Justice at last as teenager’s killer is jailed for life

A MAN has been jailed for life for strangling a teenager to death, more than a decade after her boyfriend was wrongly convicted of the murder.
Rachel ManningRachel Manning
Rachel Manning

Shahidul Ahmed killed and brutally battered shop assistant Rachel Manning, 19, in December 2000, dumping her body in undergrowth at a golf course.

He hit Miss Manning repeatedly with a steering lock after she was dead, causing broken bones and disfiguring her face, Luton Crown Court heard.

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Her boyfriend Barri White was jailed for the murder in 2002 but later acquitted at a retrial in 2008.

Ahmed, 41, was put on trial after DNA evidence linking him to Miss Manning’s death was discovered following his arrest for a sexual assault in 2010.

Bangladesh-born Ahmed, who denied murder, was found guilty by a unanimous verdict at a retrial after a jury failed to return a verdict in February.

Sentencing Ahmed to life in prison with a minimum term of 17 years, Mr Justice Wilkie said: “For almost 10 years you lived undetected with the knowledge of what you had done.

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“You took out your anger and frustration on her much-loved face and disfigured it by great violence, having sought to dispose of her where she would not be found for a sufficient time to enable you to cover your tracks.”

Mr Wilkie said Miss Manning had “much to look forward to and was relishing the challenges that life would bring”.

“Tragically at the age of 19 you, Shahidul Ahmed, snuffed all that out, driven by the same demons that led you in 2010 to conduct a sexual assault,” he said.

Mr White, who was 20 at the time, served six years for the murder before his guilty verdict was quashed on appeal in 2007 as
a result of fresh scientific evidence.

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His conviction was largely based on scientific evidence which was disputed by experts when BBC’s Rough Justice programme looked into the case.

After today’s hearing, Mr White said: “I feel over the moon that justice has finally been done and really happy that Rachel’s family have finally got justice and the closure they deserve.”

His friend Keith Hyatt, who was cleared of murder but convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by helping to dispose of the body in 2002, also had his conviction quashed in 2007 after serving a jail sentence.

Mr Wilkie said Mr White and Mr Hyatt had “suffered the agony of being convicted and imprisoned for offences of which they were wholly innocent”.

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“Nothing can bring back either Rachel’s life or those lost years,” he added.

The judge described Miss Manning as a “charming, witty, gregarious, happy, positive person” and paid tribute to her family who had endured four trials over 11 years.

Ahmed did not give evidence during the court proceedings.

The father-of-five, who was sat with an interpreter in the dock, bowed his head as the verdict was read out, while there were cheers from the public gallery.

Ahmed, of Chestnut Crescent, Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, was arrested on suspicion of the murder in September 2010 and charged with her murder in December 2011.

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DNA found on the steering lock matched Ahmed after it was discovered by the road on the direct route between his home and the spot where the body was hidden.

Mr Gumpert said a hair was retrieved from the victim’s hot pants which also matched the defendant’s DNA. He said tests showed it was 99.4 per cent likely to have come from Ahmed who came to Milton Keynes in 1989.

Following today’s hearing, Miss Manning’s mother Liz said she believed her daughter would still be alive if she had not been abandoned by her boyfriend on the night she was killed.