Alice’s killer fails to get sentence cut
COURT OF APPEAL BLOCKS MOVE BY MURDERER
COLD-BLOODED killer Trimaan “Harry” Dhillon has been refused an appeal against his life sentence for murdering his ex-girlfriend Alice Ruggles, The Chronicle can reveal.
We told last year how as viewers watched the hard-hitting documentary looking into her murder, An Hour To Catch a Killer with Trevor McDonald on ITV on the anniversary of her death back in October, little did they know Dhillon was trying to get an early release.
From a prison cell at HMP Durham, he wrote to the Court of Appeal in London in a bid to get his sentence cut.
But it has now come to light that his spell behind bars is secure after his appeal was refused.
“Bubbly” 24-year-old Northumbria University graduate Alice was brutally murdered by obsessed Dhillon. Her throat was cut when she was found in her flat in Rawling Road, Bensham, Gateshead, on October 12 2016. The 26-year-old Lance Corporal denied murder at Newcastle Crown Court, saying she had fallen on a carving knife during an argument.
Sentencing him to a minimum of 22 years, Judge Paul Sloan QC said the murder was an act of “utter barbarism”.
The court heard the Edinburghbased signaller with 2 Scots became obsessed with Alice and stalked her when he realised she was moving on after their intense relationship ended.
Dhillon claimed she died as a result of an accident when she leapt at him with a carving knife.
He told the jury they had been struggling, that he had tried to disarm her and she cut herself when he blocked a lunge, and the knife stuck in her neck when she fell to the floor.
Back then he tried to worm his way out of a murder charge, before trying to squirm his way out of at least two decades behind bars.
After writing from his cell, the Court of Appeal said it received his application on May 24. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was then informed.
A spokeswoman from the Court of Appeal said: “The case went to the first stage of appeal but it was refused at this stage. There was no re-appeal at the second stage so the case was closed.” A spokesperson for the CPS said: “We were notified by the Court of Appeal that permission to appeal the sentence was refused.”
Dhillon had driven 120 miles from his barracks near Edinburgh to confront Alice, originally from Leicestershire, when he got home from work.
Alice, an employee at Sky in Newcastle, was found dead in her bathroom by housemate Maxine McGill an hour later.
Dhillon did not react when a jury at Newcastle Crown Court convicted him of murder after they took less than two hours to dismiss his fanciful story that she had accidentally stabbed herself while lunging at him.
Judge Sloan QC said: “Precisely what happened once you were in the flat only you now know, but you have never had the decency to say.”
At 6ft 1in and 12 and a half stone, the signaller who was training for the Special Reconnaissance Regiment was nearly a foot taller and three stone heavier than his victim.
Dhillon fled without dialling 999 but remembered to take her phone and the murder weapon, disposing of them on the way back to Edinburgh.
Dhillon told a series of lies to talk his way out of trouble, and in his defence, made a series of accusations about the woman he supposedly loved. Judge Sloan said: “Not a shred of remorse have you shown from first to last, indeed you were concentrating so hard on getting your story right when giving evidence, you forgot even to shed a crocodile tear.”