Retired Dennis McGrory who murdered teen in 1975 is jailed after one match per billion DNA

[ad_1]

To get free, real-time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox, sign up for our breaking news emails.

A murderous rapist convicted of killing a teenager over decades has been jailed after matching one in the billion DNA in the oldest double jeopardy case in England and Wales.

Dennis McGrory was 28 when he sexually assaulted, stabbed and strangled 15-year-old Jackie Montgomery at her home in Islington, north London, in 1975.

The 75-year-old was acquitted of the murder the following year at the direction of a judge, but was finally convicted decades later after swabs of Montgomery’s body yielded a one-in-a-billionth DNA match.

Following a 2003 change to the Double Jeopardy Act, McGrory’s case was transferred to the Court of Appeal and sent for a new trial at the Old Bailey.

Friday was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 25 years and 126 days.

After sentencing McGrory, who appeared at Huntingdon Crown Court via video link from HMB Peterborough on Friday, Judge Bryan told the killer: “I have no doubt that you intended to kill her in your brutal attack on her.

“Jackie has been put through horrific, violent, and ongoing ordeal in her own home – a place where she should have been entitled to feel safe.

“In the decades that followed, you must have thought you got away with your heinous crimes.

How could any man inflict such sexual violence on a 15-year-old who had done him no harm the beggars believe.

She did not show an iota of remorse or sympathy towards Jackie or Jackie’s family.

“I cut out and deprived her of that life, of all the things she had hoped for in that life.”

I find it unbearable when my sister didn’t arrive until her sixteenth birthday. His actions shocked many people and there were no consequences for him

Jackie’s sister Kathy Montgomery

McGrory’s retrial was interrupted, in March, when the accused, Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, fell ill.

He appeared for a retrial at Huntingdon Crown Court via video link and was found guilty of rape and murder.

On Monday, the jury deliberated for just over an hour to convict McGrory on both counts.

Jurors were told that McGrory was “wild with rage” when he killed Jackie while trying to track down his ex-partner Josie Montgomery, who was the victim’s aunt.

During the attack, he rips out a page from the girl’s diary with her aunt’s address on it.

Jackie’s body was found by her father, Robert Montgomery, lying on the floor of the living room in Ufford Road in the early hours of 2 June 1975.

How could any man have inflicted such sexual violence on a 15-year-old who had not done him harm to the beggars faith?

Mr. Justice Bryan

She suffered fatal stab wounds as well as blunt force trauma to the face and was asphyxiated by the bending of an iron.

McGrory had threatened to rape Jackie in the past, and that night, he “concluded” those words, the jurors were told.

At the hearing on Friday, Victim Jackie’s sister Kathy Montgomery’s impact statement was read to the court, which read: “A violent man who lived within our family (raped and murdered) my sister. He was able to live his life. He spent nearly 50 years.” As a free man, he does as he pleases.

“I find it unbearable when my sister didn’t even reach her sixteenth birthday. His actions shocked many people and there were no consequences for him.

“The investigation of the past few years has meant revisiting memories of the murder that caused pain and stress for me and my family, and I am relieved that we finally got justice for Jackie.”

[ad_2]