The BBC have been flooded by complaints about a report on a murderer who led a man to his death and livestreamed the killing of a cat months before.

Scarlet Blake, a transgender woman, copied a Netflix “true crime” killer when she skinned a cat and placed it in a kitchen blender while live-streaming herself on the instruction of her American lover, before moving on to murder. Blake was jailed for 24 years.

The BBC reported on the case on February 18 this year, but in its broadcast on the one o'clock case did not make clear that Blake was a transgender woman.

Now it has emerged that 121 complaints were made to the broadcaster for not mentioning this issue.
Its most recent report outlining complaints listed the 121 figure and said: "BBC News (1pm 18/02/2024 Scarlet Blake’s transgender status not made clear."

In July 2021, Blake battered Jorge Martin Carreno with a vodka bottle as he returned from a night out, then strangled him and threw his body into the shallows of the River Cherwell in Oxford.

The 26-year-old boasted of the murder to her partner Ashlynn Bell and “revelled” in her crime, returning to the scene twice to take photographs of the memorial left by Carreno’s grieving family, which she used to burnish her “credentials as a killer”.

Blake, seen only as a masked figure on CCTV, evaded capture by the police for two years until a fight led Bell to call Thames Valley police and reveal the identity of the killer.

Blake was last month handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 24 years, after a jury returned a guilty verdict following a trial.

“Jorge Carreno was taken from his friends and family because you, Scarlet Blake, killed him,” said Mr Justice Chamberlain, passing sentence at Oxford crown court. “It was the culmination of a plan you had been considering and formulating for months.

“During your evidence to the court, you used the language of psychiatry and psychology, and adopted the persona of a cat. You talked about the difficulties you had transitioning since childhood to live as a woman and your troubled relationship with your parents.

"What you did is not the fault of a society that did not accept you. It was not the fault of your parents. The decision to kill was entirely yours.”

He ruled that the decision to kill was because Blake thought her partner “would find it sexually exciting”, adding: “You said you killed because ‘your lover thought it would be hot’… I am sure you did derive pleasure from killing Jorge, as you did from killing the cat.”

Blake remained emotionless in the dock. The killer’s mother Fang Chen, 60, a cardiologist and research fellow at Oxford University, blew her a kiss as she was taken to the cells.

Mr Carreno’s family paid tribute to an “exceptional” human being who “dreamt of a future where he could make a difference”. One of triplets, he had studied electrical engineering and worked for BMW at the company’s plant in Cowley outside Oxford.

Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who has been vocal about her gender-critical beliefs and views on transgender issues, spoke out after Sky News described Blake as a woman.

Sharing a video on Twitter, she wrote at the time: “I’m sick of this s---. This is not a woman. These are #NotOurCrimes.”

Ms Rowling said that “crime statistics are rendered useless if violent and sexual attacks committed by men are recorded as female crimes”.

Throughout the trial, the killer was referred to as “she” by Judge Chamberlain, who told jurors to consider the defendant’s “stature”, but insisted that “the fact she is trans on its own has no particular relevance to this case”.

Blake will serve the sentence in a men's prison.