Detectives are not yet linking her disappearance with Jennifer's. The man leading the hunt for Jennifer, DCI Geoff Anderson said: 'We are always concerned when a person is missing and we are more concerned because of the circumstances of this case. 'She comes from a stable home and is happy with everything in her life.'
MISSING club girl Jennifer King was found dead yesterday. Her body was discovered just 300 yards from her grieving parents' home. It was lying in a copse on the route the 22-year-old would have taken as she returned from a night out. Dark-haired secretary Jennifer vanished in the early hours of Saturday after ... A jury at Bristol Crown Court has heard how keys and a pair of returned shoes will be vital evidence in the trial of a man accused of killing secretary Jenny King.
The parents of the murdered 22-year-old held each other and wept as they heard how their daughter's semi-naked body was found strangled in an overgrown copse. Jenny King disappeared after a Friday night out with friends in Bristol in October 1998 and a major hunt was organised until her body was found four days later.
Detectives searching for the killer of 22-year-old Jenny King say they are following up a number of 'active' lines of inquiry following the reconstruction of her disappearance in Bristol last week. Now police are sifting through hundreds of statements taken from nightclubbers at the Chasers nightspot in Kingswood. The boyfriend of murder victim Jenny King has already denied that he is the killer. Steve Daly, 30, spoke soon after the reconstruction of her last hours that turned up important new clues.
Mr Daly said he was distraught when Miss King was strangled after leaving a Bristol nightclub last Saturday. He told the Sun: 'I'm sure some people have suspected me. But it wasn't me. 'I cannot believe she has been taken away from me. We were so happy together.' Detective Chief Inspector Geoff Anderson said the reconstruction had turned up 'a couple of bits of information which are quite interesting'. Police set up the exercise to try to find out what happened to Miss King after she left Chasers nightclub in Regent Street, Kingswood.
A young woman from the Support Group of Avon and Somerset Police re-enancted the last known movements of the receptionist, whose battered and strangled body was found on Tuesday just yards from her home at Crane Close, Warmley. The police officer wore similar clothes to those Miss King wore on her night out.
Local man Paul Hunt - 21 charged with murder
Paul Hunt, 21, was committed for trial at Bristol Crown Court after an hour-long hearing before North Avon Magistrates' Court at Yate, near Bristol. A bail application from defence solicitor Mr Ian Kelcey was refused and Mr Hunt, of Malvern Drive, North Common, Warmley, near Bristol, was remanded in custody until a pre-trial hearing at the Crown Court on 19 February. Reporting restrictions were not lifted at Thursday's hearing. Mr Hunt, who wore a dark blue crew-necked sweater and dark blue corduroy trousers, spoke only to confirm details of his age and home address.
He is charged with murdering 22-year-old Miss King, of Crane Close, Warmley, between October 29 and November 1 last year. Miss King left the Chasers Night Club in Regent Street, Kingswood, late on the night of October 30, apparently intending to walk the mile to her home. Her partially-clothed body was found three days later, hidden in a copse just a few hundred yards from the house.
Factory worker had made 80 threatening calls before going out on night he murdered woman walking home from nightclub A factory worker with a previous caution for indecent exposure made 80 threatening phone calls to women on the night he murdered a secretary, police disclosed yesterday. Paul Hunt, who had attended the same primary school as his victim, was last night beginning a life sentence after a jury at Bristol crown court found him guilty of killing Jenny King, 22, as she returned home from a Friday night out in October 1998. Friends and relatives of the dead woman sobbed and applauded as the jury returned its unanimous verdict after four and a half hours deliberation at the end of the 12 day trial.
Ms King's father, Ray, said he could find no quotable words to express his 'total contempt' for the killer. 'Jenny has no future. He callously took that away. It is obvious to all who have been present at this trial that he is not just a murderous liar but evil personified. According to the evidence, if it is to be believed, this is a person who within 12 hours of murdering my daughter was playing pool with his mate, and who within 18 hours was out on the town again. He has brought eternal shame on his family and tainted them and his friends with his web of deceit and lies.' Ms King disappeared in the early hours of October 31 1998 after leaving Chaser's night club in Kingswood, Bristol, to walk to her home in Warmley a few miles away.
