Darren Rigby

Darren Rigby, a violent male who identifies as a transgender woman, was convicted at at Liverpool Crown Court in June 2026 of three counts of sending communication threatening death or serious harm. He was further convicted of possession of a controlled Class B drug (cannabis) and possession of an offensive weapon in a private place (a baton). He was previously convicted of assault in 2018 when he would have been around 13 years old.

Darren Rigby, aged 21 and of Runcorn, Cheshire sent a series of terrifying emails threatening to massacre pupils at three girls’ schools across Merseyside over a number of days in January 2026. On each occasion he contacted the generic email address for the school and threatened to carry out deadly attacks supposedly in response to the treatment of transwomen. He described this treatment as oppression and tyranny but at no point did he give any indication that anyone involved in any of these schools had ever interacted with Rigby and the only link between the three schools is that they are all only attended by girls. He was reportedly heavily influenced by drink and drugs while carrying out the offences.

Local reporter Jamie Lopez was present for Rigby’s hearings and reported his chilling motives within the contents of the hoax emails he sent to the schools as they were read out by prosecutor Iain Criddle. The court heard that an email was sent at 12.53pm to Greenbank High School (four days after the first email sent to Holly Lodge Girls’ College) which warned that the writer was travelling to the school via taxi from Widnes. It said: “I am on my way to the school with a revolver and a machete and I’m going to shoot and stab all of your girls. You terfs are going to learn to stop mocking, deadnaming and misgendering transwomen like me. If anyone attempts to stop me, they will be shot and I will release a blood agent into the school which will poison you.” (Terf is a derogatory acronym for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist and it is most often used by trans activists to issue threats of violence or death against women who oppose having violent, hate-filled men like Rigby in women’s spaces.) Greenbank was forced to implement emergency safety procedures and hundreds of parents rushed to retrieve their children. It should also be noted that Rigby thought innocent girls should be murdered for ‘deadnaming’ but he was tried as Darren Rigby – i.e. he deadnamed himself, as did the courts.

Based on Lopez’s first-hand reports in the Southport Lead, Reduxx reports that in the first incident, which occurred on January 19 2026, Rigby claimed he was already hiding inside the Holly Lodge Girls’ College in West Derby and waiting to attack. The only way to prevent students from being slaughtered, Rigby said, would be for the women and girls to make a public apology to “trans women.” Police were called and the school was forced to shut down for the day. The third threat was made to The Belvedere Academy in Liverpool. At 8:30am on 26 January, 2026 headteacher Julie Taylor was informed that a threatening message had been sent during the night. The email read: “I have managed to gain access to the school and I’m now hiding somewhere in the school with a crossbow and a sword. When your girls come into school I will be jumping out. I’m going to kill every girl and woman staff member I come across.” The academy was placed in lockdown for the day.

Across all the mainstream media coverage, there was a complete failure to cover the motives behind the vile threats, nor acknowledge that Rigby claimed a transgender status for himself and cited it as motive for the threats to kill innocent school girls and female staff members. Similarly, Merseyside Police made no mention in their statement (archive here) of Rigby’s violent twisted motive, nor of the fact that he identifies as transgender.

If the Southport Lead hadn’t covered the case, no one would be any the wiser that an extremely dangerous trans-identified man had targeted school girls because actual women (or ‘terfs’ as this violent man would say) refuse to go along with the idea that men can be woman. The local paper, the Liverpool Echo, failed to mention Rigby’s motives, as did the BBC and the Irish Mirror.  In fact, the Irish Mirror deliberately removed the sentence from Rigby’s email referring to himself as transgender and blaming ‘terfs’ (i.e. women who say no to him) for his threats to murder – the article includes the sentence “I’m on my way to the school with a revolver and a machete and I’m going to shoot and stab all your girls” then misses out the incriminating sentence “You terfs are going to learn to stop mocking, deadnaming and misgendering transwomen like me” and then moves straight to the sentence “If anyone attempts to stop me they will be shot and I will release a blood agent into the school which will poison you.”

