A convicted paedophile has been jailed for life with a minimum of 17 years for murdering his girlfriend, whose body lay undetected in a cellar for eight years.

The jury at Manchester Crown Court decided by a majority of ten to two that Frederick Lawlor, 54, murdered mother-of-four Dorothy Carre, 56, in 1999.

It heard how Lawlor stabbed her to death in the front room of their house in Rochdale, before burying her in a shallow grave in the cellar.

Lawlor is already serving an indeterminate sentence for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl and offering her for sex with other men while he watched and filmed them.

Mrs Carre's daughter Lynn Edwards, 42, shouted "Yes!" and rushed out of the public gallery as the verdict was delivered, while Lawlor sat impassive in the dock.

Jurors - who had not been told of Lawlor's paedophile past - gasped as they learnt he was jailed in Strangeways Prison in April last year after admitting 18 sex offences involving the girl on beaches in North Wales.

Two female jurors burst into tears and others shook their heads at the news.

The judge in that case said Lawlor had abused the girl on at least 75 occasions and described the acts as among the "most evil and unpleasant" the court had come across.

As well as offering her for sex at his flat and in a car to men he met on beaches at Pensarn and Llanddulas, he advertised in the publication Loot.

Police were alerted after a member of the public saw the girl being abused on Pensarn beach late at night.

The young victim said she was abused by around 50 men, with ten people so far convicted in connection with the case.

Lawlor was arrested in March this year after police investigating the disappearance of mother-of-four Mrs Carre found the remains of a body under the cellar floor at the address in Equitable Street.

Although there was no soft tissue, DNA testing provided "extremely strong" evidence that the remains were those of Mrs Carre. She had last been seen alive by her GP on March 11 1999.

Despite evidence linking him to the address, Lawlor denied ever living there and claimed Mrs Carre left him in 1999 to go and live in the Republic of Ireland.

The court also heard that Lawlor had two previous convictions for physically abusing former girlfriends.

In 1981 he was convicted of actual bodily harm after he repeatedly punched his girlfriend and then jumped on her stomach while she was seven months pregnant.

And in 1987 he was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm for an attack on another partner which had striking similarities to the death of Mrs Carre.

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