At first glance, the early life of Steven Hoskin sounds almost like something out of a cosy Sunday evening TV drama. Home was a quiet Cornish village; Maudlin near Bodmin, perched on the edge of the Lanhydrock estate. 

There, the exquisite Victorian stately home is famous for its collection of rhododendrons in the grounds.

Raised by his mother, Steven had free rein in his tiny village, going from door to door chatting to his neighbours who always had their homes open to him. His uncle and aunt lived opposite, and his physical strength as a young man saw him dor farm work on – graft at harvest time was paid in cider.

Steven, who had learning difficulties, left the peace of Maudlin in 2005, but he’s still very much remembered there. Not just for his simple good nature – but because of the terrible end he later met.

For not long after he left home, some 20 years ago, Steven – trusting, vulnerable, yet ‘strong as an ox’ as one neighbour described him to the Daily Mail – was murdered in circumstances so brutally callous it almost defies belief.

One of his killers was a girl aged just 16. Another, a man he believed was his best friend. 

Steven’s last hours on earth were nothing short of hellish. At the hands of his killers, on the evening of July 5, 2006, the 39-year-old was drugged, abused and tortured, dragged around in a dog collar and stamped on before being tied up.

Force-fed an overdose of paracetamol and alcohol, which left him barely conscious, he was then taken to a nearby viaduct by the murderous gang.

Forced over the safety rail, he clung on for dear life, screaming for mercy.

Then one of the gang – 16-year-old Sarah Bullock – stamped on his hands, laughing as she did. She kept stamping until he could no longer hold on, and he plunged 100ft to his death. 

So how did innocent Steven fall into such vicious company?

The torture and murder of vulnerable Steven Hoskin in 2006 sent shockwaves through the south west of England

Steven was sent falling 100ft to his death off this viaduct in the town of St Austell in Cornwall by a gang of bullies he thought were his friends

His learning difficulties were pronounced. An IQ test Steven took a few years before his death put him in the bottom 0.4 per cent of the UK’s population and he was unable to read and write.

His mother, Ethel, a single parent, also had learning difficulties, and his father was never in the picture.

Steven’s world was small, and he was desperate for a group of friends. At school, bullies tormented him, making his existence a misery.

Even when he was taken out of mainstream education at 12 and placed in Pencalenick, a special boarding school for children with learning difficulties, he remained a magnet for tormentors.

Unable to get a full-time job after leaving school aged 16, he relied on the largesse of locals to get by, as well as living on benefits.

Matt Richards, who owns the W Richards and Sons family business near Maudlin, said he had fond memories of Steven, who worked there occasionally as a labourer.

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He told the Daily Mail: ‘He was as strong as an ox but was a little bit childlike. He could throw bales all the way over the truck if you asked him to.’

A training programme when Steven was 16 years old designed to help him get work ended when he was ‘victimised’ by his coursemates.

Then, around 2004, the seeds of Steven’s disaster were sown. His mother became too ill to look after them both. Ethel was moved to sheltered accommodation in Launceston, 20 miles away.

Steven, meanwhile, found digs in Newquay – but would still regularly go home to see former neighbours and work with the Richards family.

Then, in April 2005, adult social services found Steven and his little terrier dog their own place to live – a bedsit in the mid-Cornwall town of St Austell, ten miles away.

Steven was dead a little over a year later.

His loneliness and desperation to make friends led to his bedsit being infiltrated and taken over by a cruel gang of drop-outs, drug addicts and drunks – led by 30-year-old Darren Stewart.

A violent man with a predilection for taking advantage of vulnerable people, Stewart would hang around on the streets outside Steven’s new home. Within weeks of Steven’s arrival, he had moved in and began controlling him, partly by supplying Steven with alcohol and drugs. Any benefit money Steven received was promptly taken by Stewart, who resorted to punching and kicking Steven if he ever showed resistence.

One Maudlin local at the time said Steven would phone home telling how delighted he was to have finally found mates. ‘I’m in a gang!’, he would say breathlessly.

He appeared to have zero concept of the dangerous company he was in.

Suspected by locals of being a drug-dealer and seen as the area’s ‘big man’, Stewart – who was was obsessed with drugs and jumping from bridges – had an aggressive nature that was never far from the surface. One girl accused him of threatening her with a hammer.

Still, he had a troupe of teenage girls who were fascinated by him, one of them being Bullock.

All too soon, she also moved into Steven’s flat, and she was very much an active participant in the events which led to his death.

High on drugs and booze, Stewart, his girlfriend Bullock and another member of the gang, Martin Pollard, then 21, tortured Steven.

Darren Stewart controled Steven partly by supplying him with alcohol and drugs, also taking his benefit money

Sarah Bullock laughed as she stamped on Steven’s hands, with Martin Pollard looking on as he died 

The latter told how he had been convinced by the two others that Steven was a paedophile – a completely false allegation – and then joined in the violence.

