A teenager’s last moments walking with her killer before he strangled her were caught on CCTV.
Lily Sullivan met Lewis Haines in a nightclub in Pembroke, west Wales, just before Christmas last year. The pair had kissed after meeting in the Out nightspot on December 16 and went to a nearby alleyway together.
The 18-year-old’s body was later found face down and topless in the Mill Pond, a two-mile-long freshwater reservoir near the town.
The footage, released by the Crown Prosecution Service ahead of his sentencing for murder on Friday, shows the pair walking on the near-empty streets after leaving the venue. Haines can be seen taking the 18-year-old’s purse in one clip.
They headed towards an alleyway where 31 year-old Haines made sexual advances toward the teenager, prosecutors said.
The situation escalated when she rebuffed him. He strangled her in a bid to “silence” her and “forcibly” removed her lace top before pushing her in the water, a court heard.
After murdering Miss Sullivan, Haines walked past his victim’s mother as she waited to pick her daughter up from a nearby garage.
The father-of-one previously admitted murdering Miss Sullivan but had denied sexual misconduct.
But after a trial of facts, Judge Paul Thomas QC concluded Haines had killed the teenager after she rejected his advances.
“It is clear that Lewis Haines wanted to ensure that Lily died. His intention was to silence her,” the judge said. “He didn’t want anyone to know what had happened in the lane.
“I am sure, however, having been in that lane for some time with Lily and having had intimate contact with her up to a point, Lily decided that she was going home to meet her mother.
“She made it clear from the phone call if nothing else to her mother that she did not want the intimacy between her and Lewis Haines to go as far as sexual intercourse.
“Fuelled as he was by drink, I am sure that Lewis Haines was frustrated by this because he had expectations and hopes that it would go further.”
Haines claimed Miss Sullivan threatened to accuse him of rape and he did not want his partner and family to find out.
“His account of her threatening to tell people what he had done to her does in fact have an element based in truth about it,” the judge said.
“Mr Haines had a great deal to lose. Reasons such as those in my view explain why he strangled Lily in order to prevent her telling people he had tried to get her to go further than she was willing.”
William Hughes QC, prosecuting, had argued that Haines “showed sexual interest in Lily” from the time he met her in the venue, despite being “warned off more than once” by friends.
The court heard how Haines admitted they kissed in the alleyway where her jacket, mobile phone and tobacco were later found.
The teenager’s call to her mother at 2.47am had been cut off mid-sentence and Mr Hughes said it was the Crown’s belief that “Lily was attacked at that point”.
Miss Sullivan’s mother Anna Sullivan had repeatedly called her daughter that night as she was supposed to pick her up.
Her last conversation took place when her daughter told her she will be meeting her at the garage.
“I’m on my way,” Lily had said. “I’m a couple of minutes away. I’m nearly there.”
Haines, who was reportedly crying and hysterical when he arrived home at 3.40am, told his girlfriend Maisie John that he had killed somebody.
Ms John said Haines‘ jeans were damp and he had blood on his arms.
She said Haines was “hysterical” and repeatedly asked to be taken to his mother’s house.
On the journey, he admitted: “I think she’s dead.”
