Michael Clark was today given a life sentence for the savage killing of Zuzanna Zommer on October 1 last year.

The 40-year-old, who lived just one house away in Compton Row, Harehills, sexually assaulted the teenager before stamping on her head, smashing her skull. He also stabbed her repeatedly in the chest and stomach and cut her throat.

Clark then cleaned up, dropping the murder weapons in a bin, ate a bar of chocolate and went off to Blackpool Pleasure Beach for the day.

Zuzanna and her family had only lived in Leeds for a short time before the murder, having moved to the UK from Poland. Clark had befriended them after they moved to the street, even attending a barbecue at their home.

Sentencing him at Sheffield Crown Court, judge Mr Justice King told Clark he had considered imposing a so-called whole life tariff which would have meant him never having the possibility of being released.

But the judge said he had decided instead he must serve at least 35 years before he is considered for parole.

Clark has a string of convictions for violence, much of it sexual.

He was jailed for seven years in 1991 for raping a woman he met in a nightclub.

In 1996 he was convicted of assaulting two police officers. One lost a testicle in the attack and the another suffered a severe bite wound to his upper arm.

The officers had been called to a report of man masturbating while watching children in car park.

Two years later he was convicted of indecent assault and affray after he attacked and tried to have sex with a woman in front of her three-year-old child. She escaped from him by smashing a window.

And in 2003 he was convicted in 2003 of attacking a young prostitute.

The judge said: "No words of mine could express the grief, distress and profound sense of loss caused by your actions to the Zommer family.

"These were truly wicked acts. You have shown no remorse."

Speaking after the hearing, Detective Superintendent Bill Shackleton described Clark as an extremely dangerous sexual predator and said the murder of Zuzanna was "as bad as it gets".

It is understood that on his release from prison, Leeds City Council was told they had to rehouse him or face court action for breaching his human rights. Council officials had deemed him too dangerous to live in the city.