Man jailed over cupboard murder

Updated 14.31 Thu Jul 31 2008

Keywords: Aberdeen, murder, Debbie Buchan, Laura Milne, Stuart Jack, Leigh Mackinnon

A man has been jailed for 18 years for murdering a teenage girl, whose body he hid in a cupboard.

Homeless Stuart Jack, 22, subjected vulnerable 19-year-old Laura Milne to a savage knife attack and killed her at an Aberdeen flat on December 12 last year.

Jack later cut off one of his victim's ears and tried to hack off her head, legs and breast

His accomplices, Debbie Buchan, 19, and Leigh Mackinnon, 18, were sentenced to nine years and nine years four months respectively at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Jack later cut off one of his victim's ears and tried to hack off her head, legs and breast.

Just two days later, the killer was filmed gloating over the violent death and boasting about how he enjoyed slitting her throat.

Jack pleaded guilty to murder, while Buchan and Mackinnon admitted attempted murder. All three admitted trying to defeat the ends of justice.

At the time of her death, Miss Milne was living at Stopover, a residential care home for young homeless people in Aberdeen.

She thought her attackers were her friends, but they turned on her in Buchan's flat just days before Christmas.

The gang continued to come and go from the property - where the decomposing body had been bundled into a cupboard next to the kitchen sink - in the days following their savage attack.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard earlier this month that the dead woman's legs had been partly amputated and the body was almost completely decapitated.

The victim's father, Brian, said she was a "lovely young woman with a big heart" who did not deserve to die so young and in such a violent way.