A MURDERESS moaned on Wednesday that she could be suffering post traumatic stress disorder as a result of her crime -- in which she killed an 63-year-old grandmother in a row over £5 and a cigarette, writes Tim Bugler of  the Central Scotland News agency.
Nicolle Earley - one of Scotland’s youngest female killers - was 16 when she murdered Ann Gray in her home in Crosshill on November 14 2008.
She was jailed for life in 2010 and ordered to serve a minimum of 14 years.
But her solicitor told Stirling Sheriff Court that memories of what she called “this incident” were harming Earley’s mental health. Earley, now 24, was before the Court for sentence after pleading guilty to hurling a dinner plate at a fellow woman con in Cornton Vale female jail, near Stirling, and raining her with punches. 
Sheriff William Wood sentenced her to another six months in prison, and though he ordered it to be served concurrently with her present sentence, he warned her that it could delay her eventual freedom. Earley’s solicitor, Danielle Varela, said Earley’s release date was presently set at 2024, but before she assaulted the fellow prisoner, Pauline Sleeman, in the prison dining hall on December  (2015) she was being “moved forward” for a parole hearing in 2021.
Miss Varela said: “She has been told recently, however, that’s on hold while her mental health issues are dealt with. There has been a deterioration since she has been in custody. She has been having flashbacks in relation to this 2008 incident. There has been discussion of PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] but I’m told there’s no diagnosis made at this stage.”
She said Earley had thrown the “regular-sized circular plastic plate” at Miss Sleeman, and followed it up with punches, because Miss Sleeman had been calling her names. Earley from Benarty pleaded guilty to assault to injury.
Sheriff Wood told her she had an “unenviable record” for crimes of violence, including another sentence from March (2016), when she was ordered to serve a further six months behind bars for assaulting another fellow prisoner.
Earley appeared before Sheriff Wood -- a visiting sheriff -- after resident Stirling lawman Sheriff Wyllie Robertson, towards whom she had once made blood-curdling threats, declined to deal with her, in the interests of fairness.