Bullock is thought to be the one who put the dog’s lead on a bruised and battered Steven, telling him: ‘Time for walkies.’

Eventually, to stop the agony, Steven falsely confessed to being a paedophile. He was then forced to swallow 70 painkillers and the trio frog-marched him to the top of the Trenance railway viaduct that soars over St Austell, visible from the window of his bedsit.

Steven was chronically afraid of heights – the viaduct was a place he was already scared of.

Matt Richards, his old friend from Maudlin, told the Mail: ‘I remember he was petrified of heights to the point he wouldn’t stand on an upturned bucket, so you can imagine how terrified he must’ve been in his final moments.’

After he fell, Steven landed on parked cars beneath, suffering horrific injuries.

So unaffected were Bullock and Stewart by what they had done that, after the murder, the pair returned to the bedsit and she pestered him for sex – ‘playtime’ as she called it – before dialling 999 and reporting Steven missing.

Two decades on, his murder remains a source of deep upset. His neighbours can barely bring themselves to look at the viaduct from which he fell.

Lee Nicholls, 55, who lived a couple of doors down from Steven, said: ‘It’s bloody disgusting what happened to him.

‘The viaduct does have an association with Steven now, what happened feels like a story from my life and a part of my history.

‘I was in my mid-30s when it happened. When you see horrific crimes on the television you feel detached but it’s completely different when it happens on your doorstep.

‘I had no idea Steven had any mental problems, that only came out in the case, he just seemed like a normal bloke who was quiet.’

Matt Richards remembered how ‘every week he would walk the three miles into Bodmin to get his benefits then would go to Woolworths, spend it on whatever, get a taxi back and that would be his money gone for the week. If he still had money you wouldn’t see him’.

Mr Richards said: ‘When he moved to St Austell it took him away from a community where he knew everybody and was looked after and he was exposed to people who took advantage of his trusting nature.

‘It was a huge shock when it all came out. It’s never nice to know a friend has gone that way.’

Darren Stewart was jailed for a minimum of 25 years for murder at Truro Crown Court in 2007.

Sarah Bullock was handed a ten-year detention for the same offence.

As he sentenced her, Mr Justice Owen said she was ‘totally infatuated’ with the gang’s ringleader but was still an ‘enthusiastic participant’ in the torment.

The flats in Blowing House Close where Steve lived in St Austell – ten miles away from where he grew up

The Trenance railway viaduct where Steven spent his final terrifying minutes can clearly be seen from the bedsit he once called home – something neighbours said reminded them of his grim death 20 years later

Her family, who live nearby, had tried to get her away from Stewart two days before the murder but he had turned her against them.

Martin Pollard, meanwhile, was sentenced to eight years for manslaughter. He is the only one who appeared to show remorse, claiming to be haunted by the sights and sounds of that night – particularly the noise Steven’s body made as it hit the cars.

‘I should have stopped it from the beginning,’ he said in court.

Two 17-years-old boys also received a three-year Supervision Order and community service for falsely imprisoning and assaulting Steven.

The judge criticised social services for not protecting Steven, described in court as a child in a man’s body, with a subsequent investigation by the Serious Case Review panel revealing a litany of failures.

Indeed, the community care team did little when Stewart – and his revolving roster of young girlfriends – moved into Steven’s tiny bedsit, controlling him and his money.

Despite this, the then-Cornwall County Council’s adult social care team closed their case with Steven when he requested a stop to the service in which a helper would come in twice a week and assist with household basics including shopping, budgeting, correspondence and bills.

Despite the avalanche of 999 calls from Steven’s flat complaining about being hurt, his ‘friend’ going missing and criminal damage, little seemed to be done.

Indeed, his frequent unaccompanied visits to hospital and his GP – uncommon given adults with learning difficulties tend to avoid these services – were not treated as ‘alerts’, and no ‘decisive’ action was taken about his substance misuse.

The month before his murder, Steven contacted his social work assistant to ask for help completing a form. He said he was having difficulty settling in St Austell and wanted a ‘swap’ to be near his mother.

On the same day he visited a local adult social care office asking for £20 for food and stated that he had been ‘taken advantage of’.

Steven was given the £20, but no inquiries were made about who was exploiting him.

The review found Steven ‘literally had nowhere within his own home to which he could retreat’ and that he ‘was unequal to protecting himself from Stewart’s influence’.

In a damning conclusion, it said: ‘Even the initial meeting of the Serious Case Review Panel confirmed there was no lack of information about Steven and his circumstances and that with better inter-agency working, Steven Hoskin would have been spared the destructive impacts of unrestrained physical, financial and emotional abuse in his own home.’

It found that at ‘every stage’ following Steven leaving the ‘comparative safety’ of his mother’s home, ‘all Serious Case Review contributors could have been potential rescuers, but every part of the service system had significant failures in this role’.

In a statement following his death, his mother said: ‘Steven was generous. He wanted friendships. He is at peace at last, now he cannot be hurt anymore.’