When Cashman, 34, was found guilty of killing nine-year-old Olivia at her house in Dovecot, Liverpool, he filed an appeal against the minimum 42-year sentence that was imposed on him. This was done at the beginning of July.
A judge’s denial of the application has now been confirmed by the Court of Appeal.
The rejection of Cashman’s request to have his prison sentence reduced, according to Olivia Korbel’s mother Cheryl Korbel, “meant everything to us as a family, it was huge.”
Cashman ‘ruthlessly pursued’ his intended target, drug dealer Joseph Nee, into the Korbel family home in Knotty Ash, Liverpool on the evening of August 22 last year.
Cashman has appealed his 42-year sentence but it has been turned down (Picture: PA)Court artist sketch of Cashman in the dock at Manchester Crown Court (Picture: Elizabeth Cook / PA)
Seconds earlier, Olivia had gotten out of bed and run to her mother screaming ‘I’m scared mummy, I’m scared’ after hearing a commotion outside.
She was standing on the stairs when Cashman fired at Nee as he tried to barge his way in, with the bullet going through the front door, through Ms Korbel’s right hand and into her chest.
Jurors heard Cashman fled on foot, jumping over garden fences, and Nee staggered out into the road where he was picked up by five men in a black car as Olivia lay fatally wounded.
Cheryl Korbel, left, spoke of her pain after losing her daughter in such tragic circumstances (Picture: PA)
She was taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and rushed straight to the resuscitation room but was declared dead at 11.15pm.
Cashman, who jurors heard had planned Nee’s ‘execution’, was convicted of Olivia’s murder after just over nine hours’ deliberations following a three-week trial.
He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Nee, wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm to Ms Korbel, and two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.
After Olivia’s family endured a four-week trial, her killer refused to show up for his sentencing, instead remaining in his cell.
Cheryl, 48, told The Mirror: ‘We knew when he didn’t show up in court that he was going to appeal it.’
Cheryl said: ‘I laughed when I heard he had appealed his sentence, I just thought it was a joke, we went right through court and then he never turned up for his sentence.’
‘You never get closure’, Cheryl told the newspaper, ‘and then for him to not turn up was a punch in the stomach. It’s not a quick process at all. It was draining.’
‘The pain he has put us through, we’ve lost Olivia, she was the core of the family, she was the youngest. But whether that makes any difference to him I’m not sure.
‘The law needs changing so other families don’t have to go through the same thing, so they get the chance to tell these offenders the pain they have caused.’
Thomas Cashman‘s murderous accomplice, who shot Olivia Pratt-Korbel, 9, to death, has been imprisoned.
Following the shooting death of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel in her Dovecot, Liverpool, home in August, Paul Russell, 41, was found guilty of aiding a criminal and sentenced to 22 months in prison at Liverpool Crown Court.
The aunt of Zara Aleena is advocating for harsher punishments for criminals who avoid appearing in court with the families of their victims.
If murderers ignore victim impact statements, Farah Naz said on BBC Breakfast, their prison terms should be increased.
She remarked, “Surely the judgment is part of the punishment… we need to see that the process would deter further wrongdoing and how can the procedure feel like a punishment if the criminal exercises their piece of power?
It’s the final piece of authority that needs to be removed, at least in our opinion.
‘Otherwise we don’t have people deterred from committing crimes if they’re just moving from cell to cell there’s no sense of punishment.’
By law, defendants are allowed to choose not to attend their sentencing hearing, but it’s sparked outrage from campaigners, who say this denies families the chance to see justice being served.
Thomas Cashman, who shot and killed Olivia Pratt-Korbel in her own home, refused to come out of his cell yesterday to face the nine-year-old’s loved ones.
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His defence barrister rattled out an excuse that he was upset over prosecutors singing ‘We Are the Champions’ after the jury found him guilty.
A judge slammed Cashman’s absence as ‘deeply disrespectful’ to both the court and Olivia’s grieving family as he was handed a life sentence.
It meant Cashman – unlike the vast majority of criminals in the UK – did not have to listen to the victim impact statements read out in court.
In December, Zara’s killer Jordan McSweeney was jailed for life after committing ‘almost unimaginable violence’ on the law graduate as she walked home in Ilford, east London.
