Boy, 17, murdered teacher then took body to cemetery in a wheelie bin
A BOY of 17 was last night facing life in jail for murdering a teaching assistant and dragging her naked body through the streets in a wheelie bin.
Keep fit enthusiast Lindsay Birbeck had gone for a walk in a wood close to her home when she came across the youth by chance last summer.
The primary school teaching assistant, 47, was reported missing by relatives. But despite extensive searches by police and members of the public, her badly decomposed, naked body was not found for another 12 days.
The teenager, who was 16 at the time of the murder and cannot be named for legal reasons, later confessed to moving Mrs Birbeck’s body after police identified him on CCTV pulling a ‘heavy’ blue wheelie bin through
Accrington, Lancashire, in the days after her disappearance.
But he denied killing the mother of two and instead insisted a ‘stranger’ – who did not give him his name or number – had offered him ‘a lot of money’ to get rid of her body.
Yesterday a jury, sitting at Preston Crown Court, dismissed his account and agreed with the Crown that it was ‘implausible fiction’.
They convicted the boy, who has learning difficulties and has been diagnosed with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, of Mrs Birbeck’s murder a year to the day after her disappearance.
He is due to be sentenced at Preston Crown Court tomorrow.
Mrs Birbeck’s remains were eventually found by a dog walker in a shallow grave in Accrington Cemetery. A post-mortem examination revealed she had suffered extensive neck injuries, consistent with someone stamping, kicking or kneeling on the front of her neck.
An attempt had also been made to cut off one of her legs, possibly with a saw. Her body was so badly
‘Stamping, kicking or kneeling on neck’
decomposed she had to be identified by dental records and investigators could not say whether there was a sexual motive for the attack.
But David McLachlan QC, prosecuting, said another woman reported being followed by someone matching the youth’s description in the woods, known as The Coppice, the same afternoon and that he had been ‘on the prowl’ for lone females.
Mrs Birbeck, who taught at Ightenhill School in nearby Burnley, was last seen alive heading towards The Coppice, a dense area of woodland close to her home in Huncoat, just after 4pm on August 12 last year.
She received a WhatsApp message from her best friend around half an hour later, but it was never read. By then, the court heard, she was already dead.
Around 6.20pm the defendant was seen on CCTV walking from The Coppice into Accrington with his tracksuit bottoms cord undone. He also appeared to have wet knees and a bare chest underneath a partially unzipped hooded top.
Over the next four hours, CCTV cameras caught him walking between his home in Accrington, The Coppice and the cemetery, carrying a rucksack and dragging what looked like an empty wheelie bin.
But he allegedly waited five days before moving Mrs Birbeck’s body. She was eventually found on August 24. The bin was later recovered and Mrs Birbeck’s blood and hairs were found inside. Gloves found at the cemetery also had the youth’s DNA on the inside and Mrs Birbeck’s DNA on the outside. Plastic sheeting recovered from the defendant’s home address matched sheeting used to wrap Mrs Birbeck’s naked body before it was buried.
After her body was found her son Steven, 20, posted a poignant message on Twitter. He said the killer had robbed her of the chance to see him and his sister Sarah, 16, grow up and have families of their own.
‘I’ve always cherished the thought of seeing my mum smile,’ he wrote.
‘The fact that she will never see me and my sister grow up and is not going to be there on our wedding days and never see her grandchildren deeply saddens us.’