'Callous sadist' gets life for killing

A man who tortured a hotel worker to death in Cornwall has been jailed for life.

Paul Beart, 26, originally from Boston in Lincolnshire, was sentenced for killing Deborah O'Sullivan on a footpath near Newquay golf course on 29 April 2000.

He had given himself up after killing Miss O'Sullivan, from Manchester, and told police there ought to be the death penalty for people like him.

The court heard that he had been receiving treatment on a sex offenders' programme but broke his probation order just days before the killing.

He left her mutilated and unrecognisable though still just alive

Philip Mott QC

Deborah O'Sullivan, 31, was found naked and unconscious having suffered appalling injuries in a frenzied and horrific hour-long sexual attack.

At one point Beart had told his victim 'you know I am going to kill you now' and she simply nodded her head.

After attacking Miss O'Sullivan, Paul Beart, who still had blood on his hands and clothes, gave himself up to police and said: "I think I have killed her."

Miss O'Sullivan was found and taken to the Royal Cornwall Hospital at Treliske and placed in intensive care but she later died from multiple injuries.

Bristol Crown Court heard that he had been on a sex offenders' programme but broke his probation order to travel to Newquay, armed with a "kit" containing pornography and sexual aids for the purposes of an assault.

'Model prisoner'

Philip Mott QC, prosecuting, told the court: "He left her mutilated and unrecognisable though still just alive."

The court also heard how moments beforehand Paul Beart, who had served five years for a serious indecent assault, had attacked two teenage girls.

Sentencing Beart to life, the judge said she was astonished how he had fooled the people on the sex offenders' programme into believing he was a model prisoner.

Describing him as "a callous sadist", she also said: "You planned this attack as you had planned other assaults. You are a man who remains a danger to women."