Handyman murdered Danish schoolgirl

Camilla was visiting for a three-week English course

A museum handyman has been found guilty of the murder of a 15-year-old Danish schoolgirl at an Isle of Wight beauty spot.

Richard Kemp, 53, from Gosport, Hampshire, was jailed for life at Winchester Crown Court on Friday.

He admitted killing Camilla Petersen but had denied murdering the schoolgirl on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Camilla, from the city of Holbaek, was murdered by Kemp on 16 July after she came to Britain for a three-week study holiday to learn English.

The killing happened at Brading Down, a popular beauty spot near Sandown, where Camilla had gone to sketch.

Mental hospital

Sentencing Kemp, an odd job man at the Royal Navy Submarine museum in Gosport, the judge, Mr Justice Richard Gibbs, said: "For the indefinite future you will be a serious and homicidal danger to children and young people unless you are kept in custody.

"It is my judgment that it is most unlikely it will ever be safe to release you."

The court heard during the trial that Kemp wrote a series of letters to his parents and friends as well as a confession note on the evening following the killing.

During the 1970s, Mr Kemp spent eight years at Broadmoor high security mental hospital for a series of sexual assaults on children.

He was also convicted of indecent exposure in 1970 and 1982.

Camilla had been staying with a family on the Isle of Wight when she disappeared.

Paula Goodwin, the mother of the family, raised the alarm when she failed to come home that evening, or to go to a beach party organised by the Student Travel School in Ryde.

A supervisor from the school found Camilla's body, with her top tied around her neck, in the woods later that night.