Young American Killed A Date, Then Had Sex With Her Dead Body

A sick and twisted fantasist violently assaulted and strangled a young teacher he met on the Plenty of Fish dating site before having sex with her dead body, a court has heard.

Carl Langdell met Katie Locke on the dating app Plenty of Fish. When they met up, he took her back to the four star Theobalds Park Hotel in Hertfordshire where he violently attacked and killed her.

St Albans Crown Court heard how he dumped her body in a bush near a skip in the 55-acres grounds after strangling her to death. He then took photos of the 23-year-old's dead body, and sexually assaulted her. Only nine months earlier Langdell had told a community psychiatric nurse that he wanted to cut a girl's throat.

SOUTH BEDS NEWS AGENCY Carl Langdell and Katie Locke Katie Locke was on her first date with Carl. He also admitted that he wanted to see her naked and have sex with her when she was dead. Read more: Teenage girl with mental health problems died after Priory staff neglected her 

Katie had taught history and politics at Cardinal Pole School in Hackney, east London. Before they met, Langdell lied to Katie when he said he had his own law firm. He met her for the first time on the night she died.

Katie was unaware that Langdell, 26, spent time in a psychiatric hospital and was serving a suspended sentence for telling the nurse his sick fantasies. Following his arrest he described himself to a psychiatrist as a "monster".

Langdell, of Cheshunt, Herts, admitted at an earlier hearing to murdering Katie Locke in the early hours of last Christmas Eve. Appearing at St Albans Crown Court, Judge Andrew Bright QC said he will sentence him on Friday. 

Prosecutor Ann Evans said: "The tragedy of this case is that Katie Locke, like thousands of other young people, having agreed to a date with Carl Langdell accepted what he told her about himself.  "At the end of their first date in the early hours of 24 December last year she agreed to go back to a hotel with him, he strangled her in that hotel room and then dumped her body near a skip outside the hotel."

Katie, who graduated from Southampton University, was described as "beautiful and vibrant" by her family. Before her death, she told pal Danielle White that she had been on the Plenty of Fish website where she had met a man called Carl.

Danielle was told that they had been talking for about two weeks. Mrs Evans went on: "Katie told another friend that Carl told her he was a lawyer who owned his own firm.

"Carl Langdell is not a lawyer, nor does he have his own firm, this was a lie. "The truth was that over the previous two years he had increasingly suffered from mental illness, which had been marked by periods in psychiatric hospitals." 

During the date, she texted another pal, Rosie Foster, who said that it was going well. Katie's mum didn't know about that date because Katie had given her the impression she had gone out with Rosie.

Katie and Langdell left a bar called Trafik in Old Street, Shoreditch in East London at around 1.30am on Christmas Eve.

They were driven to the hotel by taxi.