‘Friend’ who raped and murdered Keeley Bunker after night out jailed for 29 years
A man who raped and strangled a childhood friend before dumping her half-naked body in a pond was described as ‘truly evil’ after being jailed for at least 29 years.
Wesley Streete, 20, attacked Keeley Bunker in Wigginton Park, Tamworth, Staffordshire, after offering to walk her home following a birthday night out.
The supermarket worker – supposed to be a ‘trusted friend’ of the petite 20-year-old – strangled her to death then tried to conceal her body under a pile of branches on September 19 last year.
Keeley had gone to watch rapper Aitch at Birmingham’s O2 Academy before heading to Snobs nightclub where chilling footage shows her smiling and dancing with Streete just hours before he brutally killed her. She was offered a bed at a friend Monique Riggon’s house but told her: ‘I’ve got Wes, Wes will walk me back, it’ll be fine.’
He repeatedly lied about what happened to Ms Bunker when quizzed by her worried relatives and even callously pretended to join the search party looking for her.
Streete was also found guilty of two additional counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault against three other victims, said to have happened in previous years, and was jailed for life at Stafford Crown Court. He was ordered to serve a minimum 29 years behind bars.
The Crown Prosecution Service welcomed the sentence, saying: ‘Wesley Streete will now face the consequences of his truly evil actions.’
Jailing him, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker said: ‘[Keeley] told Monique she would be safe at home, as you had offered to walk with her back to her house.
‘Unfortunately nothing could have been further from truth.’
The judge added: ‘Because, on the way back to her house, I am satisfied you persuaded Keeley to divert to the rugby club, probably on the pretext of going for a smoke.
‘However, what took place in Wigginton Park is you proceeded to rape Keeley Bunker, in the course of which you murdered her by throttling her, in all probability by placing her in a choke-hold for sufficient period of time to kill her.’
He added the choke-hold would have lasted ‘minutes, rather than seconds’.
The judge went on: ‘When you had finished with her, you decided to hide Keeley’s now lifeless body by depositing it in the brook, covering it up with branches.
‘You then walked back to your home, went to bed and slept.’
After Streete’s conviction on Wednesday, Debbie Watkins, Ms Bunker’s mother, said she had been ‘robbed’ of her ‘precious and beautiful’ daughter.
Ms Bunker’s sister had described her as ‘one of the most vibrant, caring and beautiful souls this Earth has ever seen’.
Her partially-submerged body was found by her horrified uncle, Jason Brown, during a massive search effort involving family, friends and police.
He told jurors how he saw hair and ‘an arm with a bracelet on’, and ‘just started shouting: “No!”’
A nearby witness described Mr Brown’s cries of alarm as ‘the most horrendous scream or shout I’ve ever heard in my life’.
Earlier that day – hours after Streete had concealed Ms Bunker’s body – he bumped into Mr Brown, lying to his face about where he had last seen his niece.
Asked in court about the deceit, Streete said: ‘I couldn’t tell him that I’d slept with her and accidentally strangled her – I just went with it.’
The promising footballer also told police that when he had left Ms Bunker ‘she seemed happy – 110%’. It was another lie.
Streete later changed his account at least four times in the lead-up to his trial.
He ‘carefully crafted’ an account to fit the evidence, later claiming to have done so because he was ‘scared’ and ‘embarrassed’ to tell people what had really happened.
Streete insisted Ms Bunker had been a willing participant in sex despite, by his own admission, being a childhood friend who had never entertained any ideas of romance.
By the time she and Streete had crossed the park shortly before 4am, her mind was on sleeping in her own bed, as she told best friend Monique Riggon earlier that morning.
Later that day she was due to have a second interview for her dream job as a teaching assistant.
Jacob Hallam QC, prosecuting, asked Streete: ‘It was something she really wanted – so getting home, back to her house that morning was important to Keeley, wasn’t it?’
He replied: ‘Yes.’
But he tried to paint a different picture, telling jurors how Ms Bunker was ‘flirting’ and ‘teasing’ him as they walked home.
Streete said he asked her ‘Do you want to have sex?’, adding that she said ‘Yes’ before he ‘accidentally killed her’ after wrapping his forearm around her neck.
But Ms Bunker’s injuries told a different story.
She was found to have self-inflicted scratch marks on her neck, most likely caused when she tried to prise herself from Streete’s grasp.
His lies were also exposed by other evidence.
Detectives, using GPS data recorded by his phone, showed him in the park near to the scene of murder, at the relevant time, and making repeated visits back to where he had hidden the body.
CCTV also captured the two walking together through Tamworth and later near a rugby clubhouse, at the very edge of the park.
The chilling, grainy black-and-white footage showed Streete first hugging Ms Bunker before, a few seconds later, he followed her out of frame and into the darkness.
Within minutes of that final shot, Streete launched his attack.
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