Three men jailed for child rapist's murder

Stuart Wareham, Lee Wareham and Benjamin Walter murdered convicted rapist Geoffrey Reed (PA)

Three men are to be sentenced after being found guilty of murdering a convicted child rapist in Dorset.

Geoffrey Reed, 57, was hit with an object like a hammer and then stamped and kicked on in his ground floor flat in Bournemouth by half brothers Stuart and Lee Wareham and Benjamin Walter.

The trio will serve life sentences for the murder and will be told the minimum terms they will serve before they are eligible for parole.

Reed, who allowed the men to stay or visit his flat, suffered "enormous injuries" with fractures to his head, ribs and sternum and a broken neck, the trial at Winchester Crown Court was told.

After the murder Stuart Wareham, 26, boasted in a letter from prison that "there's one more paedo off the street so he can't prey on anymore little kids".

During the four-week trial the jury were told that Stuart Wareham had found some paperwork detailing that Reed had served 10 years for four counts of rape on two vulnerable victims - one of them a child - after the men had met in a bail hostel.

The prosecution said this was a motive in the murder and also that the men wanted Reed's benefits but when he died he only had £2.56.

The men launched the fatal attack on June 7 last year and the trio put eight-stone Reed in a suitcase that the jury saw Stuart Wareham on CCTV carry one-handed out of the flat.

Stuart Wareham then asked his sister to drive him and Benjamin Walter, 22, to their grandmother's house in Lytchett Matravers - 13 miles away - and said there was a dead dog in the suitcase he wanted to bury there, the court heard.

Meanwhile Lee Wareham, 33, left the house with several bags and dumped Reed's clothes while the other men buried him in a shallow grave.

Another man Danny Anderson was living in the flat and he called police three days later fearing the men had killed Reed. Specialist dogs found him buried in woodland.

During the trial each man blamed another for the killing.

PA