'Evil' Mark Bridger was told today he
would never be released from prison after he was found guilty of
abducting, murdering and disposing of schoolgirl April Jones.
The judge at Mold Crown Court this afternoon
gave the former abattoir worker a whole life sentence, calling him a
'pathological and glib liar', and a 'paedophile who for some time
harboured sexual and morbid fantasies about young girls.'
Justice
Griffith-Williams also asked him to reveal what he did with April's
body for the sake of her parents Paul and Coral, who sat just feet away
from him as he was jailed.
On
October 1 last year Bridger snatched and murdered April, five, on the
Bryn-Y-Gog estate, in Machynlleth, Powys, before 'lying through his
teeth' by claiming he accidentally hit her with his car and was so drunk
he did not know what happened to the body.
But after a five-week trial it took the jury just four hours to decide father
of six Bridger was a fantasist, obsessed with child murder
and child pornography, who had lured disabled April into his car, before killing her.
The
47 year old still refuses to reveal what he did with her body, but it
is believed he burned her in his fire and dumped some of her remains in a
river close to his home.
As Bridger was dragged to a waiting prison van outside Mold Crown Court to begin his life term, there were shouts of 'b******'' aimed at him from a waiting crowd.
Jailed: Sexual predator and murderer Mark Bridger is taken from court this afternoon to start his whole life sentence in jail
The judge said on his laptop Bridger
stored 'not only images of pre-pubescent and pubescent girls but foul
pornography of the gross sexual abuse of young children' on the prowl for a child victim.
Mother and daughter: Coral Jones cuddles smiling
April tightly, and today described how the family will never recover
from her death
'What
prompted you to live out one of those fantasies is a matter for
speculation, but it may have been a combination of the ending of one
sexual relationship and your drinking.
'Whatever,
you set out to find a little girl to abuse. I am not sure you targeted
April specifically - it was probably fortuitous that she can be seen on
some of the images which you stored on your laptop of her older sister -
but you were on the prowl for a young girl.'
Earlier today the jury agreed there
was 'overwhelming' evidence that the former abattoir worker had snatched
and killed the five year old in a 'sexually motivated' attack last
October.
After the
sentencing Coral Jones, April's mother said: 'We are relieved that Mark
Bridger has today been found guilty of the murder of our beautiful
daughter April.
'April
will be forever in our hearts and we are so moved by the overwhelming
support we have had from so many people all over the world.'
In
court earlier, a statement read on behalf of April's parents revealed
they still cannot enter her bedroom at home or sort through her clothes
because they are so heartbroken.
They also felt deep guilt for letting April go out to play on her bike on the evening she was abducted by her killer.
Fantasist: Mark Bridger, who is 'pathological
liar and cold-blooded killer', will never leave jail and waiting people
yelled 'b******' as he was taken in cuffs to the man
Brave: April Jones's
mother Coral spoke outside court today, beside her husband Paul, and
said they were relieved that Mark Bridger was found guilty
Trial: Mark Bridger faces life in prison for the
murder of April Jones, after the jury accepted compelling evidence he
had abducted and murdered her in a 'sexually motivated' attack
Today Bridger stood in the dock as he was
found guilty, he looked up to sky, trembling, with his faced screwed up,
and even appeared to nod his head.
As the jury returned the guilty verdicts, April's parents Paul and Coral sat in dignified silence, holding hands.
Coral
then wiped a tear from her eye while Paul put his hand to his face and
wrapped his arms around April's teenage half-sister. The family, all
wearing pink ribbons in memory of their murdered daughter.
Bridger
is a 'cold-hearted murderer' who 'spun a web of lies and half-truths'
to try to get away with his 'truly horrific' crime, prosecutors said
after the verdict.
Ed Beltrami, Chief Crown Prosecutor
for CPS Wales said after the verdict: 'Mark Bridger has relentlessly
spun a web of lies and half-truths to try and distance himself from the
truly horrific nature of the crime he perpetrated. He has refused to
take responsibility for what he did to April and has stopped at nothing
to try and cover his tracks.'
Happier times: Paul and Coral Jones, hold April
and their other children on their wedding day, before their 'beautiful
daughter' was taken from them
April disappeared as she was playing with her best friend near their homes on
the Bryn-Y-Gog estate, Machynlleth, Powys, on October 1 last year.
Bridger, a former slaughterhouse worker from Ceinws, denied abduction, murder and intending to pervert the course of justice.
The
child killer's refusal to confess - either to murdering April or to
where he had hidden her body - forced the child's grieving parents to
endure five weeks of harrowing evidence, causing her mother, Coral, to
flee the courtroom on various occasions, distraught and in tears.
Brave: Paul and Coral Jones, the parents of
April Jones arrive at Mold Crown Court, where they have been every day
during their daughter's killer's murder trial
Bridger's
heartless lies have also had a huge financial cost, with months of
painstaking police searches, forensics, legal work and the money
involved in providing him with security and transport to court each day
of the trial costing the public as much as £9million.
During his five-week trial he repeatedly wept at Mold Crown Court as he painted himself as a man who had
'accidentally' run over a child and then panicked before blacking out
due to alcohol.
He said he killed April when he accidentally 'crushed' her with his
Land Rover but claimed he can't remember what he did with the body
because he was drunk and panicking.
