecting and she had attempted to escape him multiple times throughout their volatile marriage, reports the Mirror.
The seventeen-stone thug Binks had also unleashed his violence on Shirley’s younger brother on two occasions and had assaulted his own father-in-law. “My only memories of my father were of raised voices and being scared,” reveals Marcie, who will compete for the Miss Great Britain crown at the pageant’s 80th anniversary celebrations in October.
“I remember having to crawl under the TV – you couldn’t walk in front of it while he was watching. Little things like that.” On the evening of January 29, 1998, Binks was in an aggressive mood as he and Marcie’s uncle arrived back at the family residence following a night of heavy drinking.
He roused his wife from sleep to instigate a drunken quarrel, which escalated to him biting her on the arm. This led her to seek out her 24-year-old brother downstairs to understand why her husband was in such a foul mood.
A brawl ensued between the two men, causing Shirley to retreat to the hallway. “Dad stabbed my uncle with a screwdriver,” Marcie recounts, but unbeknownst to Binks, his brother-in-law had concealed a seven-inch carving knife in his trouser pocket, which he plunged into Binks’ chest and stomach three times.
When a terrified Shirley returned to the living room, she found her brother straddling her husband, drenched in his blood and still clutching the knife. She dialled emergency services, but Binks had succumbed to his injuries by the time he arrived at the hospital.
“All I remember from that night is my uncle coming upstairs and kissing all of us on the forehead. He told us, ‘You’re safe now, but I’m going away for a very long time. I love you lots,'” Marcie recalls.
Following her uncle’s imprisonment for manslaughter, Marcie’s mother suffered a mental breakdown and was admitted to hospital. The four young siblings were subsequently placed into care.
Initially, they stayed together in their first few placements, but were eventually separated – with social services sending the two eldest to boarding school.
Marcie and her younger sister Kim were relocated 13 times in six years, before finally finding solace with “the best foster parents ever”, Marion and Bob. These kind souls helped the girls piece together their fragmented childhoods.
They resided there for three years, during which Marion played a crucial role in maintaining the girls’ connection with their distressed mother.
Marcie reminisces about her childhood moniker, “My childhood nickname was Marcia Mouse, because I was scared of everything. Loud noises, shouting, men. I would avoid men for many, many years – all throughout school.”
She admits, “I was just petrified of boys and men, couldn’t be near them. I didn’t want to go outside, didn’t like noises. And it was all because of things that I’d witnessed and experienced.”
Once their mother had recovered sufficiently to return home, the two youngest girls were placed back under her care. However, their struggles were far from over.
The family’s financial situation was dire, forcing them to rely on food banks for sustenance and clothing.
Upon reaching an appropriate age, Shirley handed her daughter a pile of police reports and therapy notes she had preserved following Graham’s death.
“We’ve got reports of my brother aged six, trying to intervene when dad was hurting my mum,” she reveals. “He would say, ‘Stop it, stop hurting my mummy.’ It’s heartbreaking.”
Marcie also remembers her father’s sinister strategies to cut his wife off from the outside world.
“It got to the point where he would hold one of us kids hostage while he sent Mum to the shop, because he knew that she wouldn’t leave with just three of us and leave one child with him,” she recalls.
In one instance, prior to Marcie’s birth, Shirley had escaped the marital home with her eldest children, Lieselle and Nick. Unaware of the reason for their flight, Lieselle wished to speak to her father, leading Shirley to call him from a public payphone.
“After he hung up he called back the payphone and spoke to the operator,” Marcie recounts. “He said, ‘I’ve just spoken to my wife and her car’s broken down, can you give me the location of the payphone?’ And he found her. He used to find her, he used to turn up at women’s refuges when we would run away, which is why he started holding us hostage.”
Graham, an avid darts player, was mourned by the local community following his killing, as they were oblivious to his true nature behind closed doors.
“Our local community centre still has a darts trophy named after him in his memory, because he was such a great guy..”
Marcie’s uncle was released from prison after serving a three-year sentence. His first marriage ended, and she didn’t see him again until she was living back with her mum.
“One day, Mum told us her brother was coming round, but if we weren’t comfortable with that she could go out and meet him for a cup of tea,” she remembers.
“We all said it was fine for him to come over. When he arrived, my brother Nick – who would have been about 13 – walked straight up to him and shook his hand. He just said, ‘thank you.'”
Marcie’s personal healing journey only began in her twenties, after she left university due to depression. Her closest mate, Matt – now her long-term boyfriend – urged her to boost her self-esteem by participating in a beauty pageant.
“I bought a £40 dress – some of the girls spend thousands – and I was only going to do it once, but I ended up placing top 12 out of 60 girls,” she smiles. “I was like, ‘OK this is actually quite fun!””
In October, Marcie – an employee of the charity Action For Children – will compete against 39 other women for the title of Miss Great Britain, having secured the title of Miss York at the semi-finals in April.
Her mum and stepdad, who legally adopted all four children after meeting Shirley in hospital, will be cheering her on with pride.
Marcie is the first finalist ever to have been in care, and she takes pride in how far she’s progressed.
“Over 50% of care-leavers will experience homelessness, and a quarter of us will end up in the justice system at some point,” she said. “So that leaves you less than a 25% chance to actually just survive.
“Being care-experienced sets up so many additional barriers. I was always put into the lowest sets at school, because it was assumed I was stupid.”
Winning the Miss Great Britain title would, she expresses, “mean the world”. “I’d be over the moon,” she laughs. “I’d be able to show others that they can also achieve big things.
“For those of us with adverse childhood experiences, it’s not just about surviving; you can actually thrive, and you can be your own definition of success.”
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