Murderer was 'closely monitored' sex offender

The man, who was found guilty of the murder of Strabane woman Attracta Harron, was one of the most closely monitored sex offenders in Northern Ireland.

Trevor William Hamilton, aged 23 and from Concess Road in Sion Mills, was told yesterday by a Crown Court, that he may be sentenced to the longest ever jail term passed in the province.

It was revealed during the hearing that Trevor Hamilton had been released from prison less than four months before he murdered the 65-year-old mother of five.

The former librarian disappeared on December 11 2003, while walking home from Mass in Lifford, County Donegal.

Her body was found concealed in a makeshift grave four months after she was killed.

A post mortem examination revealed that she had been battered to death.

The case made legal history, as it was the first time in which a jury was allowed to hear evidence of Hamilton's previous criminal record.

The jury was told that Hamilton had spent seven years in a young offenders centre after pleading guilty to raping, assaulting and threatening to kill a 29-year-old woman in February 2000 when he was 17-years-old.

Co-ordinator of the Sex Offenders Strategic Management Committee, Willie McAuley, said that lessons would have to be learnt from the Trevor Hamilton case.

Mr McAuley said: "He was being closely monitored in that he would have been regularly visited by police officers because of his sex offender registration, because of his risk management plan and he would have been visited by probation officers through his being on supervised probation order and on the risk management plan.

"He would have been visited very, very regularly. Probably more regularly than any other sex offender at that point in time in Northern Ireland."

DUP MP Gregory Campbell has today called for an inquiry into the case.

Mr Campbell has successfully campaigned for sex offences legislation here to be brought onto an equal level with the rest of the United Kingdom.

Speaking earlier to the BBC, Mr Campbell said: "I think there has to be a full investigation of this case to see how closely he was monitored, how systematic the entire monitoring was and to see what improvements in the existing legislation there can be."

Mr Justice McLaughlin, the Judge at yesterday's hearing, told Hamilton that there would be a very real possibility that he would never be released in his lifetime and it would be a long time before he ever saw freedom again.

(EF/SP)