Wheelie bin killer jailed for 16 years
Teen’s ruined my life, says victim’s grieving daughter
THE daughter of a murdered teaching assistant yesterday described how her life had been ‘completely ruined’ by her mother’s teenage killer.
Sarah Birbeck, 17, spoke out as a judge locked up Rocky Marciano Price, for 16 years after he stuffed her mother’s body into a wheelie bin and buried her in a shallow grave.
The college student said her family would never recover from Lindsay’s death after Price attacked her at random as she walked in woods near her home last August. The 17-year-old traveller, named after the American boxer who inspired the Rocky films, was convicted of murdering Mrs Birbeck at Preston Crown Court on Wednesday.
Her daughter said it was ironic that Price, who has a very low IQ, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, was exactly the type of young man her mother, who worked as a higher level teaching assistant at a primary school, would have tried to help. Miss Birbeck said it was ‘unforgivable’ that he refused to admit his guilt, instead putting her family through the pain of a trial.
In a moving victim impact statement, read by barrister Simon Driver, Miss Birbeck said: ‘To know now that he murdered her [Mrs Birbeck] for absolutely no reason is heartbreaking and has not sunk in yet. The fact that he has made us come to court and listen to every graphic detail of my mum’s murder when he could have saved us this pain by pleading guilty is unforgivable.’
The court heard Price had been prowling The Coppice, an area of dense woodland on the outskirts of Accrington, Lancashire, on August 12 last year. He had stalked another lone woman earlier in the day, who got to safety after her ‘sixth sense’ told her she was in danger.
Price strangled Mrs Birbeck, 47, a mother of two, and later attempted
‘Listen to every graphic detail’
to cover his tracks by moving her body to Accrington Cemetery in a blue wheelie bin, where he buried her in a shallow grave. Mrs Birbeck’s badly decomposed remains were discovered wrapped in two plastic bags on August 24 last year, following a huge search effort.
Price, of Accrington, came forward after police issued CCTV of him pulling the wheelie bin through the town’s streets.
He denied murder but admitted moving Mrs Birbeck’s body, saying a mystery stranger had offered him ‘a lot of money’ to get rid of it. Sentencing Price to life with a minimum term of 16 years, Mrs Justice Amanda Yip said: ‘I am sure the defendant lay in wait with the intention of killing a passing woman.
‘Why he decided to kill her only he knows. If it had not been Lindsay Birbeck, it could have been someone else. This was the entirely random killing of a stranger. ’ The court heard Price’s mental problems reduced his capacity for ‘empathy,’ but the judge insisted they did not explain his actions.
She said she had ‘no doubt’ he knew what he was doing, and ‘knew that killing her was terrible wrong’.