The young actor was stabbed five times outside a pub in London – and his killer had a chilling response when he was told he was being charged with murder
Rob Knox (right) pictured with his mum Sally and younger brother Jamie(Image: PA)
This tragic star never got the chance to reach his full potential.
Days after he finished filming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 18-year-old actor Rob Knox was stabbed to death in a horrific attack. He was defending his younger brother – who tragically witnessed the murder.
“It happened in front of me, I didn’t see a knife go in, but I saw Rob go up to get the knives off the boy,” Jamie Knox told the Jeremy Kyle Show.
“This kid was just swinging his arms around with knives towards people. I’ll never forget it. I turned around and screamed and when I turned back I saw Rob slumped around him, holding himself with his arms. He was saying, ‘I’ve been stabbed, I’ve been stabbed.”
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Rob – who played Marcus Belby in the franchise – was rushed to hospital and what followed was an agonising 45 minute wait in A&E for his family.
But the minute Jamie saw a doctor and police woman heading towards them, he knew his brother was gone. “I knew straight then. ‘I’m sorry, he’s passed away,’ are words you shouldn’t be hearing,” he recalled.
Karl Bishop, 21, was charged with Rob’s murder. He had a previous conviction for a knife attack on two men and habitually carried knives. During Bishop’s trial, prosecutors said he had acted out of revenge, claiming that he had lost a fight with Jamie and his friends the week before.
Rob was stabbed outside Metro Bar in Sidcup, south-east London. He had left to protect his younger brother Jamie, then 17, after hearing that Bishop had threatened him.
Bishop, 21, had a chilling response when was told he was being charged with Mr Knox’s murder, saying “yeah sweet”, PC Craig Reid said during the trial. He said Bishop was quite calm but then got angry because he would be missing a Ricky Hatton fight.
Bishop was ultimately convicted of murdering Rob, who he stabbed five times outside the club. He also injured four of Knox’s friends, most seriously Dean Saunders, 23, who was left with permanent spinal damage after being stabbed in the neck, and Andrew Dormer, 17, who was stabbed in the chest as he tried to disarm Bishop.
He was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum of 20 years. But despite his conviction, The Times reported that Bishop refused to hear victim impact statements, smiled at friends in the courtroom, and even giggled at one point.
During his sentencing, a judge told the killer, “I do not think it is proved that you intended to kill Robert Knox.” But, he added, “The truth is that you simply could not care less whether you killed him or not. Your lack of regret let alone remorse was truly chilling”.
Rob’s devastated family went on to set up the Rob Knox Foundation to help young people get into acting. His mum Sally later spoke of the pain of attending the Harry Potter premiere without her boy.
“All he wanted to do was get his dinner suit and walk up that red carpet at Leicester Square,” she said. “He was a joker, he was a lovely normal kid. Didn’t mix with the wrong people. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
She also revealed that Warner Brothers had made her a film of outtakes of her son, which she described as her ‘happy place’.
Rob’s first credited acting role was a small part in ITV police drama The Bill, and he also appeared in Channel 4 reality show Trust Me, I’m a Teenager and BBC comedy After You’re Gone.
His breakthrough role was the character Marcus Belby in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in which he appeared posthumously when it was released in 2009. Although his character does not appear in the seventh novel, Rob had also signed on to reprise his role in the final installment of the Harry Potter film series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
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