THE killer of vulnerable teenager Rachel Wilson finally admitted 'beating' her to death almost 20 years ago.

Judge Paul Watson QC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, has now published his full sentencing remarks as Keith Hall starts an 18 and a half year prison sentence.

Rachel's family had to wait two decades to get justice for the 19-year-old and yesterday they finally saw her violent pimp, Hall, face up to his actions.

The 62-year-old had forced Rachel into a life of prostitution after getting her addicted to crack cocaine, Teesside Crown Court heard.

The Northern Echo: Rachel WilsonRachel Wilson

And the violent bully beat her to death in May 2002 before dumping her remains in a drainage ditch on the outskirts of Middlesbrough where it would remain hidden for a decade.

Judge Watson told Hall that his continually lies and manipulation of people meant it was another seven years before he was eventually charged with killing Rachel.

He said: “Rachel Wilson was about 15 years old when she first met you and 19 years old when you killed her. In the two years before Rachel was killed, when she was between the ages of 17 and 19 years of age, you exploited her work as a sex worker in order to fund your own use of cocaine and heroin and to maintain your lifestyle.

“The overwhelming evidence is that if Rachel did not earn enough money for your needs you would be violent to her, beating and bruising her.

“On 31st May 2002 one such beating went too far and resulted in you unlawfully killing her. Thereafter, you took her body to farmland on the outskirts of Middlesbrough where her remains were dumped, naked in a ditch. The discovery of her body there in 2012 led to the longest and largest homicide enquiry in the history of the Cleveland police force.

“Instead of cooperating with that enquiry you repeatedly lied to the police about her disappearance and maintained total ignorance of what had become of her.

“For many years your lies and manipulations succeeded in thwarting the investigation into her disappearance and in the process, avoiding detection and punishment for what you had done.

“On the multiple occasions that you were formally spoken to by the police in interview, you lied repeatedly about your knowledge of her death at your hands.

The Northern Echo: Keith HallKeith Hall

“It wasn’t just a question of denial. You took steps in order to pervert the course of justice by seeking to persuade a potentially important witness not to co-operate any further with the police, to lie about his evidence.

“Rachel was a vulnerable young woman who had begun to use drugs around about the age of 14 years old. She got to know you in around 1998 after she had left home and was living independently. She had been friends with your daughter and spent time at your house. Then, as time passed she began what was to prove to be the fatal relationship with you. On any view, when that relationship began she was a vulnerable and impressionable young girl.

“She looked up to you and you took advantage of her naivety and immaturity to control and manipulate her resorting to violence when it suited you. Witnesses speak of her being frightened of you and routinely appearing with black eyes, bruising around her neck and to her arms and body.

“You used your influence and control to coerce her to work the streets as a sex worker in order to provide the income to keep you in drugs. Her life was made a terrible misery as a result of her own addiction and the mistreatment and violence she was receiving at your hands. She lost considerable weight and the CCTV images from around the time of her disappearance show just how emaciated she had become.

“Rachel was last seen alive when her image was captured just after 7 am on 31st May 2002. She must have returned to your address on Southfields Road later that morning and it must have been some time later that day that you attacked her and killed her.

“Such was the length of time after the killing, before her decomposed body was discovered, that was not possible to say, from the post mortem examination, exactly how she had been killed. You, of course, are the only living person who knows what you did but, apart from admitting her unlawful killing, you have never told anyone, even now, exactly how you killed her.

"Nevertheless, I am mindful of the fact that the prosecution have accepted a plea to manslaughter on the basis that whatever you did. you did not intend to kill her or cause her really serious harm.

“The day after you killed her you took her body in your works van to Newham Hall Farm just off the Stokesley Road, a rural area on the outskirts of Middlesbrough. There you placed her naked body into a drainage ditch where it remained undiscovered for more than 10 years. It follows from the fact that her body was left naked in that ditch that you either attacked her when she was naked or, for whatever reason, you stripped her naked after you had killed her.

“In the days shortly after she had gone missing you tried to lay a false trail to suggest that she was still alive.

“On 10th June 2002 you telephoned the police station and said that you had received information from your daughter that Rachel been seen at the fair with a man called ‘Damo’ on the night she went missing.

“Similarly, when Nicola Ellis asked you if you had heard anything about Rachel you replied that she had called you and told you she had run off with a man from the fair.

