19/07/96 - FIEND! You will
never get out of jail.
Daily Record
The monster who raped and murdered seven-year-old Sophie
Hook was caged for the rest of his life yesterday.
Judge Richard Curtis told Howard Hughes, 31: "You
are a fiend. Your crimes are every parent's worst nightmare.
"My recommendation is that you are never, never,
ever released. Take him down."
There was thunderous applause from the public benches
as the 6ft 8in, toothless beast was led away.
Hughes, a notorious pervert and petty crook nicknamed
"Mad Howard", snatched Sophie from a tent
in her uncle's garden on a summer's night last year.
He raped her and put her through a sickening sex attack.
Then he strangled her and dumped her naked, battered
body in the sea.
Sophie, a bubbly child with beautiful curly hair, died
after going to Llandudno, north Wales for her cousin
Luke's ninth birthday party.
She made the trip from her home in Cheshire with her
mum Julie and big sister Gemma, nine.
The kids spent the sunny afternoon in the garden, splashing
about under a hosepipe and chattering about sleeping
in the tent Luke's granny had given him as a present.
But Hughes was listening from a path behind the hedge.
He stood there for hours, planning the crime he'd dreamed
about for years.
He'd spent the rest of the day - July 30 - leering
at young girls in Llandudno.
He tried to abduct a six-year-old, Alexandra Roberts.
But she fled, terrified, into her granny's arms.
As Hughes got ready to snatch Sophie, Julie Hook was
heading home.
She kissed her daughter goodbye and said: "I'll
see you tomorrow."
Sophie settled down for the night with Gemma, Luke
and his brother Alex.
Her uncle Danny jokingly tried to frighten them by
lifting the tent, but Luke giggled: "It's only
daddy".
Alex, six, went into the house just before midnight.
The others had been telling ghost stories, and he was
scared.
But Sophie stayed outside.
Two hours later, Hughes sneaked through the garden
gate and pulled Sophie from her sleeping bag.
He took her down the path to Llandudno beach, and committed
unspeakable sex acts on her. She struggled so hard that
her right arm was snapped.
Danny and his wife Fiona began a frantic search when
the other kids woke up and realised Sophie was gone.
A man walking his dog found her body on the beach at
7.14am. Her Winnie the Pooh nightie and knickers were
dumped in a hedge, on the way to the killer's home in
nearby Colwyn Bay.
Hughes was well known to police, and he was arrested
within hours.
He denied everything in nine hours of questioning,
then cracked totally when he was allowed to see his
dad.
Quarry owner Gerald Hughes, 71, a friend of the Hook
family, asked him bluntly if he had killed the little
girl.
Hughes said: "Yes dad, I did it. You don't know
what it's like to be sexually frustrated.
"She was screaming, so I put my hand over her
mouth and held it there. She went pink and then I knew
I'd done it."
He later accused his dad of inventing the confession,
and was still protesting innocence yesterday.
Sophie's parents Julie, 35, and Chris, 37, were traumatised.
Teacher Julie said: "Sophie was a vivacious, fun-
loving, extremely popular, beautiful, intelligent child.
No child could ever have received or given more love.
"The only thing that I want in my life now is
Sophie."
Julie and Chris couldn't bear to be at Chester Crown
Court yesterday. Danny sobbed on the public benches.
The Hooks are not the only family to have been scarred
by Howard Hughes.
He committed a string of sex attacks on youngsters,
and terrorised many others. Most of his crimes went
unpunished because there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute
him.
But when he was 16 he was convicted of trying to strangle
Graham Lloyd, who was the same age as Sophie was when
she died. He escaped jail.
Former neighbour Liz Kelly says he terrified her 11-year-old
daughter and her best pal as they slept in a Wendy house
in their garden two years ago.
He hammered on the fence near the tent to scare them,
and even fired a starting pistol.
Hughes told another neighbour: "Watch your kids
in the garden - one day they'll be on their own."
Three years after attacking Graham, he viciously molested
a girl of 13. Years later, still scarred by her ordeal,
she tried to run him down in her car.
Hughes also took vile photos of kids, which reduced
a woman juror to tears.
Many other youngsters have made statements about his
sordid activities.
And just 24 hours before Sophie's murder, he tried
to lure Brendan Jones, 14, away on a "fishing trip".
Hughes terrorised Colwyn Bay for years, threatening
and abusing schoolmates, neighbours and even his mum.
Young mum Shameem Howard-Adams had her life made hell
by Hughes when he lived next door to her.
He threatened to rape and murder her, and said he'd
kill her cat and hang it up in front of her three youngsters.
And he even pointed a GUN at Shameem, 24, as her kids
watched.
She saw him load it. Then he told her common-law husband
Sean: "I'm going to blow your wife's head off."
The family fled inside, then heard a shot. They don't
know what Hughes hit.
Shameem complained to police, as she'd done many times
before, about Hughes. He was let off with a caution.
Hughes made a stream of dirty phone calls to another
neighbour. Again, he wasn't charged.
The killer often lured young teenagers back to his
filthy flat. Angry locals, convinced he was a child
molester, once daubed "beast" on his door.
Shameem even got up a petition to have him evicted
from the flat, which overlooked an infant school. She
said: "We were all worried about him looking at
the children."
Eventually, Hughes moved back in with his mum.
He was the son his wealthy parents Gerald and Renee
longed for, after having three daughters.
But he had a genetic defect which made him grow rapidly.
A dim and violent child, he was always having to change
schools after attacking other kids.
Gerald offered the head of one private school double
fees to keep him, but he refused point blank.
Hughes spent six months at Conwy Road Primary, where
Sophie's mum Julie and aunt Fiona were also pupils.
A classmate there said: "We teased him, but we
had to be careful. He towered over us, and he was really
frightening when he got angry."
Gerald admitted sadly: "Howard was a child in
an adult's body. He has probably been in trouble with
the police more times than I know."
Hughes often played truant, stealing bikes and raiding
garden sheds. He sold stolen cycles from his parents'
garden.
When he was in his late teens, his family committed
him to mental hospital. He was no better when he returned.
When his parents divorced, he moved in with Renee.
Neighbours crossed the street to avoid him and his
only companion, a 14-stone rottweiler called Bryn.
Liz Kelly said Hughes loved making huge bonfires in
his garden. "He'd be transfixed by the flames,"
she said.
He'd also play deafening music, but only for a few
seconds at a time.
Byron Jones, now 24, hung around with Hughes when the
monster was 20.
They'd stand beneath a wooden bridge to look up schoolgirls'
skirts. Hughes tried to kill a chicken in front of the
girls, "to show he was macho".
The pair also peered into dormitories at a girls' school.
Byron was one of the few people to see inside Hughes'
room at Renee's home. "It was filthy," he
said. "He had a pile of porn mags, and slept under
an old sleeping bag with all sorts of stains.
"His mother tried to keep a tidy house, but Howard
was uncontrollable.
"He treated her like dirt and demanded money off
her for drink and drugs whenever he needed it."
A jury of eight men and four women took more than six
hours to find Hughes guilty of murder, rape and a vile
sex attack. As the verdicts were read, he leaned forward
in the dock to stroke the hair of a member of his legal
team.
Defence counsel Patrick Harrington made no attempt
to plead for leniency.
Judge Curtis gave Hughes three life sentences, then
called on the Government to make sure perverts like
him are supervised and controlled in future.
"If such action is taken," he said, "then
perhaps Sophie Hook will not have died wholly in vain."
The leader of the police team who nailed Hughes, Detective
Superintendent Eric Jones, said: "We are pleased
to have convicted him, but there is no victory here for
anyone. Whatever we do, it won't bring that little girl
back." |
