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The Trial

Crime Files

The Trial

“Only you know for sure how your victims met their deaths but the unspeakable indignities to which you subjected the bodies of your last two victims in order to satisfy your depraved and perverted needs are in no doubt”. Mr Justice Keith BBC News Online 25 November 2003Anthony Hardy’s murder trial begins at the Old Bailey in London in November 2003. Having given no information to police while under arrest, Hardy makes a startling confession: he murdered Sally White. He also changes his plea to guilty to the murders of Elizabeth and Bridgette.The court hears from prosecutors and police that Hardy would lure the women to his flat for sex. He then engages in extreme sex with them before strangling them. Through days of harrowing evidence, Hardy is revealed to the jury as a man who is a pornography-obsessed necrophiliac who achieves sexual gratification by posing the nude bodies of his victims after death and taking explicit photos of their naked corpses.The jury delivers a verdict of guilty to all three counts. The judge passes a sentence of life imprisonment. In 2010, Mr Justice Keith rules that Hardy will join an elite group of the country’s most dangerous criminals for whom life means life. He will die in prison.After the trial, The Metropolitan Police confirms that Hardy was also a suspect in three rapes and one indecent assault. In a move that would leave Hardy free to kill repeatedly, it was decided that there was insufficient evidence to charge him at the time.