Mark Bridger will die in prison.
Croydon educated killer Mark Bridger was sentenced to life in jail yesterday after being found guilty of abducting and murdering April Jones.
He will spend his whole life in prison after the jury at Mold Crown Court unanimously found him guilty of killing April in a sexually motivated attack.
The court heard that Bridger, who attended John Ruskin College and Croydon College, had stored indecent images of children on his computer, and on the day of the abduction had watched a scene from a slasher horror film.
Mr Justice John Griffith Williams yesterday gave the father of six a whole life tariff, making him only the 37th person in the UK to receive one.
“The court has listened to compelling evidence of your guilt, evidence which has also demonstrated that you are a pathological and glib liar,” he said.
“There is no doubt in my mind that you are a paedophile who has for some time harboured sexual and morbid fantasies about young girls.”
April, whose body has never been found, went missing near her Machynlleth home in Wales on October 1 2012.
The UK’s biggest ever police search was launched in an attempt to find her.
Bridger denied the murder, claiming that he had accidently run April over and that he could not remember where he put the body because he was drunk.
The murderer is a serial offender with convictions going back 28 years relating to guns, thefts and road rage attacks.
Bridger wanted these to be revealed in court to show the jury that he did not have any previous history of sexual offences or having indecent child images.
“We are relieved that Mark Bridger has today been found guilty of the murder of our beautiful daughter April, however we still do not know where she is, and this will always be a very painful thing for us to deal with,” said April’s mother Coral Jones in a statement outside court.
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