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The wannabe ‘middle class gangster’ who stabbed Yousef Makki to death:

by Danyal Hussain For Mailonline, posted 08 10 2019

Killer is revealed as 17-year-old who attended £33k-a-year private school and revelled in 'idiotic fantasies' of becoming a notorious criminal

• Joshua Molnar, who turns 18 on Tuesday, was previously only referred to as Boy A
• He's been revealed as the teenager who stabbed Yousef Makki to death in March
• His mother Stephanie defended him but shared sympathy with Yousef's family 
• Elite schools Molnar went to are often a conveyor belt to Oxford and Cambridge
• He attended £33,000-a-year Ellesmere College boarding school in Shropshire 

The teenager who stabbed Yousef Makki to death has been revealed as a rugby-loving student who attended a £33,000-a-year private school and had 'idiotic fantasies' of becoming a 'middle-class gangster'. 

Joshua Molnar, who turns 18 on Tuesday, was cleared of the murder of Yousef, also 17,  despite admitting to stabbing him after an argument in Hale Barns, an upmarket village in Cheshire, on March 2.

Molnar was sentenced to a 16-month detention training order – 12 months for perverting the course of justice, and four months for possession of the knife.
He was revealed today as a white Anglo-Hungarian with mild learning difficulties from a well-off family in the village of Hale. 

Molnar had been at one time a pupil at Ellesmere College, a £33,000-a-year boarding school in Shropshire, where Latin is still taught.
Its alumni include former England rugby union captain Bill Beaumont, the current chairman of World Rugby, and Hugh Grosvenor, the seventh Duke of Westminster.

Molnar starred in the school rugby union first XV, playing at number eight, before leaving with six GCSEs.

Before his time there, he had also attended the £9,000-a-year Cheadle Hulme School, whose past pupils include broadcasters Katie Derham and Nick Robinson.

Again, he was a regular for the school rugby team, but left early in his mid-teens when he declined to repeat a year.

His time in the sixth form at Wilmslow High School, a state school, came to an end during his A level studies.

Sources say cannabis was found in his Hugo Boss bag he had taken into school, and he was subsequently withdrawn from there by mutual agreement.

Jurors at his trial were never told any details of his schooling.

The fee-paying public schools Molnar attended are often a conveyor belt to Oxford and Cambridge for their pupils - but he is currently serving 16 months in a Young Offenders Institute. 

Despite the advantages of a good family and good education, Molnar instead became fixated with knives, living out 'idiotic fantasies' of being a middle-class gangster, his trial heard.

One detective described him and a second defendant as, 'rich kids who have never had to live in the real world'.

Despite the money spent on his expensive education, Molnar did not 'get on' with his family or appreciate his parents.

He said he could pick his friends but not his parents.

They arrived with Molnar on the first day of the trial, accompanied by their own security detail.

Both parents supported their son at court each day of the trial.

They divorced when Molnar was 13, his father living in a £500,000 three-bedroom townhouse in Hale village and his mother in a second five-bedroom house in the village, worth around £900,000.

The upmarket village south of Manchester, popular with minor celebrities and premier league footballers, was where Molnar was raised.

His life was a world away from the street gangsters in the Drill music he listened to.

How insult-laden 'diss tracks' and rapping about gang culture from disaffected inner-city youths related to him is unclear.

He lived in a low-crime, high wealth Cheshire village, but adapted entirely different accents and mannerisms, imitating the street gangsters he listened to.

Molnar sported a south central LA style neck bandana, keeping his weed and 'shank' or knife in an Armani man bag. 

He thought knives were 'cool' and routinely smoked cannabis from the age of 15, telling the jury at his trial most of his peers smoked the drug and it was 'socially acceptable'.

Videos of him posing with knives was just because people his age video everything they do, he said.

One ominous clip recovered by police showed Yousef playfully taunting Molnar, repeating: 'Where's ya shank?'

Another clip showed Molnar taking a 'selfie' using a lit flare to light a cannabis joint, he tosses the flare over his shoulder towards a parked car.

It is accompanied by drill music from notorious London gang, 1011, whose members have been jailed for knife crime.

During Molnar's difficult teenage years at Cheadle Hulme School, his mother, Stephanie Molnar, built up a successful business.

Yorkshire-born Mrs Molnar grew up in South Africa and studied in the UK, with degrees in biology and business from Bristol, London and Warwick universities.

