'Sex sadist' who killed teenager is jailed for life

A 46-year-old delivery driver was sent to jail for the rest of his life yesterday after he admitted abducting and strangling a 16-year-old schoolgirl, storing her body in a deep freeze for up to nine months and dumping it in a remote conifer forest.

The judge, Mr Justice Astill, told John Taylor that he was a "dangerous sexual sadist" as he imposed life sentences on him for the kidnap and murder of Leanne Tiernan.

"Your purpose – whether you can recognise it or not – in kidnapping this young girl was [to] satisfy your perverted craving," said Mr Justice Astill. "This is as cold and calculating an act as can be imagined."

Last night, Detective Superintendent Chris Gregg, who led the inquiry, said Taylor may be linked to four other murders, including that of the 32-year-old prostitute Yvonne Fitt, whose body was found in 1992 only 200 yards from the spot where Leanne's was discovered.

Under the pretence of exercising his border terrier, Taylor lurked for three weeks in a secluded, unlit, wooded area of Houghley Gill, near Leanne's council estate home in Bramley, Leeds, before grabbing the teenager by the shoulders as she walked home from the bus stop after a Christmas shopping trip 18 months ago.

He blindfolded her with his scarf, frogmarched her 20 minutes to his terraced home, tied her up, then retied her to imitate a sexual fantasy he had already acted out with several women. Her mobile phone, ringing out with calls from her anxious mother and friend, was switched off before Taylor strangled her with a scarf and an industrial cable tie.

The overwhelming strength of the prosecution case led the divorced father of two into a last-minute retraction yesterday of his story that Leanne had already died from a fall from his bed and that he tied the ligatures in panic.

But the 18-month investigation into the teenager's disappearance frustrated detectives for 18 months and seemed to have them beaten at times. Leanne had been expected home for supper by 6pm on 26 November 2000, a typical Sunday on which she had visited the local Sandford Methodist church with her grandmother and helped out at Sunday school before heading into Leeds to shop with a friend.

When she failed to return, West Yorkshire Police were confronted with a vast and complex area to search, including moorland and an underground system of 32 drain shafts. A two-mile stretch of the Leeds/Liverpool canal was lowered and DNA samples were taken from 200 men on the council estate.

But the most expensive missing person's inquiry in the West Yorkshire force's history had yielded nothing before the body of the teenager, who had been studying for nine GCSEs, was found nine months later. It was meticulously wrapped in a sleeping bag and nine green bin bags, bound with twine and cable ties, beneath a thick canopy of trees 17 miles away at Lindley Wood, near Otley, North Yorkshire.

The case continued to frustrate the 200 officers who worked on it every day. Leanne's body had decomposed and the floral print sleeping bag was a mystery – there was no known manufacturer and its labels were faded from frequent washing.

There was also a formidable number of callers, included the woman who claimed that a Bramley man, to whose lonely hearts she had replied, drove her past Lindley Wood, boasting that he used to go poaching in it. His name was John Taylor.

Perhaps the best forensic lead was a distinctive leather dog collar found around Leanne's neck in her shallow grave. But it also seemed to be leading police down a blind alley for a time. Though 30 such dog leads had been sold in four Leeds outlets (including a Bramley pet shop that had even logged buyers' names) telephone inquiries had to be broadened out to 120 other pet shops and wholesalers.

The 114th on the list, a Liverpool wholesalers called "Pets Pyjamas", had the names of three people who had bought the lead by e-mail, including a J Taylor of Cockshutt Drive, Bramley. The trail was gradually leading police to a former warehouseman and postal worker whose only previous conviction was the theft of a suit at the age of 15. His eccentric passion for breeding and selling animals – a commercial sideline – earned him the nickname "the pet man" and had already exposed a brutal streak. In his 20s, as a Boys' Brigade member, he was witnessed brutally stoving a fox's head in.

In a series of lonely hearts column encounters, Taylor also demonstrated odd sexual practices, including tying women up with his industrial products – twine and self-locking cable ties which can only be cut open by scissors. One woman also told police of his desire to tie woman up and lock them in cupboards. Another said he had wanted to photograph her tied up in them.

Forensic examination of Taylor's terraced house revealed the twine Leanne was bound in – part of only one batch manufactured for rabbit netting. Carpet fibres on Leanne's jumper were also matched with threads left sticking from nails in Taylor's bedroom, after he had removed the carpet to burn.

Dog hairs found on Leanne's body were also used to obtain a DNA profile of an animal – the first time such techniques were used in a British murder inquiry – but they proved useless. He had beaten his terriers' heads and buried them in an effort to cover his tracks.

The testimony of several scientists, including a refrigeration expert, also demonstrated that Taylor may have frozen Leanne's body for months in the freezers he used to store food for animals. One scientist said cardiac tissue was consistent with refrigeration.

There was no evidence of a sexual assault on Leanne but the absence of her jacket and boots and the position of her underwear were among forensic evidence pointing powerfully towards a sexual motive.

Three months after killing Leanne, he was still showing a perverted sexual desire for teenagers. In February 2001, he told a female partner that he wanted sex with her 15-year-old daughter. He was either "entirely unremorseful or driven by his sexual urges to repeat the scene in which Leanne had died," said Robert Smith QC, for the prosecution.

After Taylor's sentence had been greeted with cheers from the public gallery, Leanne's mother, Sharon Hawkshead, who helped bear her daughter's coffin into church, said: "Despite all this, our agony continues."