Her brother, Andrew, who had met her in the club that evening, gave her £5 for a taxi, but she did not take one. Her disappearance prompted a huge police search, and her semi-naked body was discovered three days later in a copse a few hundred yards from her home. She had been beaten about the face and strangled with one of the legs of her trousers.
The killer had stamped on her abdomen, and had stuffed her underwear and part of her trousers into her mouth to stop her screaming. Forensic experts recovered tiny green fibres from her clothing that were later found to match a Ralph Lauren shirt recovered from Hunt's home. The pattern on the soles of a pair of shoes belonging to Hunt were found to match prints left on Ms King's body. The big breakthrough for police came with the discovery of a set of house keys during the search of the thick undergrowth where the body was found. Hunt was persuaded by his fiancee to ring Crimestoppers to report the loss of a similar set on the night of the killing. Hunt, now 22, was arrested when the keys were found to fit the front and back doors of the house in Warmley where he lived with his mother Teena. Prosecutors told the court that on the night of the killing Hunt had woken his mother at around 3.30 in the morning by banging on the back door of the house because he was locked out. H
Hunt, an only child whose father left home when he was five, had spent the evening drinking in a city centre nightclub with two friends but, after downing eight pints of lager, left the club alone at around 1.30 in the morning to make his way back to the Warmley area. His girlfriend had decided not to join him on his regular Friday night out because she was feeling unwell. In evidence he told the jury he could not recall ever meeting Ms King and said that if he had killed her he would not be standing there 'putting her family, friends and relatives through what they are going through'. That was, said the judge, Mrs Justice Hallett, 'a wicked and bare faced lie'.
The evidence against him was overwhelming and as it mounted up he had continued to protest his innocence. She told him: 'Jenny King was a lovely young woman with everything to live for. She died at your hands, tragically young, because she rejected your sexual advances. 'I also suspect the reason you got close enough to make sexual advances to her was because she recognised you as someone from her childhood, someone she trusted.' It emerged in court that Hunt had in the past received cautions for indecent exposure and making obscene phone calls, and in the six months leading up to the killing had made around 4,000 threatening phone calls to women in the Bristol area from his home in Warmley.
The women were apparently chosen at random. Detective Superintendent Bill Davies, who led the police investigation, said there was no evidence that Hunt had made any such calls to his victim. 'Jenny was a lovely young lady. She was well liked in the community, a vivacious young girl. She was brutally murdered by Hunt because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.' He said that in the period leading up to his arrest Hunt - 'a callous, ruthless, brutal killer' - had made thousands of phone calls to women in the Bristol area, threatening rape.
Eighty of those calls were made just before he set out on the night he killed Ms King. Night of murder Mr Denyer said Jenny King had separated from friends to go to Chasers night-club in Kingswood. 'She had chatted to her brother, Andrew King, who gave her a fiver to get a taxi home.' 'Unfortunately,' Mr Denyer said,'She did not get a taxi home.' Mr Denyer explained how her body was found in an overgrown copse he referred to as 'the den' a few hundred yards from the woman's family home in the Warmley area of Bristol. He said a leg of Miss King's trousers had been tied around her neck. Mr Denyer told the court a set of keys found at the scene, were later found to open doors at the house Mr Hunt lived.
He was arrested after a TV and newspaper appeal centred round the keys found at the scene when a relative contacted police saying Mr Hunt had lost a similar set on the night Miss King went missing. Mr Denyer said fibres had been also found on Miss King's body which allegedly matched a green Ralph Lauren shirt owned by the accused. He then told the jury the accused's mother, Teena Andrews, had taken a pair of his shoes back to a Bristol City Centre shop on the morning after Miss King died. Mr Denyer said there was 'overwhelming evidence' the prints from the soles of the boots matched marks found on her stomach.
