A 17-year-old boy has been found guilty of murdering a teaching assistant who was buried in a shallow grave at the back of a cemetery. The teenager, who cannot be named, killed Lindsay Birbeck, 47, whose body was found wrapped in plastic bags in Accrington Cemetery, Lancashire, on August 24 last year, 12 days after she disappeared. Mrs Birbeck’s family raised the alarm when she failed to return from an afternoon walk. Her attacker had been searching a wooded area known as the Coppice for women walking alone and is thought to have killed her there. Yesterday, exactly a year after Mrs Birbeck’s death, a jury at Preston crown court convicted the boy of murder after deliberating for more than four hours.

Source: The Times August 12, 2020 23:26 UTC