'Pure evil': Dad who strangled Lily Sullivan, 18, to death after she refused to have sex with him is jailed for life

26 August 2022, 10:58 | Updated: 26 August 2022, 12:36

Lewis Haines, 31, has been jailed at Cardiff Crown Court for life for the murder of 18-year-old Lily Sullivan, after she refused to have sex with him.

Haines murdered Lily Sullivan and dumped her body in a pond after he met her inside a nightclub in Pembroke, west Wales, just before Christmas last year.

Lily Sullivan's mother Anna Sullivan branded Lewis Haines "pure evil" for murdering her daughter and said she could never forgive him.

"The events of the night Lily died go over in my mind constantly and I wake up in the night picturing Lily in the water, wondering if she knew what was happening, if she was scared," Ms Sullivan said in a victim impact statement read to the court by William Hughes QC, prosecuting.

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"I wish I had stopped Lily going out that night.

"I picture the male responsible for Lily's death who I saw in the garage and wish I'd confronted him.

"He looked me straight in the eyes, knowing what he had done.

"Knowing I was that close to her, I wish I'd gotten out of my car and walked. I will always wonder if I could have saved her.

"These thoughts never leave me and I can't stop thinking about it. I have to live with the fact that I will now never know what really happened to Lily that night.

"I suspect the actual truth will haunt me for the rest of my life."

Chilling CCTV shows tragic final moments of teenager Lily Sullivan

The pair had kissed after meeting in the Out nightspot on December 16 and later went to a nearby alleyway together where they became more intimate.

Swansea Crown Court heard the 18-year-old was later found face down and topless in the Mill Pond, a two-mile-long freshwater reservoir near the town.

CCTV footage shows Haines walking down the street with Sullivan moments before he killed her. He is then seen walking back past his victim's mother as she waited to pick her daughter up from a nearby garage.

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The father-of-one has admitted murdering Miss Sullivan but denied sexual misconduct.

But after a trial of facts, Judge Paul Thomas QC concluded Haines had killed the teenager after she rebuffed his sexual 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.

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Sentencing Lewis Haines to life in prison, Judge Paul Thomas QC said: "You strangled her face-to-face, she must have been terrified.

"An 18-year-old girl all alone in the dark with a powerful man.

"She was entirely at your mercy and you, Lewis Haines, showed her none.

"You were entirely thinking about your own self-preservation."

He said Lily Sullivan's death had caused "devastation to many".

Haines has been jailed at Cardiff Crown Court for life with a minimum term of 23 years and four months.