The murder initially went unsolved until June 1994, when Carr attacked and stabbed another pupil at Collingwood College Comprehensive School for no apparent reason and then repeatedly boasted about the murder of Rackliff to friends and family and in her diary entries made in prison.
32 Facts About Sharon Carr
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Sharon Carr was convicted of the murder in 1997, attracting much media interest due to her young age and the brutality of the killing.
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Sharon Carr was ordered to serve at least 14 years' imprisonment but has remained imprisoned long after this minimum tariff expired due to her disruptive behaviour in prison.
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Sharon Carr was born in Belize on 21 December 1979 and was brought up by her mother and stepfather.
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Sharon Carr was one of four children and grew up in great poverty.
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The incident caused the couple to be hospitalised with burns, and Sharon Carr's mother was charged with assault.
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At school, Sharon Carr was initially described as polite and helpful by teachers.
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Sharon Carr was briefly put into foster care, but she returned home after only one month away.
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On 7 June 1994, the second anniversary of Rackliff's murder, Sharon Carr attacked a 13-year-old fellow pupil with a knife, for no apparent reason, in the toilets at Collingwood College Comprehensive School.
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Sharon Carr stabbed the victim in the back, causing a lung puncture; the attack was stopped when five students entered the toilets and intervened.
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The victim said that Sharon Carr was smiling and appeared happy during the attack.
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Sharon Carr did not return home that day and was found on school grounds the next morning; after being arrested, she told officers that she enjoyed stabbing cats and had beheaded a dog.
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Sharon Carr was charged with two counts of actual bodily harm for this in addition to the charges for the attack at Collingwood College.
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Sharon Carr was convicted in December 1994 and sentenced to be detained "at Her Majesty's pleasure".
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Sharon Carr was initially held in various psychiatric units but continued to regularly seriously assault other females, and so was transferred to an all-boys unit at Aycliffe Secure Centre.
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Sharon Carr admitted to attacking a prison officer who she said she had a 'crush' on and talked about it to a probation officer.
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Sharon Carr graphically described one particular injury and provided details that the police had deliberately withheld, meaning that she had knowledge that only the killer would have.
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Sharon Carr knew that a bracelet had been stolen from Rackliff, which police had not revealed.
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Sharon Carr helped police film a reconstruction of the murder in which she acted out the murder and, when questioned about the attack, repeatedly laughed about the details.
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Police found that Sharon Carr had a long history of cruelty to animals, having once decapitated a dog with a spade, and concluded that she probably had a form of psychopathic disorder.
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Sharon Carr continued to write her boasts about the murder even after being questioned by the police, and in January 1996 gave a further series of confessions to prison officers that she had a 'crush' on.
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Sharon Carr was charged with the murder of Rackliff in May 1996.
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On 25 March 1997, after a month-long trial at Winchester Crown Court, Sharon Carr was convicted of murder.
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The conviction meant that Sharon Carr was officially Britain's youngest ever female murderer, having been only 12 at the time of the killing.
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Sharon Carr received a minimum tariff of 14 years imprisonment after her trial.
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Sharon Carr was later transferred to Broadmoor Hospital in 1998.
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Sharon Carr's warrant stated that she no longer required treatment or that no effective treatment could be given.
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Sharon Carr appealed against this decision in 2020, but this was denied on the grounds that she had yet to provide any significant evidence of a reduction in risk.
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Category A prison supervisors at Bronzefield reported that Sharon Carr was still evidencing incidents of volatile relationships and was continuing to have paranoid thoughts.
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Sharon Carr had disclosed the desire to murder another prisoner.
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In 2010, Sharon Carr's case was again discussed in the press when another British child, 15-year-old Lorraine Thorpe, became Britain's youngest convicted female double murderer.
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Sharon Carr's case returned to the news in 2016 when two female children were convicted of the murder of a vulnerable woman named Angela Wrightson, which led to comparisons with Sharon Carr's case.