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).

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.

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.

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

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