LONDON - A British teen-ager obsessed with vampires was jailed for at least 12
years Friday for butchering a 90-year-old woman, carving out her heart and
drinking her blood in a case police said was uniquely macabre.
Art student Mathew Hardman, 17, murdered pensioner Mabel Leyshon in November
2001 as she watched television at home in a sleepy north Wales tourist village
until now most famous for having the longest place name in Britain.
Hardman stabbed the elderly widow 22 times, cut out her heart and placed it
next to two pokers arranged in the shape of a crucifix at her feet, Mold Crown
Court in Wales heard.
``Throughout the United Kingdom there is no previous offense whereby the heart
has been removed in such macabre circumstances as this,'' North Wales police
Detective Superintendent Alan Jones said after Hardman's conviction.
``The victim was subject to 22 stab wounds ... there were deep lacerations to
her legs and to her neck,'' he said.
Police said Hardman was tracked down by lip marks left on a bowl that contained
his victim's blood.
Prosecutor Roger Thomas told the court Hardman committed the murder in a bid to
become an immortal vampire.
``He (Hardman) believed vampires existed, believed they drank human blood and
believed most importantly that they could achieve immortality -- and he wanted
to be immortal,'' Thomas said.
The murder sent shockwaves through the quiet tourist village of Llanfairpwll
PG. Its 56-letter full name is so long and difficult to pronounce that locals
abbreviate it.
Under immense pressure to crack the case, North Wales police deployed a
60-member murder team who consulted experts in witchcraft and took DNA samples
from more than 100 people.
Hardman was arrested in January but denied the murder in court. An order
allowing the juvenile to be named was issued after his conviction. He was
ordered to serve at least 12 years of an open-ended sentence known in British
youth courts as being ``detained at Her Majesty's pleasure.''
During their investigation, police said they seized numerous magazines,
documents and videos that related to vampirism from Hardman's home address.
In a separate case which drew widespread attention to vampirism in Britain, a
German couple were sentenced to lengthy jail sentences in January after they
killed a friend by stabbing him 66 times in a Satanic ritual.
One of the killers, Manula Ruda, 23, said she had acquired a taste for
vampirism during a visit to London, where she attended ``bite parties'' at
which people voluntarily had blood sucked from their veins.