Killer of `trusting girl' is given life

A JOBLESS loner was jailed for life yesterday for what a judge described as the "callous and brutal" murder of a schoolgirl.

Craig Aaron Smith, who shot Claire Hart with an air rifle, beat her and strangled her with her school tie, was told by Mr Justice Maurice Kay that he was a very dangerous young man who would go to prison for a "very long time.

"To anyone who saw you in the witness box it is apparent you have no sense of remorse for the terrible crime you committed and no thoughts for anybody but yourself," he said.

Thirteen-year-old Claire was murdered last June by Smith, 20, after leaving her home in Eaton, outside Congleton in Cheshire. The jury at Chester Crown Court took nearly six hours to find Smith, fromBuglawton, near Congleton guilty of the killing after a two-week trial.

The trial jury heard how Claire had been sexually abused and bullied in her early life and was moved to residential care before being fostered by the Harts in 1994. Her foster parents were in the process of adopting her. Yesterday, Katherine and Robin Hart said they had longed for the laughter of a son or daughter and Claire had been the answer to their prayers. "We had the benefit of some time with a lovely young girl," said Mrs Hart, last night. "She wasn't perfect, none of us are. She was happy-go-lucky, she sang and laughed. She wasn't a forward teenager and now she never will be."

But Claire was always too trusting, too quick to describe new acquaintances as friends. Her emotional maturity was that of a 10-year-old. She trusted Smith and that, said Patrick Harrington, for the prosecution, was a "terrible mistake".

Smith was a loner who spent much of his time in the woods around the River Dane, dressed in combat gear, fishing and firing air guns. He did not get on with his own family who, as prosecution witnesses, offered some of the most telling evidence against him.

Margaret Smith recalled her son's chilling prophecy, five days before he murdered Claire. "There's a rumour I've killed a girl," he told her. He had not but in his mind, a fantasy was already forming. Most of his friends were boys aged 10 or 11 and when he fell into conversation with two of them in woods near the scene of the killing, he pulled out a piece of string or rope. "This is what you use to strangle people you don't like," he told the boys.

A schoolboy was the last person to see Claire alive. She was sitting in playing fields near the school talking to Smith. Claire was not distressed but Smith was carrying a gun. He was to strangle Claire, possibly with her own school tie, beat and shoot her, then wade out into the river, struggling to ensure that her body was washed away.

Piece-by-piece, the child's possessions were found in the river over the next five days. Her overcoat, then her sports kit and a silver carrier bag she had carried it in. Finally her body washed over a weir.

Smith was charged with the murder the day after her body was found. At first, he denied meeting her in the field. Later, he told police officers he had been with her but that she had carried on to school.

A memorial to Claire is to stand in the millennium field planned in Eaton.