British killer of young women sentenced to life without parole

Levi Bellfield, 39, known as the 'Bus Stop Stalker" who killed vulnerable young British women, has been given a whole life tariff (life without parole), a sentence which has only been given to three dozen other British prisoners. He is the second British prisoner to be given this sentence in a week, Steve Wright, a serial killer of five women, being given the same life without parole sentence February 22.

Sentencing Bellfield at the Old Bailey on Tuesday in his absence, Mrs Justice Rafferty said: "You have reduced three families to unimagined grief.

"What dreadful feelings went through your head as you attacked and, in two cases, snuffed out a young life is beyond understanding."

Explaining her sentencing she said: "Aggravating features are the chronicle of violence directed towards lone vulnerable young women during the hours of darkness and substantial premeditation and planning."

The judge also praised Det Ch Insp Colin Sutton, who led the case, for seeing through Bellfield's "web of deceit".

"This case has depended on thousands of hours of unglamorous, painstaking work by officers who took their lead from you," she said.

Bellfield is the second person in the UK to be handed a "whole life" term in four days.
Steve Wright, who killed five women in Suffolk at the end of 2006, was given the same sentence at Ipswich Crown Court on Friday.

The Old Bailey heard that Bellfield had refused to attend his sentencing because of a "welter of accusations" that he was behind other unsolved crimes.

His barrister, William Boyce QC told the judge: "Overnight there has been what some consider to be a quite extraordinary explosion of bad publicity."

Blunt instrument
The wheel clamper from West Drayton carried out attacks on the three students in 2003 and 2004.

Police suspect him of carrying out 20 other attacks on women, including date rapes.
He is also the main suspect in the murder of Milly Dowler, who went missing on her way home from school in Walton-on-Thames in Surrey on 21 March 2002.

Her body was found in Yateley Heath, Hampshire, six months later.

Miss McDonnell was hit three times on the head with a hammer just yards from her front door after she got off a bus in February 2003.

In a similar attack in August 2004, Miss Delagrange was hit on the head with a blunt instrument on Twickenham Green while she was walking home after missing her bus.

Miss Sheedy, who is now 21, suffered a broken collarbone, a punctured lung and other internal injuries when Bellfield drove his people carrier into her and reversed back over her in May 2004.

In an impact statement Dominique Delagrange described the pain of losing her daughter Amelie.
She said: "Her loss is an open wound that will never heal. We shall never get over it."

Miss McDonnell's uncle, Shane, said: "Marsha's murder was an act of pure evil, an innocent girl attacked from behind with no motive, no reason and no justification."