Life for murderer who killed ten years ago

A man who was caught by DNA technology more than a decade after he murdered an office worker was jailed for life yesterday.

Mark Hampson was found guilty by a Bristol Crown Court jury of murdering Geraldine Palk, 26, whose semi-naked body was found in a stream near her home in Cardiff in December 1990. She had been stabbed 81 times and her skull had been smashed.

Mrs Justice Heather Hallett said Hampson, who was arrested for the crime at Dartmoor prison last year, was a "vicious and wicked man".

Hampson's criminal record included permanently disfiguring a young man by slashing his face with a knife and attacking someone with a brick.

Hampson, 35, of Taff's Well, south Wales, had been sentenced to a total of more than 15 years in prison for various offences, and was on bail for serious firearms offences at the time of Miss Palk's killing.

He was caught when his DNA was matched to sperm found in Miss Palk's body.

He claimed that was from a consensual sexual encounter with the clerk and that he had nothing to do with her death.

But the judge told him: "A lovely young woman who had everything to live for is dead, abducted at knifepoint just yards from her back door, from her parents and from safety."