Bexhill Body Trial

22 May 2012, 12:37 | Updated: 23 May 2012, 06:19

A former altar boy has been sentenced for killing his gay lover just four months after he was freed from prison following his acquittal for a vicar's murder.

A man who murdered a supermarket worker with whom he had a gay relationship has been jailed for life,

Christopher Hunnisett, of Hastings, was ordered to serve a minimum of 18 years by a judge at Woolwich Crown Court.

The 28-year-old bludgeoned Peter Bick, 57, with a hammer at his home in Bexhill, Sussex, on 11 January 2011.

He told the court that he belived Mr Bick was a paedophile

In September 2010, he had been cleared of murdering a vicar he claimed had sexually abused him by drowning him in a bath.

The judge said: "The time may never come when this defendant is considered safe to be released.''

Hunnisett previously spent more than nine years in jail for killing the Rev Ronald Glazebrook, 81, in his bath and cutting up his body in April 2001.

But his conviction was quashed and he was cleared of Mr Glazebrook's murder at a retrial during which he alleged that the priest sexually abused him.

After being freed from prison in September 2010, Hunnisett, of Hastings, East Sussex, made a "hit list'' of men he planned to kill in his bid to rid the world of paedophiles.

Having formulated a plan to track down child abusers and rapists while he was in custody, on his release he set up false internet accounts as a "honeytrap'' for sex offenders.

Mr Bick, an Asda employee from Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, was at the top of Hunnisett's list of targets, although the prosecution said there was ``not a shred of evidence'' that he was a paedophile.

Having split up from his long-term partner, the supermarket worker regularly used social networking and dating websites to meet young men for consensual sex, the trial heard.

Overnight on January 10-11 last year, Hunnisett had sex with Mr Bick at his flat before brutally smashing his head with five severe hammer blows and strangling him with a shoelace.

The killer tried to cover his tracks by sending text messages falsely suggesting that the supermarket worker believed he was meeting a 15-year-old boy.