But it was all lies and it emerged:
- Bridger was an impotent alcoholic who was bitter after being dumped by his girlfriend
- He stalked local teenage girls on Facebook who searched for horrific images of child sexual abuse on the internet
- He
used the fact that five-year-old April would have known him as being
the father of a girl she knew at school to lure her into his car and
later kill her
- Killer
confessed to prison priest after his arrest that he disposed of the
schoolgirl in a river, evidence kept from jury reveals
Tragic: April Jones was abducted while she
played on her bike (pictured), probably lured by Bridger into his car
with the promise of a sleepover with his daughter
Experts said today getting Mark Bridger to crack and finally reveal what he did to April Jones could take years.
He
has rigidly tried to stick to his fanciful story that he “accidentally”
killed cerebral palsy sufferer April - and could not remember what he
did with her.
Nottingham
Trent University senior psychology lecturer Serena Simmons said: 'He
clearly is deluded and has a distorted view of the world. He certainly
displays this mentality of "if I keep stalling then eventually things
will blow over". But that is far from the case.
'He definitely knows what he has done to April Jones and how she came to her death.
'The
cracks in his story have already started to show during his trial. He
will face more questions while in prison from his psychiatrist.
'Whether
he chooses to engage with that process is a different matter, but I
fear finding out the full extent of what he did could take a very long
time.
Cold-blooded: Killer Mark Bridger had pictures of himself holding this gun on his Facebook profile
Grim discovery: Mark Bridger's burnt knife recovered from his property in Ceinws, where April may have died
After viewing child pornography and a
rape scene on television at home, Bridger decided to abduct April, which
kick-started the biggest missing person hunt in police history.
She has
never been found but police say they would try again if Bridger came clean about her death.
As hundreds scoured streets and countryside in
the desperate hope of finding April safe and well, Bridger was cleaning
her blood from his house and trying to remove DNA evidence - but he failed.
Later he shed tears over the
‘terrible news’ of her disappearance and helped volunteers to look for
her, but was seen close to a river with a black bin liner, but said he
was 'going for a wee' in a lay-by.
In an emotionally-charged month-long
trial the jury was shown the last, poignant image of five-year-old April
Jones before she was killed. It was taken from CCTV footage at her
local leisure centre as she came out of the changing rooms from her
regular Monday evening swimming lesson. The time on the film was 5:29pm.
They were also shown Mark Bridger's Land Rover Discovery driving away from town at 7:19pm.
April would already have been in the passenger seat after Bridger abducted her from outside her home nearby.
The next morning, while hundreds scoured streets and
countryside around the mid-Wales market town of Machynlleth, Bridger
calmly went out for a walk with his dog.
He was captured on film by a police
helicopter above the cottage in which the Crown says April lay bleeding
on the hearth.
Smoke billowed from his chimney, which prosecutors suggested was a way of disposing of evidence.
Half an hour before his arrest, police
officers went into Bridger's white-washed cottage searching for April.
They said the house was uncomfortably
hot, there was a strong smell of detergent, and a smell of cleaning
products, air freshener and washed clothes as he tried to hide his crime.
The only trace of the innocent blonde
schoolgirl would emerge the next day - her blood in the
ex-slaughterman's home, found with fragments of a child's skull among
the ashes of his fireplace.
Detective Superintendent Andy John,
who led the hunt for April's killer, said: 'Mark Bridger is an evil and
manipulative individual. I think we have clearly identified during the
course of our inquiries and during the course of the investigation that
he is somebody who fantasises, he is somebody who likes to be in control
and clearly believes that what he says is the true version of events.
'He is somebody that can't be trusted and, ultimately, he is somebody who has committed the most horrific of crimes.'
Police believe Bridger, who was
experienced in 'survival and bushcraft', dismembered April in his lounge
before getting rid of her body in the forests and waterways in the
hills surrounding his home.
Mr
John said: 'I think that the body has been dismembered and various
parts of the remains have been placed in different areas and possibly
those remains have been so small and damaged that that's why we have had
such difficulty in locating them.'
'He
knows the geography of the area. We've got the rivers close by and the
rivers were fast flowing and at the time this offence occurred they
would have been very high.
'We can't rule out that body parts may have gone into the river. We can't rule out that certain parts would have been burnt.'
Lounge: This is Mark Bridger's living room, where forensics found blood and bone fragments, a room which was shown to jurors
Bathroom tiles: The green arrows denote where police say they found April's blood following Mark Bridger's arrest
Mr John said he believed the attack was sexually motivated but that he did not think April was 'specific target'.
He
said Bridger's life was spiralling out of control after he had been
dumped by his girlfriend and he was also having financial difficulties.
'I think that April Jones happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and as a result was abducted,' he said.
The
youngster's blood was found all over Bridger's cottage and a boning
knife - obtained from his time as a skilled slaughterman - was found to
have been burned in the fire to apparently eradicate any DNA evidence.
Bridger,
who the prosecution said was 'forensically aware' had cleaned his Mount
Pleasant cottage in the tiny Welsh hamlet of Ceinws from top to bottom.
Horror: Floral tributes and a single candle
burns outside Bridger's white-washed cottage, where he watched violent
films and child pornography
In court Bridger, who could be seen
with a large snake tattoo on his forearm, often wept when describing
what he said happened to April. He wept most when he felt a piece of
testimony or evidence might be backing up his wild claims.
When
one forensic scientist said he could not say for sure that an assault
took place in Mount Pleasant, Bridger openly wept and nodded.
But
when the same scientist added that this did not mean an assault did not
take place outside the house and Bridger brought April inside, he
regained his composure.
The jury heard he had
researched serial killer Ted Bundy on the FBI’s most wanted website, and
also read about the James Bulger murder and was ‘volunteering’
information he knew about other murdered children, including Caroline
Dickinson, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
His laptop had child porn on it, as well as files of pictures of local children, including April, grabbed off Facebook.
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