A Jack the Ripper-esque killer has been jailed for over 25 years for the murder of a pregnant woman he was acquitted of killing 30 years ago.
David Smith, 67, murdered escort Sarah Crump, 33, in 1991 and then killed another sex worker, Amanda Walker, 21, eight years later.
Judge Bryan on Friday sentenced him to life in prison with a minimum term of 27 years minus the 479 days he spent in pretrial detention in the 1990s, meaning he will serve at least 25 years and 251 days.
Smith, wearing dark glasses and a bowed head, showed no emotion when he was branded a “sadistic sex murderer” and a “dishonest habitual liar.”
“I must sentence you for this abhorrent murder, which I am certain was both sexual and sadistic in nature,” the judge told him.
“I have no doubt that his premeditated and planned intent that night…was to kill and sexually mutilate an escort to satisfy his perverted and sadistic sexual desires,” he added.
Smith boasted that he “got away with it” after he was acquitted of murdering Ms. Crump, the secretary of a podiatrist who earned extra money working as an escort, in 1993.
The truck driver had also raped two other women and then killed Ms Walker in 1999.
An Old Baily judge found Smith guilty of Mrs Walker’s murder later that year, but Mrs Crump’s family was left seeking justice for three painful decades until Court of Appeal judges ordered a new trial.
The naked and mutilated body of Sarah Crump was found by police in her west London flat in the early hours of August 29, 1991.
(PENNSYLVANIA)
He showed no emotion when he was finally convicted of the crime after less than three hours of deliberation at London’s Inner Crown Court on Thursday.
Ms Crump’s older sisters, Joanne Platt and Suzanne Wright, attended court to hear the verdict and said in a statement: “Finally justice for our beloved Sarah. If only mom and dad were here with us today to share in this momentous occasion.
“Thirty years may have passed, but we still miss Sarah. She was a shining light in a murky world who wished for the best but found the worst in humanity.”
During the original Old Bailey trial of Mrs Crump, her mother, Pat Rhodes, warned that she believed Smith would kill again.
But he thanked the jury when he was allowed to go free after his defense attorney accused police of incompetence and suppression of evidence.
The police emphatically denied the defense accusation and said they were not looking for anyone else.
The Crump family had to wait three decades for justice to be served.
(PA Media)
Both Mrs. Crump and Mrs. Walker were mutilated by Smith, who was known to his colleagues as the “Honey Monster” or “Lestacada” due to his 6-foot-3-inch height and stocky build.
Smith killed Mrs Crump in her west London flat in Southall in the early hours of August 29, 1991.
She is said to have lived a double life as an escort while working at Wimbledon Hospital after previous work as a psychiatric nurse.
Loner Smith, then 34 and living with her parents in Middlesex, had met her at the one-bedroom apartment during her week off.
Her nude body was found “brutally mutilated” with marks resembling the surgical scars of a woman Smith had become “obsessed with” but “rejected his attentions”.
At Smith’s last trial, jurors heard while he was remanded awaiting trial for the murder of Mrs Walker, he bragged to another inmate that he had already faced a murder trial at the Old Bailey but had “walked”.
Amanda Walker, 21, whose partially clothed body was found in a wood next to the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society in Wisley, Surrey.
(PENNSYLVANIA)
“He said they had no evidence on him and he got away with it,” the prisoner said.
His case was remitted to the Court of Appeal and was sent for a new trial after a change in the law on double jeopardy in 2003.
He denied a single murder charge but produced no evidence.
Prosecutor William Boyce KC told jurors how Ms Crump’s murder was part of her “growing pattern of violent and sexual crimes against women” dating back to her teens in the 1970s.
He said Smith developed “fascinations and obsessions” with some of the women he paid for sex and had allegedly attempted to rape a companion just 10 days before the murder: he was cleared of attempted rape at the Old Bailey.
Jurors also heard that Smith raped a young mother at knifepoint in 1976 and falsely imprisoned an unknown woman in a car some 10 years later.
It was said that he also regularly used sex workers and had visited Ms Crump’s apartment to pay for sex using an assumed name, “Duncan”.
Boyce said the murder “had a number of similarities” to the murder and mutilation of Mrs Walker, whose body was found in a shallow leafy grave near the grounds of the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley in Surrey, a place known for couples coming together to have sex. almost six weeks after her disappearance.
After Smith was found guilty of the murder, Mrs Crump’s mother said: “Nothing will bring Sarah back, we know that, but we feel there has been unfinished business while Smith has been free.
“I really believe that Smith is guilty of the murder of my daughter Sarah. I said at the trial that he would kill again.
Dr Harold Shipman’s 2005 inquest heard how Smith had regularly played cards with the serial killer GP while serving his sentence in Wakefield Prison.
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