A VICIOUS killer who strangled his girlfriend with one of her own shoelaces has been jailed for life at Manchester Crown Court.

There were loud cheers from Rhonda Melling's friends and relations as Stuart Thorpe was found guilty of murder.

And as their anger at Thorpe continued while he was led away to begin his life sentence, Manchester's top Judge, the Recorder Rhys Davies warned the crowd : "This is not a matter of entertainment, it's a matter of great gravity."

The jury had taken just over six hours to convict Thorpe of murdering 23 years-old Miss Melling.

They rejected his claim that he grabbed her by the throat after she provoked him by comparing him to his own father, a convicted child killer.

After the guilty verdict Judge Davies told 27-year-old Thorpe: "What you did was to take away the life of a young woman. You also deprived a child of his mother for the duration of his life.

"I accept what has been said about the remorse and regret you express, but the sentence I have to pass on to you is one fixed by law and that is life imprisonment".

During the trial, the jury heard how police found Miss Melling's body when they burst into the home she shared with Thorpe in Abbey Lane, Westleigh, Leigh.

She was dead in bed and Thorpe was semi-conscious beside her having injected himself with a heroin overdose.

Thorpe spent three days in hospital before he could be interviewed about the death and initially claimed he could remember clearly what happened.

As Miss Melling lay dead at the house, Thorpe spoke to her mother and some of her friends, claiming she had not returned home. But the prosecution alleged he was trying to leave a "false trail."

Thorpe claimed, in evidence, that she died when he grabbed her neck as she shouted at him that he was not fit to care for her son and compared him to his father, who was once convicted of the manslaughter of a child.

He said he put the shoelace round her throat after realising she was dead but could not explain why. He also claimed he left her body in a bath of cold water for some hours before drying her and putting her in bed and then taking the heroin overdose.

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