Stepfather jailed for condom row killing

(First Edition)

A MAN who killed his 13-year-old stepdaughter with a chisel after finding a packet of condoms in her school satchel, with one missing, was jailed for life today. yesterday.

During the trial a Home Office pathologist had told Nottingham Crown Court that the girl was still a virgin. Cheers broke out in the public gallery when Brent Huskinson, 35, was convicted of murder.

The jury rejected his plea that he was provoked by his stepdaughter, Leah, who attacked him during an argument over the condoms.

When the jury announced the verdict, Leah's mother, Mrs Sherrie Huskinson, 33, a hospital nurse, sobbed and gasped: 'Oh, thank you God.'

Oh thank you, God.'

Huskinson, unemployed, was told by Mr Justice Dyson: 'You lost your temper with her because of an argument over a packet of condoms.

'She may have used foul language and hit you I don't know but this was a most appalling and shocking case.'

The jury heard that Huskinson struck Leah six times over the head with a cold chisel and strangled her, while her mother was at work. He then trussed her body in a laundry sack in the kitchen and placed a carnation on top.

Huskinson, of Kirkby Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, claimed he lost control and blacked out after the girl kicked him on the shins and ripped his face.

But after the case Leah's mother, who is applying for a divorce, said: 'My little girl was not violent. He tried to blacken her character to try to get off with manslaughter.

'But it didn't work. I am very pleased with the verdict. The jury saw through him.'

'Leah told me she wasn't sexually active and I believed her. I don't know whether she had condoms or not. But all girls experiment with them I had condoms in my satchel when I was at school.'

Mrs Huskinson added: 'Leah was a lovely little girl. She would do anything for me and for her stepdad. She loved him for 13 years as a real father and he let her down.'

'They thought so much of her at her school that they have planted a tree in her memory.'

During the trial Home Office pathologist Professor Stephen Jones said Leah was sexually well developed but still a virgin.

Huskinson described himself as 'a house husband' because while his wife worked at a local hospital he stayed at home in Skegby Road, Kirkby Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire 'doing the washing'.