COLIN Bainbridge was a real-life Walter Mitty character.

Known as a "Billy Liar" for inventing a fantasy world, he would regale friends and strangers with his fantasies of how he taught karate and mixed with the rich and famous.

He even claimed on occasions to have caught a merman.

To most he seemed an innocent and harmless daydreamer. But his lies and deceit were to take a sinister turn when he lured the bubbly and outgoing nine-year-old Laura Kane from her home in Penshaw village, near Sunderland, on August 25, last year.

A trusted family friend, he raped her and suffocated her at his home, before spending the night in the pub with her mother, as the child lay dead in his bathroom.

When questioned by police, who had mounted a major search, he was "cool, calm and collected" and he continued his lies.

It was to be a combination of his fabrications and hard forensic evidence which were to prove his undoing.

Asked to account for his whereabouts, he said he had gone shopping for nappies at Asda. Video recordings from the store proved him wrong.

When Laura's body was found ten days later, wedged between the joists under his floorboards at his home in Murton, he falsely told police she had died at her own home where he had been plastering.

He even solemnly marked a map showing where, and claimed she had suffocated accidentally during a tying up game.

The detective heading the hunt, Detective Superintendent Steve Bolam, said: "He tried to manipulate his story of innocence to fit in with the changing evidence that was put to him.

"If we told him something that was fact he would change his story to fit in with that.

"He's a Walter Mitty-type character. A man who tries to ingratiate himself with people and brags about things he has never done."

In court, the unrepentant Bainbridge continued his charade, but the jury at Newcastle Crown Court saw through his crocodile tears and ill-disguised deceit and convicted him.

Bainbridge had lived alone in Murton, County Durham, with his dog. He had an on and off relationship with Andrea McKenzie and the pair had a baby son Kieron, who was six months old at the time of Laura's death.

Bainbridge worked as an electrician, doing odd jobs, and spent his spare time in pubs and clubs around Murton and Penshaw. He played in a darts team with Laura's mother, Carol, and had the nickname Flick, because of his throwing technique.

Laura's father Martin Kane said before the trial: "I only met him a couple of times. I thought he was mad. He told me he was a karate expert and had been taught in South Shields by the movie star Steven Segal.

"He told me he was best mates with the Sunderland football chairman Bob Murray.

"When he told me he had a girlfriend I did not believe him because of all the other lies he told me."

"I thought he was nuts, but even though I didn't like him very much I never thought he was capable of what he did."

The pathological evil encapsulated by Bainbridge contrasts starkly with the happy innocence of Laura, whose bright smiling face captured the nation when she went missing.

Laura's mother Carol said: "Her death has left a huge void in our lives that will never be replaced.

"There's no laughter any more, just silence. I feel numb. I sometimes forget and think she is going to come running through the door and then the reality hits again and I just want to scream out.

"She had this beautiful smile and when she did something wrong she would flash those big brown eyes at you and that smile, and you just couldn't bring yourself to punish her."

Sadly, it was Laura's trusting nature which led her into the grip of the one person she should have trusted least.