A twisted killer who escaped justice for almost 50 years has finally been jailed and it has emerged that he was initially given back a key piece of evidence by police - one that tied him to the crime. Dennis McGrory was 28 when he sexually assaulted, stabbed and strangled 15-year-old Jacqui Montgomery in her home in Islington, north London, in 1975.
But McGrory, now 75, was cleared of murder the following year on the directions of a judge and couldn't be tried again due to double jeopardy laws, where a person cannot be tried twice for the same crime. But the law was scrapped in 2005 and, armed with fresh DNA evidence, prosecutors pushed for a retrial.
Now, 48 years after the horrific crime, the sick pensioner, from Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, has been jailed at Huntingdon Crown Court - as swabs from Jacqui's body produced a one-in-a-billion DNA match.
McGrory was jailed for 25 years and 126 days, but during the retrial it emerged the evil pensioner had been given back a key piece of evidence by police.
Jurors were told McGrory, who is described as a "violent man" and a "bully who terrified the women in his life", had been out looking for his partner Josie Montgomery, Jacqui's aunt, when he attacked the teenager.
He was "wild with rage", and during the attack he ripped out a page from Jacqui's diary that had her aunt's address on it, before murdering her.
The teenager's body was found by her father, Robert Montgomery, lying on the floor of their living room in the early hours of June 2, 1975.
It was reported that she had suffered fatal stab wounds, as well as blunt force trauma to the face and had been strangled.
Jurors in the trial were told that McGrory had threatened to rape Jacqui in the past, and had "made good" on those claims that night.
When police spoke to McGrory the next day, they found a note with his address on, written on lined paper, but he lied about the origin - saying it had been handed to him by a woman outside a chemist.
The note was handed back to McGrory on June 4 June, 1975, as it's significance wasn't known.
But Prosecutor Sarah Przybylska said during proceedings that in the room where Jacqui was found there was also a diary belonging to the teenager, which was on top of a bloodstained sofa, as the Daily Mail reports.
Inside, the diary was filled with the same lined paper that McGrory's note had been written on.
Ms Przybylska went on to say that later, when Jacqui's diary was examined, a page was found to be missing, and she added: "The inference can properly be drawn that the address had been in Jacqui Montgomery's diary and had been ripped out by the defendant.
"When else would or could he have torn a page out of Jacqui Montgomery's diary than during the course of the rape and the murder?
"...If the defendant was not the murderer, what are the chances of another person who knew Jacqui being let into the property, raping and murdering her, and then taking part of one page out of the diary?"
Now, McGrory has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years and 126 days.
Sentencing McGrory, who appeared at Huntingdon Crown court via video-link from HMP Peterborough on Friday, Mr Justice Bryan told the killer: "I have no doubt whatsoever that you intended to kill her in your brutal attack on her.
"You put Jacqui through a horrific, violent and sustained ordeal in her own home - a place where she was entitled to feel safe.
"In the decades that followed, you must have thought you had gotten away with your hideous crimes.
"How any man could inflict such sexual violence on a 15-year-old child that had done them no harm beggars belief.
"You have shown not one iota of remorse or compassion for Jacqui or Jacqui's family.
"You cut short that life and deprived her of that life, and all the things she hoped for in that life."
McGrory's retrial, in March, was halted when the defendant fell ill.
He appeared for his retrial at Huntingdon Crown Court by video-link and was found guilty of rape and murder.
The jury deliberated on Monday for just over an hour to convict McGrory on both charges, securing justice in the oldest double jeopardy case in England and Wales.
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