'My uncle killed our abusive dad'

Miss Great Britain hopeful Marcie Reid tells us how her troubled childhood won't hold her back

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Marcie as a baby with her mum, Shirley

A beauty queen whose abusive father was killed by her uncle wants to show the world her traumatic childhood won't define her future.

Marcie Reid, now 30 and living in York, was three years old when her mum’s brother stabbed her father, Graham Binks, to death inside her home in Croxley Green, Hertfordshire.

She and her three terrified siblings huddled in bed together as a deadly fight raged between the two men downstairs.

Former security guard Binks had a long history of violence towards her mother, Shirley, regularly beating her black and blue and on one occasion breaking her jaw. When they found out Shirley was pregnant, he told her to get an abortion and she had tried to leave him several times during their tumultuous marriage.

The 17st bully had also turned his fists on Shirley’s younger brother twice and had beaten up his own father-in-law.

“My only memories of my father are of raised voices and being scared,” said Marcie, who will be competing for the title of Miss Great Britain 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 January 29, 1998, Binks was in a belligerent mood, as he and Marcie’s uncle returned to the family home after an evening of drinking. He woke up his wife to pick a drunken argument and bit her on the arm, prompting her to come downstairs to ask her brother, then 24, why Binks was in such a bad mood. A fight broke out between the two men and Shirley fled to the hallway.

“Dad stabbed my uncle with a screwdriver,” Marcie recalled.

But Binks hadn't realised his brother-in-law had stashed a 7in carving knife in his pocket, which he thrust into Binks’s chest and stomach three times.