Rapist faces life in jail for pensioner's murder

A convicted rapist who abducted and murdered a pensioner on her way home from church will discover today if he is ever to be freed again.

Farm labourer Trevor Hamilton, 23, is to be sentenced for battering retired librarian Attracta Harron around the head with a hatchet or axe before burying her naked body in a shallow grave near his family home in Sion Mills, Co Tyrone.

The brutality of the attack on Mrs Harron, 65, a devout Roman Catholic and mother of five, shocked Northern Ireland.

Hamilton carried out the killing less than four months after completing a rape sentence.

At Dungannon Crown Court today he is expected to receive one of the toughest prison sentences ever imposed by the Northern Ireland judicial system.

Crown lawyers have already pressed for a considerably higher minimum term behind bars than the guidelines set down in legislation.

No remorse has been shown by the killer whose motive for abducting Mrs Harron was sexual, they stressed.

The trial judge, Mr Justice McLaughlin, has already warned Hamilton, of Concess Road, Sion Mills, that he may spend the rest of his life in prison.

Mrs Harron vanished in December 2003 as she walked home to Strabane, Co Tyrone from her daily trip the short distance across the Irish border to attend Mass in Lifford, Co Donegal.

Her remains were discovered four months later after specialist body recovery dogs were brought in from South Yorkshire Police.

The body had been wrapped in a meal sack for a shroud and buried in a riverbank behind Hamilton’s home.

Although he had past convictions for indecent exposure and the brutal rape of a woman he dragged into a caravan at the age of just 17, Mrs Harron’s body was so badly decomposed it was impossible to establish if she had been sexually assaulted.