04/08/2006

Harron killer gets life sentence

The man who abducted and murdered Strabane pensioner Attracta Harron as she made her way home from Mass in December 2003, has today been told that he is to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Trevor Hamilton, 23, and from Concess Road in Sion Mills, today received the highest prison sentence ever to be imposed by a Northern Ireland court, with no recommended minimum tariff.

The trial judge, Mr Justice McLaughlin, today told Dungannon Crown Court that the case was made up of "the stuff of nightmares," as he passed the sentence of live imprisonment.

Hamilton was convicted in April this year for the murder.

Attracta Harron, 65, disappeared in December 2003, after attending Mass in Lifford, County Donegal.

It is understood that Hamilton lured the mother of five into his car, where he subsequently took her to his home and battered her to death, with what is believed to have been an axe or a hatchet.

After continuous searches, her body was eventually found four months later in a makeshift grave in a riverbank bordering Hamilton's home.

Her body was so badly decomposed that it was impossible to establish if she had been sexually assaulted, however a prosecution lawyer said considering his previous convictions, no other conclusion could be reached.

At the time of the murder, Hamilton had just completed a sentence and was on parole after raping a woman in his home village three years earlier.

(EF)

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