A depraved killer who sexually assaulted and murdered his step-grandmother after accessing hardcore pornography has today been jailed for life.
Jack Huxley, 20, mutilated, stabbed and slashed Janis Dundas, 28 times in the bedroom of her Cheshire home.
The 62-year-old pensioner was found by police officers face down in a pool of blood with three knives protruding from her back.
Liverpool Crown Court heard how Huxley accessed pornography showing sex between young men and mature women in the hours before and after the murder in Ellesmere Port.
Sentencing Huxley jailed with a minimum term of 21 years and eight months., the Recorder of Liverpool Judge Clement Goldstone said the killing “plumbed the depths of depravity and brutality”.
The defendant, who had taken a cocktail of alcohol and drugs at the time of the murder, was sentenced after pleading guilty to murder.
Huxley, with short cropped brown hair and wearing a white shirt, held his head in his hands throughout the hearing.
Judge Goldstone said Mrs Dundas offered Huxley lodging after he had been made an “outcast” by his family due to his reliance on drink and drugs.
She had taken him in “out of the goodness of her heart”, the court heard.
Judge Goldstone said: “Within less than 24 hours you were to repay that kindness and common decency in a way which was as inhuman as it was gratuitously violent.”
The judge said that on the night he had been welcomed into the victim’s home the defendant did not go to bed.
“Instead you searched Janis Dundas’s computer for hardcore pornographic websites – not just any hardcore pornographic websites, but those which in some respects were able to satisfy an interest in sexual activity between young men and women of a mature age,” he said.
The court heard that earlier that day, April 4, the defendant carried out the same searches on his own laptop as well as using the victim’s computer to carry out more porn searches of that nature after he had murdered her.
Judge Goldstone said: “I am sure that on that night you spent some considerable time on such websites… in order to arouse yourself sexually with a view to having intercourse with her.”
The judge said he was “in no doubt whatsoever” that Huxley not only planned to have sex with his step-grandmother but that he did have penetrative sex with her that night.
He added: “I am sure that, in fact, your sexual assault upon her began and continued either whilst she was asleep or not responding.”
He said one of the reasons he carried out the assault was his apparent inability to form a sexual relationship or any meaningful relationship with a girl of his own age.
The court heard that after the sexual assault Huxley armed himself with four kitchen knives and a skewer and went on to murder and mutilate his step-grandmother.
The judge said only Huxley knew why he had murdered Mrs Dundas but he said there could only be two reasons: “Either you were so frustrated by the unsatisfactory sex that had taken place, or you were so disgusted by what you had done that you decided, there and then, to kill her.”
Huxley launched an attack of “massive ferocity” which continued after Mrs Dundas died, the court heard.
Huxley dragged the pensioner’s body off the bed and on to the floor and carried on stabbing her, leaving four knives sticking out of her back and tried to “impale” her foot to the floor, the court heard.
After the murder Huxley tried to carry out a quick clean-up of the flat before again viewing hardcore pornography and finally fleeing the flat, stealing the victim’s mobile telephone, credit card, cash and her car which he went on to crash.
He was arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and was found to be under the influence of alcohol, cannabis, mephedrone, and prescription drugs taken from the victim’s home.
After his arrest Huxley tried to “blacken” Mrs Dundas’s character by claiming he killed her in self-defence after she tried to sexually assault and attack him.
He also claimed he had seen a “masked stranger” before he changed his plea to guilty.
The court heard that Huxley, from Ellesmere Port, had a “difficult and troubled” childhood and that he was “vulnerable to psychotic symptoms” and was clinically depressed and immature.
The court also heard that he suffered from neuro-developmental disorder and substance use disorder.
Judge Goldstone described Mrs Dundas, a retired mental health nurse, as a “devoted” mother and grandmother and said her family had been left “devastated” by the loss.
After the sentencing, Jessica Knight, Mrs Dundas’s daughter, said: “She was a mummy, a grandmother, sister and daughter, a clever and insightful woman murdered so brutally by a man she had invited into her home.
“Her murder has left a deep and dark hole in our lives. The sentence imposed in some ways reflects the gravity of this crime and gives us some consolation.”
Leave a reply