She worked in scientific software before becoming a marketing manager, and in 2001 co-founded the Elmscot Group - which runs children's nurseries and out-of-school clubs in Cheshire.

She found inspiration for the business, she said, because as a working mother with young children, she struggled to find the right nursery for her own children, Lexi, a one-time Miss Cheshire contestant, and younger brother Joshua.

Molnar had been initially enrolled at £2,600 a term Hale Preparatory School, which takes children aged from four to 11.

He struggled with the 'teaching methods' there, according to his family, and was moved aged five to another school until the age of 11.

The nursery and after-school club business co-founded by his mother now employs more than 225 people, providing early years childcare and education for around 1,700 children.

On July 1 this year, Stephanie Molnar resigned as a director of Elmscot Group and other associated nurseries, according to documents lodged with Companies House.

Joshua's father, Mark Lazlo Molnar - the son of a Hungarian refugee who was born and brought up in south Wales, is a management consultant and listed as an honorary general secretary of the Cheshire Lawn Tennis Association.

He is also listed as a director of Hale Village Tennis Club.

Now, Molnar's mother Stephanie has spoken out after her rugby-playing son was named for the first time, describing the events in March as a tragedy and sharing her sympathy for Yousef's family. 

She says that her son accepts responsibility for his friend's killing and will have to live with it for the rest of his life.   

His parents have admitted that, since the killing, they have agonised over whether they could have prevented it by encouraging their son to make different decisions in the lead up to the night in question. 

Mother Stephanie said she felt compelled to speak up after seeing rumours on social media and newspapers about her son.  

She also described him as 'no different than any other 17-year-old in the area'.

Stephanie told the Sunday Times: 'Nobody can know the detail of everything that your kids get up to. All you can do is rely on them to make positive choices based on the values that have been instilled in them throughout their upbringing.'

Yousef, who was from an Anglo-Lebanese family from Burnage, south Manchester, had won a scholarship to the prestigious £12,000-a-year Manchester Grammar School.

The court heard how hours before the stabbing, Boy B arranged a £45 cannabis deal and the teenagers planned to rob the drug dealer, a 'soft target'.

But the robbery went wrong and Yousef and Boy B fled, leaving Molnar to take a beating.

After they met up again, Molnar then later pushed Yousef who called him a 'p****' and punched him in the face.

Molnar told the jury Yousef pulled out a knife and he responded by also taking out a knife and his victim was accidentally stabbed.

Speaking about the killing and the subsequent trial, Molnar's mother Stephanie said: 'Circumstances on the night of March 2 led to our son Joshua accidentally killing his friend Yousef with a knife whilst defending himself against a knife. He was found not guilty to the charges of murder and manslaughter, based on self-defence, in a unanimous verdict.

'The events of that night were a tragedy. These were three friends going out on a Saturday. They should all still be here to lead fulfilling lives but they are not.

'I cannot imagine what Yousef's parents and family must be going through as they try to come to terms with this.

'Joshua fully accepts responsibility for Yousef's death in the act of self-defence and the impact of this acceptance is massive.

'He will have to live with the responsibility of his role in this for the rest of his life.

'We are also acutely aware that the hurt and loss that Yousef's family is experiencing are infinitely greater than anything we are going through and nothing I can say can make up for or change that.

'There were no winners in this case.

'We fully support all the positive steps to celebrate Yousef's life and anything positive in the future that can come from this tragedy is something we would welcome and contribute to in whatever way possible.'  

However, her words were slammed by Yousef's sister, who described them as 'self-serving'.

Jade Akoum, 28, told the Sunday Telegraph:  'I thought a normal thing to do would be to apologise and lay low. I wouldn't want their help and I don't want to forgive them. They haven't once reached out to us.

'Saying they want to celebrate Yousef's life? Your son killed my brother.' 

Yousef's family reacted with fury after the controversial verdict in March with his father Ghaleb Makki shouting: 'F*** you! Where's the justice for my son! Where's the justice?'. 

Boy B had bought the knives online using a false name and had them posted from China to a friend's address, the court heard.

Officers later found a dark coloured 'flick knife' behind a low boundary wall near the scene of the killing plus a silver coloured lock knife in some bushes and recovered a flick knife from down a grid.  

In court, Molinar broke down in tears and said: 'I got more annoyed. I [took] it out straight away, I don't really know what I did, kind of lifted my arm up. I didn't realise anything had happened at first.'