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A former abattoir worker and lifeguard who was found to have abducted and murdered April Jones began a whole-life prison term on Thursday, still refusing to say what he did with her body.
Mark Bridger was found guilty and sentenced after a five-week trial that left the five-year-old's parents still searching for answers. The judge said he believed that Bridger had sexually assaulted April before killing her last October.
April's mother, Coral, expressed relief that Bridger would spend the rest of his time behind bars but said: "We still do not know where she is and this will always be a very painful thing for us to deal with."
Sentencing him at Mold crown court, Mr Justice Griffith Williams told Bridger: "You are a paedophile who has for some time harboured sexual and morbid fantasies about young girls."
Some of the jurors wept as April's mother's victim impact statement was read out, in which she said she would live with the guilt of letting her daughter go out to play that night for the rest of her life.
Jones and her husband, Paul, moved from the public gallery where they had watched the trial to the body of the court to see Bridger being sentenced. They appeared calm as he was told he would spend the rest of his life behind bars, and held hands as he was taken to the court cells.
Despite a six-month search – the biggest in British police history – April's body was not recovered, and the judge said April's family would struggle to move on. "Without the knowledge of what happened, her parents will probably never come to terms with their grievous loss," he said.
The conviction reignited the debate over whether men like Bridger, who had a library of images of child sexual abuse, are prompted to kill by such material. It will also lead to calls for more controls to be placed on the internet to make it harder for such images to be accessed.
Phillip Noyes, acting chief executive of the NSPCC, said: "Bridger lived in a fantasy world, which included looking at child abuse images online. For some time we have been concerned about the growing number of these obscene images. This case points to the ever-growing evidence that there is a worrying link between looking at this vile kind of material and committing serious sexual assaults."
During the trial, it emerged that Bridger had viewed a cartoon image of a girl bound and being sexually abused by an adult, just hours before April was abducted. Also on his computer were images of murder victims, including 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who were murdered by school caretaker Ian Huntley in Soham, Cambridgeshire. The man who led the hunt for April's killer, Det Supt Andy John, met with the retired detective who headed the Soham case, Chris Stevenson, to discuss similarities.
It can now be revealed that a video found in Bridger's home when police raided it was paused at the point of a rape and murder scene from the remake of the 70s slasher film The Last House on the Left. He had recorded the same scene – but nothing more of the film – twice. It can also now be reported that the father of six told a priest while on remand in prison that he had flung April's body into the river. Police, however, do not set much store by this account, pointing out that he gave them many fake possible scenarios for what happened to April.
Det Supt John, senior investigating officer, said he believed the truth was, if anything, even more grim. "I think the body has been dismembered and various parts have been placed in different areas. Possibly those remains would have been small and damaged. That's why we've had such difficulty locating them."
Police believe that fragments of bone found in Bridger's wood burner were from April's skull and got there as he cleaned up his cottage following the girl's death. Discussions will now take place over whether the fragments will be returned to the family so they can have some form of burial if they choose. The family have made it clear to police that they would like Bridger's cottage, Mount Pleasant, demolished.
John said: "For me the computer evidence points towards an individual who is evil, manipulative and has premeditated this. The unhealthy interest he has in indecent images of children is a clear indicator that this individual was going to commit something as horrific as he did."
April was abducted as she played close to her home in Machynlleth, mid-Wales, last 1 October. Bridger, who lived in the nearby village of Ceinws, did not realise that a seven-year-old friend of April's had spotted her getting into his Land Rover. In the witness box Bridger, 47, insisted he had accidentally knocked April over and put her in his vehicle, but had a mental blank over what he did with the body.
The jury took a little over four hours to convict him of abduction, murder and disposing of, concealing or destroying April's body. Sentencing him, Mr Justice Griffith Williams branded him a "pathological and glib liar" who collected "foul pornography of the gross sexual abuse of young children". During the trial the jury asked that the screens in the dock showing some of the abusive images be turned off because they worried that he was enjoying seeing them again.
April was in some of the decent pictures of young girls that Bridger had collected from Facebook but the judge said: "I am not sure you targeted April specifically but you were on the prowl for a young girl."
The van taking Bridger to Manchester prison was mobbed by about 20 people as it left the court. Prison sources say there is already a "tag" on his head and he will spend the rest of his life being protected from other inmates. He becomes the 48th prisoner in the UK serving a full-life term, joining the likes of notorious killers such as Rose West and Dennis Nilsen.
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