A teenager who murdered a 90-year-old neighbour, mutilated her body, removed her heart, and drank her blood in a macabre vampire ritual was beginning a life sentence last night, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.
Psychologists found no outward signs of mental illness in 17-year-old art student Mathew Hardman, who insisted his alleged fascination with vampires was nothing more than "a subtle interest". However Judge Mr Justice Richards said all the evidence pointed to Hardman's belief that he could achieve immortality by killing widow Mrs Mabel Leyshon and drinking her blood. "It may well seem incredible but in my judgment that is where the evidence leads," Justice Richards said as he sentenced Hardman to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure for "an act of great wickedness". The Judge said he could allow for some degree of confused thinking and immaturity as well as for some childish fantasizing, but the fact remained this was "an act of great wickedness" which Hardman had not faced up to and for which he had shown no remorse: "You hoped for immortality but all you have achieved is the brutal ending of another person's life."
Directing that Hardman serve a minimum sentence of 12 years, the Judge lifted the ban on naming him immediately the jury reached its unanimous verdict. Hardman wept in the dock and his mother sobbed in the public gallery. Also watching from the gallery was the teenage German exchange student whom he had accused of being "one of them" and begged to bite his neck so that he, too, could become a vampire.
The prosecution told how Hardman had surfed the internet for vampire websites and had read a magazine featuring an article on the conduct of a black mass.
Mrs Leyshon was stabbed 22 times to her death at her home in Anglesey in November last year. Hardman, who lived just yards away and had once been Mrs Leyshon's paper boy, mutilated her body before placing pokers at her feet in the shape of a cross.
Her heart had been removed, wrapped in newspaper and placed on a saucepan on a silver platter next to her body.
The prosecution said the teenager was obsessed with vampires and the occult and had told others he wanted to kill in order to become immortal.