AN unemployed man was sentenced to three life sentences in Chester Crown Court yesterday for the rape and murder of seven year old Sophie Hook last summer. It emerged at the end of the 19 day trial that Hughes had been linked to a string of child sex attacks.
Thunderous applause echoed from the public gallery of Chester Crown Court as Hughes, branded "a fiend" by Mr Justice Richard Curtis, was lead away to the cells. The judge told him he would always be a danger to girls and should never ever be released.
The jury found Hughes (31), of Colwyn Bay, north Wales, unanimously guilty of the double rape and murder. The judge passed three life sentences on him, one for murdering Sophie and one each on the two rape charges.
During the trial, the court heard how Hughes had snatched Sophie from the back garden of her uncle's Llandudno home as she camped out overnight in a tent with her sister, Jemma, and cousin, Luke. Sophie was raped and strangled and her body dumped in the sea last July.
In his incoherent, often angry, testimony from the witness box, Hughes admitted his "fancy" for children, but repeated like a mantra, "I didn't kill Sophie Hook," but his father told how his son had confessed to the murder.
After the case, Det Supt Eric Jones of North Wales Police confirmed that Hughes had been watched since an attack on a seven year old boy in 1981, for which he was convicted.