By Helen Carter | March 8, 2010 | theguardian
A serial sex offender was today sentenced to life in prison after he admitted kidnapping, raping and murdering a teenager whom he ensnared using a fake profile on Facebook. Peter Chapman was told he must serve at least 35 years in prison by judge Peter Fox today, following the killing of Ashleigh Hall, who was 17. The judge said he was “a very great danger to young women, and for what it is worth, I cannot foresee your release”. Sentencing him at Teesside crown court, the judge said Chapman had been the architect of “an evil scheme, very carefully brought, and with considerable detail, to trap your victim”. The killer had claimed to be a handsome teenager and used the profile to lure the teenager into meeting him after he befriended her through Facebook. In reality, he was an emaciated, 33-year-old convicted double rapist, who was almost toothless and living in his car. Graham Reeds QC, for the prosecution, told the court Chapman had claimed to be called DJ Pete or Pete Cartwright. “The photograph is not of him. It is of a barechested and good-looking boy, who is apparently in his late teens.” Chapman was, in fact, “a somewhat plainer-looking man who could pass for being rather older than his 33 years. When she met him on 25 October last year, he kidnapped, raped and murdered her.”
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