An “evil” 31-year-old man who murdered an 18-year-old woman to silence her after she rejected his sexual advances and left her part-naked body in a town millpond has been told he will serve at least 23 years and four months in prison.
Lewis Haines, an oil refinery worker, forcibly removed Lily Sullivan’s top and strangled her before pushing her into the water in Pembroke, south-west Wales, hours after meeting her in a nightclub.
Jailing him for life at Swansea crown court, Judge Paul Thomas QC said Haines he would be in his mid-50s before he could be considered for parole. As he was sentenced one person in the public gallery shouted “monster” and said the jail term was not long enough.
Thomas told him: “You brutally murdered Lily Sullivan because you wanted sexual intercourse. She was making arrangements to meet her mother. You got frustrated and tried to force her to go further. She told you she would complain about what you had done.
“To stop her doing so, you strangled her face to face. She must have been terrified, an 18-year-old girl alone in the dark with a powerful man, entirely at your mercy and you showed her absolutely none, you were only concerned about your self-preservation.”
The teenager’s mother, Anna Sullivan, said she wished she could go back in time and stop her going out that night. “I wish I could have protected her from the evil she met,” she said.
In a victim personal statement, Anna Sullivan said she was her only child, born after 14 miscarriages. Sullivan grew into a “beautiful girl inside and out” who always saw the best in people. She was a talented artist who loved house music and had just started going out with friends and was enjoying college. “She has been robbed of her future,” her mother said.
She said the events of the night played out in her mind constantly. “I wake up in the night picturing Lily in the water and wondering if she knew what was happening and if she was scared. It’s like being tortured thinking just one decision could have changed the whole night.”
Anna Sullivan was in her car waiting to pick up her daughter when Haines walked past. “He looked me straight in the eye knowing what he had done,” she said. She was haunted by the idea she could have got out and found the teenager. “Maybe I could have saved my girl. She was trying to get back to me. She needed me, she was in trouble.”
Sullivan’s mother said she had panic attacks and was no longer afraid of dying because it would mean she could be with her daughter. She said her father, who adored Sullivan, had dementia and she constantly had to explain to him why his granddaughter was not there, which was “like causing a fresh cut every day”.
Haines admitted murdering Sullivan but denied it was a sexually motivated attack. The judge found that “sexual conduct” was involved.
The pair met for the first time at the Out nightclub in Pembroke on the evening of 16 December last year. In the early hours of the next morning they left the club and Haines shepherded Sullivan to an unlit secluded alley leading to the millpond. A friend of Sullivan shouted at Haines: “What are you doing? You’ve got a girlfriend … and she’s only 18.”
Anna Sullivan was speaking to her daughter on the phone as the attack began and the line went dead. At about that time someone who lived nearby heard a woman scream. Anna Sullivan tried to call back 30 times but there was no reply.
Grainy CCTV footage of the alley showed Sullivan’s phone lighting up repeatedly as her mother tried to contact her.
