Girl’s real killer gets life decade after boyfriend wrongly convicted

A man has been jailed for life for strangling a teenager to death, more than a decade after her boyfriend was wrongly convicted of the murder.

Shahidul Ahmed killed and “brutally battered” shop assistant Rachel Manning, 19, in Dec 2000, dumping her body in undergrowth at a golf course.

He hit Ms Manning repeatedly with a steering lock after she was dead, causing broken bones and disfiguring her face, Luton Crown Court heard.

Her boyfriend Barri White was jailed for the murder in 2002 but later acquitted at a retrial in 2008.

Ahmed, aged 41, was put on trial after DNA evidence linking him to Ms Manning’s death was discovered following his arrest for a sexual assault in 2010. He denied murder.

Ahmed, who was born in Bangladesh, was found guilty by a unanimous verdict at a retrial after a jury failed to return a verdict in February.

Sentencing Ahmed to life in prison with a minimum term of 17 years, Mr Justice Wilkie said: “For almost 10 years you lived undetected with the knowledge of what you had done.

“You took out your anger and frustration on her much-loved face and disfigured it by great violence, having sought to dispose of her where she would not be found for a sufficient time to enable you to cover your tracks.”

Mr Wilkie said Ms Manning had “much to look forward to and was relishing the challenges that life would bring”.

“Tragically at the age of 19 you, Shahidul Ahmed, snuffed all that out, driven by the same demons that led you in 2010 to conduct a sexual assault,” he said.

Mr White, who was 20 at the time, served six years for the murder before his guilty verdict was quashed on appeal in 2007. His conviction was largely based on scientific evidence which was disputed by experts when BBC’s Rough Justice programme looked into the case.

After yesterday’s hearing, Mr White said: “I feel over the moon that justice has finally been done and really happy that Rachel’s family have finally got justice and the closure they deserve.”

His friend Keith Hyatt, who was convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by helping to dispose of the body in 2002, also had his conviction quashed in 2007 after serving a jail sentence.

Mr Wilkie said Mr White and Mr Hyatt had “suffered the agony of being convicted and imprisoned for offences of which they were wholly innocent”.

Outside court, Mr Hyatt said: “At the moment I’m still in shock. I’m just pleased it’s now over.

“We can say we are innocent of this, we never did this, and the right guy has now gone to jail.”

Ahmed, wearing a grey shirt and flanked by five security guards, did not give evidence during the court proceedings.

The father-of-five, who sat with an interpreter in the dock, bowed his head as the verdict was read out, while there were cheers from the public gallery.

In Ahmed’s opening trial, prosecutor Ben Gumpert said the victim was strangled with a soft ligature.

“There is no evidence which points to any particular motive, although it seems likely that the impulse to attack her would have been a sexual one,” the barrister said.

“Whether he always intended to kill her or only did so because she was not willing to comply with his demands is unknown.”

Ahmed, of Bletchley in Buckinghamshire, was arrested on suspicion of the murder in Sept 2010 and charged in Dec 2011.

DNA found on the steering lock matched Ahmed after it was found by the road on the direct route between his home and the spot where the body was hidden.

Mr Gumpert said a hair was retrieved from the victim’s clothing which also matched the defendant’s DNA.

He said tests showed it was 99.4% likely to have come from Ahmed.