Teenage rap fan gets life in jail for killing homeless man

A teenager murdered a man who was sleeping rough on a seafront, then went home and listened repeatedly to the violent lyrics of a song by the rapper Eminem.

David Pallister, 18, punched, kicked, stamped on and sexually assaulted Richard Jones, 47, a former soldier, in South Shields, Tyne and Wear, on New Year's Eve of 2001.

He then went back to his flat and listened repeatedly to the song "Fight Music" by Eminem's band D12, which features the lyrics "I f****** hate you, I will take your drawers down and f****** rape you."

Pallister, from South Shields, was sentenced to life by Newcastle Crown Court yesterday after admitting murder at a previous hearing.

The defendant's former housemate, Kelly Percival, had told police that Pallister frequently listened to the track. "She said David kept playing Eminem," said Toby Hedworth QC, for the prosecution.

A forensic psychiatrist, Kim Fraser, said there was a "great deal" of violence in the track but Pallister claimed he "tried to ignore" the lyrics when he listened to it after the killing.

David Robson QC, in mitigation, said a large proportion of young people were Eminem fans "for reasons best known to themselves" and that there was nothing "unusual or suspect" about listening to his music.

Mr Jones, originally from Treorchy, south Wales, was a former Welsh guardsman who had cared for his mother, Naomi, for 15 years and began travelling the country after her death. He had been treated for depression in South Tyneside General Hospital.

In the attack, he suffered head injuries and a broken larynx. He was also sexually as-saulted, although whether he was alive at the time was unclear. Forensic science evidence showed that Mr Jones had been kicked and dragged about before his lifeless, naked body was dumped near a bin and covered with his sleeping bag. Pallister was identified from bloodstains on his training shoe and semen found on Mr Jones's body.

Sentencing Pallister to life, Mr Justice Hooper told him: "You carried out a prolonged and extremely violent attack on a 47-year-old man who had chosen to sleep in a shelter on the promenade at South Shields."

Three weeks ago, the Culture minister Kim Howells denounced the "hateful lyrics of boasting macho idiot rappers" in a radio debate after two girls were shot dead in Birmingham.