Published: 00:01 BST, 12 August 2026 | Updated: 07:52 BST, 12 August 2026<\/p>\n
When in 2020 Rachel Fulstow clicked on the profile placed by Michael Hillier on dating website Hinge, she was immediately struck by his commendable qualities and desire to meet someone who shared the same values.<\/p>\n
He was, he wrote, 'honest and loyal' and 'a gentleman' who was looking for someone 'caring with good morals'.<\/p>\n
And certainly, at first, he seemed every bit the good catch. 'Initially, he appeared loving and respectful towards Rachel,' recalls her mother Jenny today. 'He seemed intelligent, articulate, interested in my work in the NHS.'<\/p>\n
No one could have guessed where this promising love story would end: with the pair in prison, both convicted of murder.<\/p>\n
Equally astonishing is the fact Fulstow had never even been at the crime scene. She was 100 miles away at her home in York when, on November 24, 2022, Hillier, now 42, drove to the Wigan home of self-employed electrician Liam Smith, 38, shot him in the face then doused him in acid.<\/p>\n
Rachel was ultimately prosecuted under the law of joint enterprise after Hillier insisted she had conspired with him to plan the attack as 'revenge' for being 'graphically raped' by Smith following a date with him.<\/p>\n
Today, Fulstow, now 40, is three years into a 30-year prison sentence for murder, a conviction her mother, together with appeal lawyer Jeremy Moore, is trying to overturn.<\/p>\n
They insist she was not Hillier's co-conspirator, but the victim of a coercive and abusive relationship.<\/p>\n
Rachel Fulstow was prosecuted under the law of joint enterprise after it was insisted that she had conspired to plan a 'revenge' attack<\/p>\n
Self-employed electrician Liam Smith was shot in the face then doused in acid by Michael Hillier in November 2022<\/p>\n
Hillier had worked as a plasterer as well as becoming involved in the cannabis trade \u2013 and in his early 30s he had been given a suspended sentence for GBH<\/p>\n
'I'm not the mother of a murderer; she's been convicted of murder, but she's not a murderer,' Jenny, 71, a retired cancer nurse specialist, told the Daily Mail this week.<\/p>\n
'There's a man out there who isn't alive, not because of Rachel, but because of a monster that she had a relationship with.'<\/p>\n
It is an extraordinary turn of events for someone raised in a loving, middle-class family in Yorkshire \u2013 an 'independently minded, delightful, happy, social little girl', as Jenny recalls, with friends who remain loyal to this day.<\/p>\n