Petrol killer back behind bars over child sex images
AMURDERER who spent 17 years in prison for dousing an ex-girlfriend in petrol and setting fire to her is back behind bars after being caught with child sex abuse pictures.
Ian Anthony Harris downloaded the indecent pictures after visiting internet sex chatrooms.
However, officers from the South Wales Police On-line Investigation Team (Polit) were alerted to his activity and swooped on his Swansea house.
In 1988 Harris murdered his ex, Mandy Jackson, after she ended their relationship – he went to her flat in Uplands, poured petrol over her as she made a cup of tea and threw a match on her. Police later found her charred body by the kitchen table.
Harris was given a life sentence for murdering the 21-year-old.
Dean Pulling, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court that on February 10 this year officers from Polit received information about activity involving a computer linked to an address in the Ravenhill area of the city.
Harris was out, but officers went to his place of work and took him back home – in a bedroom at the property they found a desktop computer containing 18 indecent images including one of Category A, the most extreme kind. Officers also found evidence Harris had shared a Category B image.
The 52-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of distributing an indecent image of a child and three of possessing indecent images when he appeared in custody in the dock.
The court heard that during his police interviews Harris said he had downloaded the images after visiting internet chatrooms where the talk was “invariably sexual, and in a variety of forms”. He said he had uploaded an image – of Category B – after somebody in a chatroom asked to see it.
The prosecutor said Harris had convictions for some 22 offences including murder.
Harris was released from jail in 2006.
He was recalled to prison after his arrest on the indecent images charges.
Dan Griffiths, for Harris, said his client accepted that in due course he would have to convince the parole board he was no longer a danger.
The advocate said his client was a family man who had started a new relationship after his release in 2006, and had spent six years working as a greenskeeper at a Swansea golf course.
Recorder Ifan Wyn Lloyd told him possessing indecent child images was a serious matter.
He said: “Behind every one of these images there is a child being abused – these are not just images, these are real children being abused so people like you can get some sort of perverted pleasure from viewing them.”
Harris was sentenced to a total of eight months in prison, and will be on the sex offenders register for the next 10 years.
He was also made the subject of an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order controlling his access to the internet.