Mother’s agony as teenager finally admits Alesha murder
++ Psychopath gets 27 years ++ He went to house to steal cannabis ++ Then he saw six-year-old and ‘all he thought about was killing her’
THE mother of Alesha MacPhail screamed at the smirking teenage psychopath who raped and murdered the six-year-old as he was jailed for 27 years yesterday.
Aaron Campbell, 16, grinned at Alesha’s family from the dock after revealing that when he saw the little girl while burgling her father’s home ‘all I thought about was killing her’.
The murderer had spent the previous eight months protesting his innocence, subsequently claiming it ‘took everything to stop himself laughing’ as he put Alesha’s family though the ordeal of a trial.
But Glasgow High Court heard he had finally admitted abducting Alesha from her bed on the Isle of Bute last July.
Alesha’s mother, Georgina Lochrane, lunged at him after his confession, made to a psychologist following his conviction last month, was read to the court.
Miss Lochrane, 23, who had to be restrained, screamed: ‘F*****g disgusting, you dirty, vile rat.’
Judge Lord Matthews said Campbell’s crime had caused ‘ revulsion and disbelief ’, and called him ‘a cold, callous, calculating, remorseless and dangerous individual’ and sentenced him to life with a minimum of 27 years.
The court heard how Campbell, who had pleaded not guilty during a two-week murder trial in February, admitted his guilt ahead of his sentencing yesterday.
He told a psychologist who was assessing him prior to sentencing that he drank a bottle and a half of wine before breaking into the home of Alesha’s father, Robert, who was a drug dealer, at 2am on July 2 with the intention of stealing cannabis.
But twisted Campbell felt ‘a moment of opportunity’ when he entered Alesha’s bedroom, where she had fallen asleep watching a Peppa Pig DVD during a summer holiday at the flat her father shared with his parents.
Campbell said: ‘ At any other time in life, murder wouldn’t have been the conclusion. If I was a year younger I don’t think I would have done it. All I thought about was killing her once I saw her.’
He told how he picked her up and carried her outside. When she asked who he was and where they were going, he told the ‘drowsy’ child he was a friend of her father’s and was ‘taking her home’.
Campbell took her along a beach to woodland in the grounds of an abandoned hotel where he raped and smothered her – inflicting 117 ‘catastrophic’ injuries which a child pathologist said were unlike anything he had seen before.
He threw his bloodstained clothes into the sea and said he felt ‘satisfied’ with the murder. In a sign of his remorselessness, he even claimed he became ‘mildly amused’ when the police failed to arrest him over the next few days.
Clinical psychologist Dr Gary Macpherson, who assessed Camp- bell after he was convicted by a jury three weeks ago, said the teenage killer showed no emotion as he confessed.
The court heard that in the year before murdering Alesha, Camp- bell had thought of ‘doing something excessive, including rape’.
Lord Matthews said Dr Macpherson’s report concluded that Campbell was not suffering from a mental health disorder, but showed a complete lack of victim empathy.
During his trial, Campbell tried to blame the crime on Toni McLachlan, the 18-year- old girlfriend of Alesha’s father.
Lord Matthews said: ‘It was a cruel travesty of the truth.’
Earlier, there were gasps from the public gallery as Campbell’s solicitor Brian McConnachie QC revealed his client had finally admitted his guilt.
Lord Matthews told Campbell: ‘Despite the overwhelming evidence against you, you did not plead guilty but elected to go to trial. It is symptomatic of your staggering lack of remorse. Not once during the trial did I detect a flicker of emotion from you.’
Campbell must serve 27 years before he is eligible for parole.
Lord Matthews said it would be for others to decide whether he would ever be released, but said the killer’s reintegration into society might be ‘impossible’.
Miss Lochrane, of Airdrie, near Glasgow, has said her ‘world was ripped away’ by the killer, adding: ‘Words cannot express just how devastated I am to have lost my beautiful, happy, smiley wee girl.’
Alesha was three days into a three-week holiday when she was taken. Her disappearance was discovered at 6am on July 2 and her naked body was found at 8.54am by a member of the public.
Campbell was arrested on July 4 after his mother, Janette, 54, reported him to police having seen him on her own CCTV coming and going on the night of the killing.
She thought that by giving officers his name she was eliminating him from their inquiries – not realising that her son was the killer.
‘Staggering lack of remorse’