Killer shaved her head to look like ex-soldier victim and danced naked in street

This is the chilling face of Sarah Hansford, a drug addict who brutally murdered an ex-soldier in his own home in Nottingham.

The 44-year-old was caught on CCTV dancing naked in the street after killing Barry Spooner, a well-loved pensioner, and later disguised herself as him to withdraw money from his bank account, NottinghamshireLive reported.

The hearing was told how Mr Spooner, 74, took pity on the defendant in 2020 and allowed her to stay at his flat in Gladstone Street, Forest Fields where, in late May this year, she inflicted more than 30 stab wounds on his body, pushed it into the cellar and covered it in cardboard.

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The next morning she was seen dumping bags of rubbish in a bin which was collected by council refuse workers and later that same day she tried to rob a local store armed with a knife. Hansford took advantage of Mr Spooner's kindness over several years, exploiting his generosity to fund her drug habit, Nottingham Crown Court heard.

In a heart-wrenching statement, Darren McMahon, Spooner's nephew, said: "Barry would go out of his way to help anyone and I will forever be haunted at the thought of his last moments and tortured knowing he would have been unable to defend himself. I will never forgive his killer in the way she has dehumanised him in the most vile way.

In the days that followed Hansford, of Coalville, Leicestershire, twice visited his bank dressed as a man and armed with paperwork to withdraw money. For the next two weeks, she carried on living at the property knowing her victim's body was in the cellar.

After being arrested and charged, she later told a psychiatrist "I knew what I was doing, I did it, I'm not sorry, he deserved to die," claiming she had earlier discovered he had paedophilic tendencies and that she had been raped as a child.

Jailing her for life with a minimum of 22-and-a-half years until she is eligible for parole, Judge Nirmal Shant KC said: "No one else knows how he really met his death and your accounts have been inconsistent.

"You later said you could not remember how many times you stabbed him, you tried to drown him and strangle him and what did you do afterwards? You unceremoniously dumped his body in the cellar and the day after you did that, you danced naked in the street.

"In his victim impact statement, his nephew said 'he spent those last minutes on this earth with a vile person, the very worst of humanity', that's the impact you've had on the family of Mr Spooner. You told lie after lie to get your hands on that money."

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