Man cut up murdered girlfriend's body at home and made a necklace out of her teeth

Dean Lowe disposed of parts in lavatory and lived among bloodstains for four months

Dean Lowe murdered his girlfriend Kirby Noden with a rock and metal pole (Devon and Cornwall Police)

A drug user who beat his girlfriend to death with a metal pole, cut up her body and made a necklace from her teeth, has been jailed for life.

Dean Lowe lived with Kirby Noden’s remains for at least a week before flushing some of them down the lavatory, his trial Exeter Crown Court heard. He put other parts in dustbins.

In the four months after the murder until police were alerted, Lowe remained living alongside the remains and bloodstains at the couple’s flat in Cornwall.

Noden's family raised the alarm with police, when they received messages from Lowe on 17 May, saying there had been a body on the floor which he had cut up and disposed of in bins and down a toilet.

The court heard he had left the 32-year-old's "bloody corpse" where it lay for several days.

When a police officer arrived, Lowe confessed, saying there was blood on the floor and that he had to cut up the carpet because of the blood and guts. He added that he had made a necklace out of Ms Noden's teeth.

Sentencing him to life with a minimum term of 28 years at Truro Crown Court, Ms Justice May said the officer must have been "truly shocked" by what he discovered when he went into the basement flat using only light from a pocket torch because the electricity was not on.

"There was blood spatter from floor to ceiling all over the walls to the left on entering the bedroom," she said, adding that what were later identified as "impact" and "cast-off stains" were also in the room, and the underside of the mattress had two large blood stains.

Police said Kirby Noden's family were put 'through hell' (Devon and Cornwall Police)

"You must have eaten, slept, watched TV and taken your drugs next to it for several days, with two bull terriers in the same room," Ms Justice May said. "Over a weekend before the bin men came on Monday, you cut up what remained, wrapped some in the carpet and took the rest in rucksacks to the bins.

"The bin men collected them noticing nothing - in this bleak, desolate manner was Kirby's life ended and her remains obliterated.”

No one would ever know the details of what happened to Ms Noden, because there was "no body to reveal the extent of your deadly abuse", she added.

"No-one there to mourn or say goodbye," she said. "This was a pitiless attack on someone who had done nothing but love you devotedly.

In text messages to a cousin revealed at trial, Lowe had said: "Either I'm getting set up or I've murdered Kirby. I had a blackout, hazy memory and woke up with a body on the floor. I am scared so I just got rid.

"I put the body in the bins down the road. I remember the binmen finding all the meat and didn't know what it was. The carpet was lifted because of the body matter. It took a week to get rid of the body - it was horrible."

Investigators who searched the property also found the metal pole and rock Lowe used to kill her with. It had fractured into pieces with the force of the blows.

After his initial confession, Lowe later denied murder, instead claiming his girlfriend had left him for another man.

Mrs Justice May said that later claim added to his "cowardice and cruelty".

She added: "Your lies about her are the very opposite of remorse. You have never once expressed any regret for all that you have done"

She also commended the officers "most highly" for their "long and painstaking" investigation.

The trial had earlier heard that couple, originally from Winsford in Cheshire, started a relationship aged around 25. They lived in Torquay together before moving to Marazion, west Cornwall.

Their lives together had been chaotic and Lowe described in evidence how they would take whatever drugs they could get and when they had no drugs would blood-let for the headrush.

Mrs Justice May added: "By all accounts Kirby was besotted with you, following wherever you went, doing whatever you asked her to do. She described you as the love of her life. You, on the other hand, spoke of her as 'that skanky bitch'."

She also concluded that Lowe was not mentally ill when he murdered Ms Noden, adding: "I am quite sure that although you habitually took drugs, and a great deal of them, you were entirely sentient when you murdered Kirby.

"I regard you as wholly culpable."