But he refused to leave his cell for sentencing because he did not want to watch the CCTV of what he did.
Ms Naz said the family wanted her killer to hear how he had ‘completely destroyed’ them.
After meeting with her family, justice secretary Dominic Raab said he was looking into whether the law could be changed to compel offenders to attend their sentencing, and grant judges powers to impose longer prison sentences on those who opt to skip court.
She added: ‘I think there are other ways to make the convict come to face their judgement and that would be to add time to their sentencing or there can be other ways.’
Thomas Cashman was convicted of killing Olivia Pratt-Korbel, 9, in a gangland execution that “horribly went awry.”
On the evening of August 22 of last year, the schoolgirl was shot as the gunman, 34, “ruthlessly followed” his intended target, convicted drug dealer Joseph Nee, into her family home in Knotty Ash, Liverpool.
She had just heard a noise outside when she sprang out of bed and ran to her mother Cheryl Korbel, 46, yelling, “Mom, I’m afraid,” Manchester Crown Court was informed.
She was standing on the stairs when Cashman fired at Nee as he tried to barge his way in, with the bullet going through the front door, through Ms Korbel’s right hand and into her chest.
Jurors heard Cashman fled on foot, jumping over garden fences, and Nee staggered out into the road where he was picked up by five men in a black car as Olivia lay fatally wounded.
She was taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and rushed straight to the resuscitation room but was declared dead at 11.15pm.
Cashman, who jurors heard had planned Nee’s ‘execution’, was convicted of Olivia’s murder following a trial which lasted three weeks.
Olivia was fatally shot at her home in Knotty Ash, Liverpool (Picture: PA)
Opening the case, prosecutor David McLachlan KC said he had been ‘lying in wait’ for Nee, who was watching football at another man’s house that night.
When he left the address at 10pm, Cashman ran up behind him and fired three shots from a self-loading pistol, one of which hit Nee in the midriff.
Cashman then stood over Nee and tried to fire again but, possibly because the pistol malfunctioned, he was unable to complete his ‘task’.
Seeing the light in Ms Korbel’s doorway as she peered out to see what was going on, Nee ‘made a dash’ for the house, with Cashman in pursuit.
He pulled out a second gun, a revolver, and let off a fourth shot, which killed Olivia.
Mr McLachlan told the jury: ‘The shooting had gone horribly wrong.
‘This is what this case is all about. This is serious business, as you will appreciate.
‘The prosecution say it’s about the ruthless pursuit by Thomas Cashman to shoot Joseph Nee at all costs without any consideration for anyone else in the community.
‘Thomas Cashman’s actions resulted in Joseph Nee being injured, Cheryl Korbel being injured and, most tragically of all in this case, Olivia Pratt-Korbel being killed.’
Several people in the public gallery wept as they watched Ms Korbel’s video interview, in which she tearfully told police officers: ‘I knew she had gone.’
With her arm in a bandage, she said her son Ryan helped her to carry Olivia up the stairs and she shouted for a towel to stop the bleeding.
She added: ‘She went all floppy, and her eyes went to the back of her head, and I realised that she must have been hit because I didn’t know until then and I lifted her top up and the bullet had got her right in the middle of the chest.’
The mum-of-three said a neighbour came in and started CPR on Olivia, adding: ‘I knew she’d gone; I knew she’d gone. Then the police turned up and came up and just picked her up and took her out the house.’
She was taken to another hospital for treatment to her hand and while she was there, she said she was told Olivia ‘had gone’, adding: ‘I just went hysterical screaming I wanted my baby.’
Describing a phone call with a friend who was with Olivia, she said: ‘She told me she was with the baby, and I told her not to leave her on her own and she promised me that she wouldn’t.
‘She said she looked like she was sleeping, so I made her promise she wouldn’t leave her on her own.’
At one point, Cashman was handed a tissue by a dock officer after appearing to wipe away tears with his hand.
Ms Korbel later walked out of court as he denied her daughter’s murder from the witness box.
After being shown CCTV footage of the shooting, he told jurors: ‘It’s not me.’
Mr McLachlan said: ‘You’re not prepared to, in the words of somebody else, own this, Mr Cashman, because you killed a little girl?’
