Two young women were told yesterday that they will spend at least the next 18 years in prison for the "horrific" killing of a friend's teenage love rival.
Emma Last and Kerry Bauer were both teenagers themselves when they took part in a plot to lure 17-year-old Debra Carne to a remote layby, where they beat her and asphyxiated her before dousing her with petrol and setting her alight.
"When she was set alight, Debra Carne was either alive or asphyxiated by restraint or still breathing while the petrol was ignited - a thought so awful one would want to banish it from one's mind," said Mr Justice Nelson at Chelmsford Crown Court.
Miss Carne, a quiet teenager who lived with her mother in Sible Hedingham, Essex, was targeted almost two years ago because she had spent the night with Steven Wood, now 23, the boyfriend of Nicole Hollinshead, who was a friend of Last and Bauer.
When Wood was reconciled with Hollinshead, now 19, the four hatched the plan to harm Miss Carne. Yesterday, Wood, who was convicted of Miss Carne's manslaughter last week, was sentenced to eight years in jail while Hollinshead was jailed for five years for conspiracy to inflict grievous bodily harm.
Last, now 19, and Bauer, now 21, were both jailed for life. The judge, who described the killing as "particularly cruel", said that Last should serve at least 20 years and Bauer, the only one who had admitted her role in the attack, 18 years.
The judge told the four: "The circumstances of Debra Carne's death were horrific and the motive for killing her, on the face of it, so trivial that it defies the imagination.
"For teenagers to have lover's quarrels is common but for it to end in murder is thankfully not."
Roger Carne, the victim's father, said after yesterday's hearing: "Our lives have been in turmoil over the last 21 months. The murder of my only daughter has devastated us all. She was taken in the most vicious way and it is impossible to come to terms with it.
"We were very pleased with the verdicts. It was the best we could have hoped for." Heather Knight, Miss Carne's mother, described her daughter's killers as "selfish, evil kids".
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