See here for other examples of the media obscuring violent men’s transgender status, and here for our post on Felix Winter, a trans-identified female who was jailed in 2025 for offences under the Terrorism Act after planning a mass shooting attack at a school in Edinburgh.

Rigby is the latest in a long line of inadequate, violent men who hate women, and in several cases actually perpetrate mass killings because they spuriously blame innocent women and girls for their inadequacies. For example the Manchester Arena bomber, the Plymouth shooter, the Montreal Ecole Polytechnique massacre, the Alta Vista shooter, the Toronto van killer and other mass murders perpetrated by incels. 

Rigby was sentenced to a mere two years and four months in prison. A review of this absurdly lenient sentence has been requested of the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) under the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) scheme that allows anyone to ask for certain Crown Court sentences to be reviewed. He was also issued with three restraining orders prohibiting further contact with the schools involved.

*Update 22 June 2026*

After, no doubt, a plethora of complaints, the BBC substantially updated its article on Rigby’s conviction to include key details such as the fact that Rigby targeted girls’ schools  – and only girls’ schools – and the effect his threats had on the pupils, plus the fact that that he identified as transgender, was targeting ‘terfs’ and citing misgendering etc as justification for murdering women and girls in his emailed threats. Further key information included Rigby’s previous convictions – such as an assault in 2018 – and that he had refused to provide medical information during two psychiatric reports. In response to a woman who complained, an editor at BBC News called Tim Burke blamed (in very passive voice language) the fact that the article had been written based on the “police press release and a court check” and that “relevant material heard in court was not incorporated into the first published version of the story”.

You can compare the perfunctory first BBC article here, with the updated version here (archive)

As a reminder, the BBC admitted in April 2025 that the omission of the trans identity of murderer Scarlet Blake was a breach of their accuracy rules. It was again heavily criticised in November 2025 after revelations in a leaked dossier showed the BBC ‘LGBTQ desk’ had effectively been censoring stories which attempted any criticism of transgender ideology – see commentary here from Sex Matters. A senior BBC executive admitted the BBC had not been impartial and proposed that, among other measures, making the social affairs editor responsible for covering this contentious area would help restore much-needed balance.

The BBC’s note (added to their expanded article) explaining their failures in reporting on Darren Rigby is reproduced below:

Update 17 June: This article was originally published without including key details about this case, due to miscommunication between BBC reporters in court and the writers. We have updated the article to explain that these threats were directed at three all-girls’ schools, related to the “misgendering” of trans girls and that Darren Rigby identified in one threat as a trans woman.

We have also included further details from these communications which referred to TERFs, targeting female pupils and staff and included threats to use bladed weapons, a crossbow, a revolver, and poison.

Separately, we have also added reaction from senior leaders at all three schools, in which they explain the fear, disruption and upset caused by these threats to pupils, parents and staff.

We have also included comments from Recorder Eric Lamb during sentencing that despite Rigby’s guilty plea at the earliest opportunity, this was a “planned and sophisticated plot” which included measures to make him harder to trace, and the Recorder’s references to defence submissions which included Rigby’s heavy use of cannabis and alcohol, immaturity, previous convictions and refusals to provide medical information for two psychiatric reports.

We apologise for the failures in our reporting.

Image Credit: Merseyside Police via Reduxx

Media reports

Reduxx https://reduxx.info/uk-transactivist-jailed-for-sending-death-threats-to-schools-for-women-and-girls/ archive

Southport Lead https://southport.thelead.uk/p/hoax-attacker-threatened-violent  archive

BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0e20ll9gz2o  archive 1  archive 2

Runcorn & Widnes World https://www.runcornandwidnesworld.co.uk/news/26156676.runcorn-man-jailed-hoax-emails-merseyside-girl-schools/  archive

Liverpool Echo https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/man-21-sentenced-after-sending-34047071 archive

Irish Mirror https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-news/school-terror-chilling-email-threatens-37239176  archive

Mumsnet https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5538270-darren-rigby-case-salient-details-left-out-of-reporting  archive