Girl, 4, left cowering for hours in Leeds house of carnage

Sarah Laycock, 31, and Abigail Miller, eight, fought in vain for their lives when John Miller, acting on voices from his computer telling him to do it, killed them in a frenzy using an axe and knives.

The racist BNP member was later to tell police he spared his youngest daughter Amelia because she was “Aryan” and had superior DNA.

The girl was found at the family home in Garforth, Leeds, cowering upstairs with the pet dog, while the bodies lay downstairs amid scenes of horrifying brutality.

Police had gone to the house after Miller, 38, who was arrested after attacking paramedics at Fairburn Ings nature reserve, told them he had a “secret” and his girlfriend had had an accident.

Through the window officers had seen the body of Ms Laycock, a deputy head teacher at Wheldon Infants School, in Castleford, in the kitchen of the property in Kirkby Avenue.

She had been stabbed and slashed about the head, neck and chest 19 times, before Miller took an axe and hit her four times. The bloodstained weapon was left resting against a wall.

Young Abigail’s body was in the living room. She was dressed in her nightie and Leeds Crown Court heard she had put up a considerable struggle in a “sustained attack” but died from a fatal stab wound to the neck.

Miller was given a life sentence yesterday after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility over the killings on January 13 last year.

Mr Justice Coulson ordered he serve a minimum of 15 years in prison but, while it was accepted he was suffering from a psychotic mental illness at the time of the killings, the judge rejected an application by his lawyers that he be detained under the Mental Health Act.

The court heard the self-employed plasterer, who was described as “jealous and controlling”, had a long history of abusing cannabis and injecting himself with steroids.

After the tragedy he told police and psychiatrists he believed he was being brainwashed by his computer. He also claimed he believed a nuclear war was about to start, that he could see aliens from his garden and he had made a tin foil hat for himself to block out signals. Police also found a mobile phone at the house wrapped in tin foil.

He had been arrested at Fairburn Ings on January 14 after attacking paramedics called to the nature reserve when he was found wandering around in the cold with self-inflicted cuts.

By the time police arrived he was naked, beating his chest, growling and making animal noises.

Distraught family members gasped in court as the judge described the killings as “heinous” and said that while Miller appeared to show remorse, in reality his only concern was whether he could rebuild his relationship with his daughter.

The court had heard Amelia remains so frightened of her father she has asked relatives “what is the size of the padlock on Daddy’s door?”

The judge said: “The trauma she [Amelia] will suffer, and continue to suffer in the absence of her mother and sister, is the worst possible.”

He added: “It is agreed you are a very dangerous man and a proper punishment requires a life sentence.”