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A man with a history of violence toward former partners has been sentenced to life imprisonment after killing his fiancée. Jack Johns, aged 53, was convicted of murdering 51-year-old Malgorzata Wiktor, also known as Gosia, following a relationship that lasted six months. Leeds Crown Court was told that Johns initially “love bombed” Gosia when they met, creating an intense and overwhelming dynamic.
Concerns had been raised by Gosia’s friends and family about Johns’s behaviour, which they described as “intense” in the days leading up to her death on 11 June. During sentencing, Judge Tom Bayliss KC characterized Johns as an “obsessive, possessive, domineering and unstable individual,” handing down a minimum term of 29 years in prison and warning that Johns is “an extremely dangerous man.” The judge highlighted the presence of “classic markers of coercing and controlling behaviour” throughout their relationship. According to prosecutor Geraldine Kelly KC, those close to Gosia described Johns’s early actions as “overwhelming” and “love bombing,” adding that Gosia herself had recently expressed discomfort with his “over-the-top behaviour and affection.”
Gosia, who had moved to the UK from Poland about 20 years ago, was living in the Belle Isle area of Leeds with her son, Gracjan. Throughout the relationship, she reported feeling “suffocated” due to Johns’s clingy and overly emotional conduct. Gosia described him as being “too intense,” constantly monitoring her communications and exerting pressure on her. The couple became engaged within three months, a pace Gosia found rushed, which contributed to her unease. By May, prosecutors said, Gosia had begun to fear Johns. A colleague noted a change in her demeanour, describing her transition from “loud and vibrant” to “quiet and sad.”
The day before her death, Gosia sent a voice message expressing frustration that Johns was not open about his past. The following day, police responded to a call after colleagues alerted Gosia’s son that she had not arrived at work. At the scene, she was found dead, having suffered multiple skull fractures and stab wounds. In his victim impact statement, her son Gracjan described his mother as “the kindest, most loving and trusting person I have ever known,” adding that those privileged to know her loved her deeply and lamenting that she was taken away suddenly without a chance to say goodbye. Gosia’s sister, Anna, expressed the profound impact of the loss on their family, stating, “Something died in every one of us that day” and emphasizing that Johns’s crime did not just affect the day Gosia died.
During the sentencing hearing, it was revealed that Johns had a violent past under his previous name, Colin French. He had been convicted of offences against two former partners in 2006 and 2016 in different parts of the country. In 2006, Johns was given an Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence after setting fire to his ex-girlfriend’s home while she and her family were inside. Ten years later, he attempted to kidnap another woman he had dated by hiding in the boot of her car. The court heard that Johns’s license period for the latter offence only ended in 2024. Judge Bayliss pointed out “a number of strikingly similar circumstances” in his previous crimes and remarked that it was “unfortunate to say the least that an extremely dangerous man was in a position, under a new name, to start a relationship” with Gosia. Johns declined to discuss the details surrounding Gosia’s death, which the judge described as “the culmination of a campaign of coercive and controlling behaviour,” with the murder representing “the final assertion of control.”
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