Neighbour gets life for killing and mutilating woman, 38
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Your support makes all the difference.A man who murdered his neighbour and scattered her body parts over a golf course was sentenced to life imprisonment yesterday.
A man who murdered his neighbour and scattered her body parts over a golf course was sentenced to life imprisonment yesterday.
Keith Valentine was found guilty at the Old Bailey of killing Isabelle Lewis, 38.
Valentine, 40, from New Addington, Surrey was told by Mr Justice Blofeld: "It is difficult for normal human beings to understand what made you kill this unfortunate woman. It is behaviour normal human beings consider so revolting."
Valentine was further jailed for seven years after being found guilty of perverting the course of justice in cutting up the body and disposing of it. He cut Mrs Lewis into nine pieces and took the remains in two plastic sacks to the Addington Court golf course across the road from the block of flats where they lived.
A pathologist told the court Mrs Lewis had an air rifle pellet in her brain and had been stabbed several times before being mutilated. She had a cross carved into her forehead.
Richard Horwell, for the prosecution, said the woman's breasts had never been found."There are elements to this case which are gruesome to the extreme," he said.
The court was told remains began appearing shortly after Mrs Lewis was last seen, on 1 September 1998. Golfers thought they were animals' until part of the torso was discovered.
Mrs Lewis had suffered depression after the death of her two-year-old daughter in 1995, and was living apart from her husband and three sons. Her husband reported her missing.
Traces of Mrs Lewis's blood and bits of her cut-up shoes and trousers were found in Valentine's flat, which was above that of Mrs Lewis. Valentine denied knowing Mrs Lewis when questioned but in January this year, a bag containing eight knives with serrated edges and the rifle were found in his flat.
The court was told that pictures of naked women with cut marks drawn on them were found in his possession.
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