Convicted Sex Offender Jailed for Facebook Murder

A British sex offender that had previously been convicted of rape twice posed as a teenager on Facebook in order to lure a college girl from her home. After getting the girl - 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall - 33-year-old Peter Chapman raped and then killed her.

The man had evaded police for more than a year after failing to notify a change of address, which was a violation of his Sex Offenders’ Register order, but he has now been convicted and sentenced to jail for the rape and murder for a minimum of 35 years to life.

Chapman had posted a bare-chested photo of a good looking teenage guy on Facebook to lure Hall. Prosecutor Graham Reeds said that the girl’s friends said that she was interested in boys, but boys didn’t generally return the interest. Because Hall was given some attention from the man, she was likely very flattered by it, which made her an easy target for Chapman.

After linking up on Facebook, the chats between the two moved to Tagged.com and MSN messaging. Hall eventually gave Chapman her mobile phone details, and they also communicated through texts. Reeds says that it was obvious from the beginning that the man was obsessed with sex and trying to meet with the girl.

Chapman didn’t make it to their first scheduled meeting, because he figured Hall wouldn’t get into his car as soon as she noticed that he wasn’t the same teen in the pic. So he invented a plan to pretend to be his father and pick her up at her house.

After picking her up, he took her to a secluded and dark lay-by last year on October 25. Then he forced her to perform oral sex on him, and before raping her, he bound her forearms and gagged her with gaffer tape by winding it around her face. After the rape, he put more tape over face to suffocate and kill her, then dumped her body near a Little Chef cafe.

Chapman was stopped by police due to the violation of the sex offender order after returning to the scene. He eventually admitted to an officer that an accident had happened and later produced a nine page account of his story, which police described as all lies. Authorities kept digging, and the man was forced to confess to failing to notify of a change of address, kidnapping, rape and murder.