Cashman replied: ‘No, I did not kill a little girl.’
He questioned whether his DNA had been found on the door of Olivia’s family home and suggested Nee had given the name of another suspect.
Police ‘hunting down’ those who enabled Olivia’s murder
Police chiefs say they are still ‘hunting down’ those who enabled the youngster’s murder.
Two guns were used in the killing, which also injured her mother and Nee, but neither has been recovered.
Chief Constable Serena Kennedy of Merseyside Police said: ‘The conviction of Thomas Cashman in terms of the murder of Olivia is a positive.
‘We are still hunting down those people who enabled that murder to take place – who supplied the gun, where the gun is – and we will carry on until we identify those people responsible.’
Detective Superintendent Mark Baker said finding the weapons – a Glock self-loading pistol and revolver – is key.
He said: ‘We appeal for people to come forward if they’ve got knowledge of those guns, and we want them off the streets.’
Ms Kennedy, who became Chief Constable in 2021, said she was ‘completely devastated’ when she heard of Olivia’s death.
Police react to guilty verdict in trial of Olivia Pratt-Korbel killer.
She said: ‘I was just absolutely horrified to hear that a nine-year-old child had been murdered in a way in which she had, you know, the way in which Olivia’s life had ended.
‘My condolences absolutely go to Olivia’s family. I just can’t imagine what they’re going through every day since Olivia was murdered.’
She described the people carrying out shootings as ‘absolutely cowardly, despicable people’.
‘Anybody who is willing to pick up a gun to settle a dispute that they have with another person is taking a risk, but it’s a risk they’re not bothered about.
‘They don’t care about the consequences. They don’t care that a family has lost a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, a partner. They’re just not bothered. They don’t care about the consequences.
‘They’re not people that we want living in our communities in Merseyside and we will hunt them down, hold them responsible, or put them before the courts.’
Cashman admitted selling cannabis but told the court he was ‘not a bad drug dealer’.
He said a woman he had a fling with, who claimed he had gone to her house after the shooting and heard him say he had ‘done Joey’, was a ‘woman scorned’.
Defending, John Cooper KC told jurors Cashman was ‘probably one of the most hated people in the country’.
He said the family of Nee, the intended target of the shooting, ‘had their enemies’ and there were other people who wanted him dead.
Mr Cooper added: ‘When Tommy Cashman says to you “it wasn’t me”, it therefore must have been someone else, that’s not pie in the sky, we submit, it’s based on fact.’
The murder of Olivia, who was fatally shot by a gunman who chased a convicted burglar into herLiverpool home, was charged against Thomas Cashman, 34, at Liverpool Crown Court.
The accused killer of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel entered a not-guilty plea.
On Wednesday, 34-year-old Thomas Cashman made a videolink appearance at Liverpool Crown Court.
A shooter who chased Joseph Nee, a convicted burglar, into Olivia’s Dovecot, Liverpool, home in August fatally shot Nee.
Image:Thomas Cashman
The victim’s mother, Cheryl Korbel, 46, was also injured in the shooting.
Cashman, from West Derby, entered not guilty pleas to Olivia’s murder, the attempted murder of Nee, the wounding with intent of Ms Korbel, as well as two counts of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
Ms Korbel was in court along with other family members, some of whom shook their heads as the not-guilty pleas were entered.
Thomas Cashman is also charged with the attempted murder of the girl’s mother Cheryl Korbel and convicted burglar Joseph Nee, as well as two counts of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
Thomas Cashman, 34, appeared at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court this morning.
The case has been sent to Liverpool Crown Court where it will be heard at 2pm today.
Olivia was fatally shot by a gunman who chased convicted burglar Joseph Nee into her home in Dovecot on 22 August.
Her mother Cheryl Korbel, 46, was injured in the shooting, which happened just after 10pm.
Cashman, of Grenadier Drive, West Derby, is also charged with the attempted murder of Ms Korbel and Nee, as well as two counts of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
Cashman, wearing a pale T-shirt, was in handcuffs in the dock and surrounded by four police officers. He spoke to give his name, date of birth and address.
The court heard the case could only be dealt with by the crown court.