“Plainly that was not true and was intended to create a smokescreen and perpetuate the possibility, the hope, that she was still alive and so keep suspicion away from you.

“In the months and years that followed, though, you made a series of incriminating remarks to a number of witnesses. You told Ann Haig that you had ‘killed her’. She did not know at the time who you were talking about but after Rachel’s body was found in 2012 she told the police what she believed you had said.

“You made similar remarks the Chantelle Hall and Linda Nettleton who, perhaps unsurprisingly, shrugged off your remarks as a poor taste joke.

“You told Danielle Russell that you had attacked her but the violence had ‘gone too far’. You told her that you had ‘battered’ Rachel and that her head had hit a wall. What you told her was that you had attacked her because you sent her out to solicit herself but had come back with no money at all.

“In 2014 you had made potentially incriminating remarks to your friend Kenneth Bishop after the two of you had seen a news item about Rachel’s disappearance which led to you being arrested and interviewed under caution.

“On 1st July 2014 you were released from police custody whilst the investigation continued. A listening device was installed at your home which enabled the police to hear and record what was said once you returned there. Transcripts of the recordings show that, almost as soon as you arrived home from the police station, you telephoned Mr Bishop who then went to your house.

“During the conversation that followed you admitted having made the incriminating comments but you tried to explain them away. You also asked him not to go back to the police and told him that you had told the police that he must have been mistaken.

“You then asked him to for lie for you and suggested what he might say. You asked him to say that it might have been your daughter or even his daughter who made the remarks. As a result, he did change his account saying that he must have ‘got it wrong’.

“Over the years you were interviewed on several occasions about Rachel’s disappearance and death. You lied repeatedly claiming that you had no knowledge of what had happened to her. Only when the matter was listed for trial did you finally acknowledge that you had killed her.

“The consequences of what you did in 2002 and what you have done since have caused untold anguish and suffering to her family and those who loved her. For ten years no-one even knew if she was dead or alive and the pain that family must have endured when it was finally confirmed that the remains which the police had recovered from that ditch were of Rachel is unimaginable.

“I have listened carefully to the victim personal statements in this case. No sentence I can pass could begin to reflect the pain and sense of loss suffered by Rachel's family. They of course have the heartfelt sympathies of this court and all that can be hoped for is that today’s proceedings will finally bring a sense of closure after nearly 20 years of emotional trauma.

“I accept that you are now in failing health. At your age and with your health conditions a lengthy prison sentence will indeed be harder than for a younger healthier man. Yet the only reason for that hardship is the fact that for decades you avoided detection and prosecution by your deceit and obfuscation.

"You have enjoyed your life and your liberty, preserved by your false claims of innocence. I have no doubt that if you had admitted this offence twenty years ago you would have served your sentence by now. The only person to blame for the difficulties you now face is you.

“The sentence I impose on count one and two must conform with the Sentencing Council guidelines for sentencing in cases of manslaughter and inciting prostitution for gain.

“Your culpability for the offence of manslaughter was high. You knew what you had done to her and you knew it was no accident. You had, to use your own word, ‘battered’ her to death and I am sure that you must have intended to cause her significant harm though falling short of grievous bodily harm.

“There was a premeditated and determined attempt to conceal her body, transporting it to a lonely rural area and depositing it in a drainage ditch where it remained undetected for ten years. Because of the combination of factors in category B of the guideline, I adjust the starting point from 12 years to a term of 14 years before adjustment for further aggravating features.

“Your culpability is further aggravated by the fact of your previous convictions, the history of violence and abuse by you towards Rachel as well as her personal vulnerability – a weak and frail heroin addict.

“I place this at the highest end of what is a very broad range of sentencing for offences of this kind. After a trial, had you been convicted of manslaughter, the sentence would have been 16 years. You are entitled to some credit, broadly ten per cent, for your plea reducing that to a term of 14 and a half years.

“On count two, I have reduced the sentence after trial from four years to two years so as to take account of the totality of the sentence I impose. For living on the earnings of prostitution there will be a consecutive sentence of 21 months with just over ten per cent credit for your plea.

“For the offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice, the sentence would have been 30 months after a trial, again taking account of totality, but I reduce it to 27 months for your plea. The total sentence therefore is one of 18 and a half year’s imprisonment.”