Killer’s trail of crimes sparked major review

In 1990, Hatch had abused a boy of 10, dragging him into the same lift where he was later to dump Sean’s body and indecently assaulting him.

And just a year later, he was arrested for assaulting a boy of eight and choking him until he lost consciousness.

But despite grave warnings from his lawyer that he could kill again on release, and psychiatrist Dr Anthony Wilkins telling the trial Hatch was a “menace to the public” who should be sent to Broadmoor top security hospital, he was not considered dangerous enough by doctors, and was instead sentenced to three years in prison.

Within 11 weeks of being paroled in April 1993, Hatch spotted Sean cycling to see a friend at the tower block where he lived in Norfolk Close, Finchley, north London, and abducted him before sexually assaulting and strangling him.

A postman discovered the youngster’s body taped up in bin liners and dumped in a lift.

The two-week Old Bailey trial heard Hatch had convictions for attacks on five other young boys dating back to 1987 when he was just 15, and that fantasies “involving abduction, sexual abuse and the killing of young children” written by Hatch were found in a wardrobe in his mother’s bedroom after his arrest.

The jury of six men and six women rejected Hatch’s plea of guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter and his defence that he was driven to attack Sean by a compulsion over which he had no control.

The prosecution maintained he had always planned to murder Sean after sexually assaulting the youngster at his flat.

Reports at the time, said jobless Hatch, then 21, smirked when he heard the guilty verdict and was led away from the dock to begin his prison sentence.

Following Hatch’s conviction, Sean’s mother and father, Lynn and John Williams, said others had to take some of the blame for their son’s death as well and questioned why Hatch was not more closely supervised by probation officers and why doctors had not discovered his true condition during more than 40 visits while he was at a young offenders’ institution.

Speaking at the time, Mrs Williams said: “Never again must a child be murdered by a pervert. Never again must a family have to suffer this experience and never again must Colin Hatch be released back into our community.”

The case sparked a widespread review of parole and probation for those convicted of sex crimes, and the head of the Middlesex area probation service said it had led to the introduction of improved risk assessment and a comprehensive training programme for probation officers responsible for supervising sex offenders.

Detective Superintendent Duncan Macrae, who led the murder inquiry, described Hatch, following the trial, as a “frighteningly cunning criminal who had pulled the wool over the eyes of the authorities and would kill again if he was ever released”.