A man has received a life sentence after he strangled a teenager and left her body in a reservoir.
Lewis Haines, 31, murdered Lilly Sullivan, 18, after she refused to have sex with him. The pair met inside a nightclub in Pembroke, south-west Wales, just before Christmas last year.
They had kissed after meeting in the Out nightspot on December 16 and later went to a nearby alleyway together where they became more intimate. But Swansea Crown Court heard how Haines had killed the teenager after she refused his sexual advances. She was later found face down and topless in Mill Pond, a two-mile-long freshwater reservoir nearby, near the alleyway.
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After murdering Lily, Haines walked past his victim's mother as she waited to pick her daughter up from a nearby garage. He admitted to murdering Miss Sullivan but denied any sexual misconduct.
However, following trial, Judge Paul Thomas QC said that it was clear that after spending around an hour in an alleyway together, Haines had become "frustrated" and attacked Miss Sullivan.
Some of her possession - a tobacco tin, mobile phone, and leather jacket - were later found on the ground in the lane. Haines made Miss Sullivan walk to the lake, which was a short distance away, and "forcibly" remove her cream lace top.
He later claimed that the victim had threatened to accuse him of rape. Judge Thomas added that while parts of the defendant's story held an "element based in truth", he had a "great deal to lose".
“He strangled Lily in order to prevent her telling people he had tried to get her to go further than she was willing,” Judge Thomas said. “His intention was to silence her. He didn’t want anyone to know what had happened in the lane.”
Sentencing Lewis Haines to life in prison, Judge Paul Thomas QC said: “You strangled her face-to-face, she must have been terrified. An 18-year-old girl all alone in the dark with a powerful man.
“She was entirely at your mercy and you, Lewis Haines, showed her none. You were entirely thinking about your own self-preservation.”
He said Lily Sullivan’s death had caused “devastation to many”. The victim's mother, Ann Sullivan, called Haines "pure evil" for murdering her daughter. In a victim impact statement read to the court by William Hughes QC, prosecuting, she said: " The events of the night Lily died go over in my mind constantly and I wake up in the night picturing Lily in the water, wondering if she knew what was happening, if she was scared.
“I wish I had stopped Lily going out that night. I picture the male responsible for Lily’s death who I saw in the garage and wish I’d confronted him.
“He looked me straight in the eyes, knowing what he had done. Knowing I was that close to her, I wish I’d gotten out of my car and walked. I will always wonder if I could have saved her.
“These thoughts never leave me and I can’t stop thinking about it. I have to live with the fact that I will now never know what really happened to Lily that night. I suspect the actual truth will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Haines was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 23 years and four months.
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