Harron murderer 'will spend life behind bars'

A rapist who abducted and murdered a pensioner on her way home from church was today told he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Farm labourer Trevor Hamilton, 23, used pitiless and chilling cruelty when he bludgeoned retired librarian Attracta Harron and then buried her naked body at a riverbank near his home in Sion Mills, County Tyrone, in Northern Ireland in December 2003.

Sentencing him at Dungannon Crown Court, Mr Justice Richard McLaughlin told him that the punishment had to be the toughest possible because of the sinister similarities with an earlier brutal sex attack on a woman he lured into his car.

The judge told him: “What you did to Mrs Harron, a good and loving woman, was at once nauseating and horrifying, it was the stuff of nightmares and the epitome of the loss of innocence in our community.

“What that poor woman experienced as you prepared to execute her, whatever weapon you used to accomplish it, was so appalling that it demands retribution of the most severe kind.

“When the multiple aggravating factors are taken into account, particularly that you murdered her so soon after your release from prison for such serious offences, I conclude that only one punishment is appropriate, especially as you have been given a second chance in the past but it has had no affect on your behaviour.

“You will in consequence spend the rest of your life in prison.”

It is believed to be the first time in Northern Ireland that a murderer has been told he will never be freed again.