Jason Dodds—Frank McQuillan

Jason Dodds and Frank McQuillan’s partnership transformed online grooming into the abduction of Terri Briggs and Berri Briggs. Dodds communicated with the twins under the name Mario, while the two men concealed their identities and intentions behind a fabricated online persona; their cooperation carried the girls from messages and requests for photographs to a meeting in Newcastle, then into captivity.

Deception and Recruitment

The twins’ messages show how the approach moved from suggestion to pressure. When Mario asked whether they were still interested in what they had discussed, Berri replied cautiously that they might be. He then invoked the men who had bought them their phone and urged them to meet. Berri asked instead for a new picture, and after Terri nodded, sent the request. Later, another message pressed them to confirm that the meeting was really happening. The exchange established a connection built around the phone and the promise of meeting the supposed young men, while the twins’ hesitation and shared decisions remained visible in their replies.

The Fabricated Meeting

The investigation later established that the messages came from a number registered to Jason Dodds, although the twins knew their correspondent as Mario. In interview, Frank McQuillan described how he and Dodds had created a Facebook page and used photographs of handsome young men found online, presenting themselves as slightly older than the people in the pictures. The police had not yet established where the twins first encountered the profile, but the phone contained clear evidence of grooming: the men repeatedly sought photographs, escalated their requests towards sexual images, and tried to persuade the girls to do more. The twins sent topless pictures, but, as the investigation found, they had resisted the more extreme demands and had stuck together.

McQuillan said that the men hoped to obtain images they could sell and possibly make a video, and arranged a meeting after pressuring the girls to skip school and travel to Newcastle. The twins sent selfies that showed where they were in town, including the Monument and outside Fenwick’s. McQuillan met them across the road from the station, claiming to be the uncle of one of the young men they had been chatting with and saying he had come to collect them. They were wary because he was not Italian, but, having travelled that far, they got into his car.

He drove them to Jesmond Dene, claiming they would meet the young men there. Instead, Dodds was waiting alone. The twins objected when they realized who was present and turned to leave; McQuillan said they were in a quiet area chosen for the purpose and had no idea where they were. Dodds seized one girl and McQuillan the other. Together they forced the twins back to the car, put them in the rear seat, and drove them to McQuillan’s house. The meeting thus converted a deception sustained through messages and photographs into a coordinated physical seizure.

Captivity and Concealment

At McQuillan’s house, the twins tried to use their smartphone to contact someone. McQuillan recalled that he snatched it away and put it in his pocket, then took their bags in case they had brought their own phones. He also had a knife, but later said he would not tell police about it. These details show the partnership extending beyond the coordinated seizure: McQuillan described controlling the girls’ means of communication and withholding information about a weapon, while Dodds remained part of the joint crime.

After the twins were killed, the men wrapped them in plastic sheeting, carried them outside, and placed them in the boot of a car. They drove to a lock-up where Dodds kept an old deep freezer; relieved that it still worked when they plugged it in, they put the bodies inside. Earlier on the day their account was being discussed, they had returned to the lock-up, fitted a padlock bought at B&Q, and moved other things to make the freezer less visible. The concealment depended on practical cooperation as much as the abduction had: the freezer, the car, and the altered lock-up became parts of a shared effort to hide what they had done.

The Partnership Exposed

The police interviews gave the investigation a view of the partnership from inside. Colin Flynn and Jane Bowman questioned Frank McQuillan while Gary Baxter observed; Eve Strong joined Gary in the observation room. McQuillan described the men’s online scheme as something they had first treated as a laugh, but his account also disclosed an intended progression from coaxing the girls into sexualised photographs to making material they could sell. The contrast between that dismissive framing and the plan he described exposed the exploitation beneath the supposed courtship.

The account also clarified that the crime depended on complementary roles rather than a single opportunistic encounter. Dodds was the online contact known to the twins as Mario and was waiting at Jesmond Dene; McQuillan maintained the false identity in person and drove the girls there. When they tried to leave, each man seized one of them. Their cooperation continued through the removal of the twins’ means of contacting others and, later, the concealment of their bodies. Read alongside the messages recovered from the phone, McQuillan’s account connected the fabricated online relationship to the physical abduction and the subsequent attempt to hide the evidence.