Porn-crazed thug gets 35 years for Kayleigh’s murder
THe landscape gardener who raped and murdered schoolgirl Kayleigh Haywood was jailed for 35 years yesterday.
Stephen Beadman was obsessed with violent pornography and searched for extreme images online hours before battering her to death, it was revealed.
Kayleigh was murdered in a field after being groomed on Facebook in what judge Mrs Justice Cox described as ‘every parent’s worst nightmare’. She said her murder showed the dangers to which young people are exposed through social media.
Beadman and his next- door neighbour Luke Harlow had held the 15-year-old prisoner in Harlow’s flat. When terrified Kayleigh, who was barefoot and semi-naked, fled in the early hours of the morning, Beadman, 29, caught her and raped her.
He then forced her to walk over a mile to the woodland spot where he attacked her so savagely she had to be identified using dental records.
In a letter to Nottingham Crown Court Kayleigh’s mother Stephanie, 37, said: ‘These evil people have given us a lifetime of utter destruction and heartache. I have been robbed of my daughter and robbed of my last goodbye. My heart is shattered.’
In an interview before the sentencing Miss Haywood, said she could ‘never forgive’ Beadman and Harlow. ‘They’re not human’, she added.
The court heard how Harlow, 28, who described himself as a ‘ professional serial killer’ on Twitter, contacted Kayleigh out of the blue on Facebook and ‘put her into the path of a monster’ in Beadman by grooming her online and inviting her to stay at his flat in Ibstock, Leicestershire, despite knowing she was only 15.