NAMED The teenager who stabbed Yousef Makki
As Joshua Molnar turns 18, we look at how he, an expensively-educated boy from Hale, ended up knifing his friend in the heart
THE teenager who stabbed Yousef Makki to death can today be named as Joshua Molnar.
The teenager’s identity no longer has to stay a secret – because this week he turns 18.
It means the full story of how the expensively-educated son of affluent business-people ended up knifing his friend in the heart can be told for the first time.
Former Cheadle Hulme School pupil Molnar is currently serving a sentence in a young offenders institution.
The teenager was unanimously cleared of the murder and manslaughter of Yousef, 17, in July by a jury on the basis of selfdefence.
But the former public schoolboy was locked up after he admitted possessing the knife which caused Yousef’s fatal wound, and perverting the course of justice by lying that someone else had inflicted the injury to police.
Molnar’s fateful confrontation with Yousef, on March 2 this year, came after a row over a cannabis deal that went wrong.
It ended the promising life of Yousef, a straight-A student from Burnage who dreamed of becoming a heart surgeon.
And it was the devastating climax of Molnar’s descent from the privileged life of independent schools, designer gifts, expensive holidays and nights out that he had enjoyed as the son of two Hale entrepreneurs.
Now, in a series of special reports today and tomorrow, the M.E.N. looks at Molnar’s story in detail; reveals the torment suffered by Yousef’s family; and looks at what could happen next in the late schoolboy’s case.
The lapsing of Molnar’s anonymity order comes as his mother speaks publicly for the first time, describing the events of that night as a ‘tragedy’ – one that her son would have to live with his role in for the rest of his life.
“I cannot imagine what Yousef’s parents and family must be going through as they try to come to terms with this,” Stephanie Molnar told the M.E.N. in a statement. “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
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 Stephanie Molnar
that.
“There were no winners in this case,” she said.
Yousef’s death and Molnar’s conviction were highly unusual for the country’s courts because it was knife crime that happened against a backdrop of privilege.
Yousef was the academically gifted boy who won a bursary to one of the country’s best independent schools.
Molnar was his friend from the leafy outer suburbs, who wanted for nothing materially.
But the picture that emerges in this case is one of teenage rebellion and aggressive posturing that somehow got so twisted it made Yousef’s death, as Molnar’s QC put it, an ‘accident waiting to happen.’
By the time Molnar fell out, catastrophically, with his friend Yousef, he had left a series of schools and his relationship with his family was strained.
Against a backdrop of increasing cannabis use, he began living what his own lawyer described as the double, fantasy life of a juvenile, ‘middle class gangster,’ ‘playing around with knives’ and getting into fights.
As the son of successful business- people Mark and Stephanie Molnar, from Hale, who divorced several years ago, so
much more was expected of him.
Molnar’s father Mark, 56, a maths graduate, is a company director and business consultant, while his mother, Stephanie, 51, co-founded a chain of Cheshire nurseries.
At the age of 15 Molnar began using cannabis.
He was not an academic high achiever like his friend Yousef. He saw himself as the class clown.
It was on the rugby field, in school teams and with Altrincham Kersal RFC, where he played for their winning U-16 side, where he expressed himself, and found vent for his aggressive streak.
Cultivating a bad boy image, among other private school kids on the streets and at parties in suburbs like Wilmslow and Hale, provided another escape.
He took to carrying a knife, he has said to protect himself from muggings, and because of peer pressure that made him feel ‘I should be doing that.’
“If I had a pretty cool knife I would show it off a bit,” he told his trial.
Exactly a year before Yousef died, Molnar was a guest at a party.
Held at a £1m property, there was security at the gated entrance and youngsters from Greater Manchester’s independent schools made up the guests.
When a fight broke out Molnar, his trial heard, punched another boy before stepping back and pulling out a knife from his waistband.
Molnar denied having had a knife at this party in his trial.
But young, prosecution witnesses would testify that he seemed to take pleasure in taking out a kitchen knife and – saying nothing – watching as the room fell silent in fear.
The picture that emerges of Molnar, from some who know him, is not of a nice, middle-class boy who fell under bad, more streetwise influences.
Rather, he was the bad influence, the one who always took things one step too far.
This is not something that his family would accept. They say Molnar, whose elder sister was a ‘Miss Cheshire’ contestant in 2017, was a ‘typical’ teenage boy.
Again and again, throughout Molnar’s trial, he described knives as ‘cool.’
It’s open to question why, when he had the opportunity to provide character witnesses during his trial - his co-defendant provided a succession of glowing testimonials - Molnar didn’t come up with a single reference.
Could it be, that in his most desperate hour of need, that not one person had a good thing to say about him?
He was just five when he left his first private school, Hale Preparatory School, after a show of ‘aggressive behaviour,’ the M.E.N. understands.
A source close to the family said he had never been expelled from any school and that he had left Hale Preparatory School because he had ‘struggled with their teaching methods.’
From there he was moved to Bollington Primary School in Altrincham, where he was ‘very happy,’ the source said.
But his secondary school career was troubled. At the £12,000-a-year Cheadle Hulme School, he was considered by some as a flash bully – they recall mundane, high school stuff, like him barging into pupils he didn’t like in the corridors and publishing pictures on his social media of his latest designer purchase.
During his time at CHS he struggled academically, his parents got divorced, and, a source close to his family says, ‘suffered series of family bereavements.’
He left when he was asked to repeat Year 9.
As he got older it seemed he was embarrassed by his comfortable background and determined to kick against it.
The showy pictures stopped, replaced by pictures of cannabis. He sold his designer clothes and started wearing tracksuits.
From there, his parents sent him to Ellesmere College, a boarding school in Shropshire.
In its guide to public schools, writers at society magazine Tatler describe themselves as ‘big fans’ of Ellesmere’s approach.
The school has a strong focus on sport and nurturing pupils who aren’t naturally academic highflyers.
Molnar played rugby for the first team and got six GCSEs, before leaving Ellesmere to be closer to home and moving on to a state comprehensive, Wilmslow High School.
He ended up leaving Wilmslow High – ‘by mutual consent’ – after cannabis was found in his Hugo Boss bag. It had been stolen from him and when it was found drugs were inside, a source close to his family said.
Molnar would tell friends that at times he had run away from home and talked of sleeping in his mother’s car, telling his subsequent trial, pointedly, that while he could pick his friends, ‘I don’t always get on with my family.’
A source close to the family said neither of his parents was aware he had ever run away from home, and that they ‘don’t recall’ him ever sleeping in his mother’s Alfa Romeo.
Any suggestion that he had been allowed to go off the rails, the source said, was ‘complete nonsense.’
However, selfie videos, where he acted out violent scenarios, charted his descent into what his own lawyer would call ‘idiotic fantasies,’ fuelled by a love of drill music tracks which glorified the use of knives.
He filmed himself with a machete in the mirror of his bedroom, sniggering as he made violent stabbing motions towards another boy, the point of the blade coming just a few centimetres from his face.
The other boy makes stabbing movements towards Molnar with his own knife as both laugh.
Another clip shows Molnar using a lit firework to light a spliff before tossing it over his shoulder to explode near a car.