Ex-altar boy Hunnisett to be sentenced for murder (From The Argus)

Ex-altar boy Hunnisett to be sentenced for murder

9:00am Tuesday 22nd May 2012 in News

A former altar boy will be sentenced today for killing his gay lover just four months after he was freed from prison following his acquittal for a vicar's murder.

Christopher Hunnisett, 28, was found guilty earlier this month of murdering supermarket worker Peter Bick, 57, in January last year.

He previously spent eight years in prison for drowning the Rev Ronald Glazebrook, 81, in his bath at the flat they shared in April 2001.

But his conviction was quashed and in September 2010 he was cleared of Mr Glazebrook's murder at a retrial during which he alleged that the priest sexually abused him.

After being freed from jail, Hunnisett, of Hastings, East Sussex, made a "hit list" of men he planned to kill in his bid to rid the world of paedophiles, Lewes Crown Court heard.

He began formulating his plan to track down rapists and child abusers while he was in prison, and on his release set up false internet accounts as a "honeytrap" for sex offenders.

In January last year he walked into Hastings police station and confessed to killing a man.

Hunnisett told the jury he killed Mr Bick because he believed he was a paedophile.

But the prosecution said there was "not a shred of evidence" that Mr Bick, an Asda employee from Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, had abused children, although he enjoyed meeting young men over the internet for consensual sex.

Having split up from his long-term partner, the supermarket worker regularly used social networking and dating websites to meet other men for sex.

On their second meeting, Hunnisett had sex with Mr Bick before murdering him in the early hours of January 11 last year.

He smashed Mr Bick's head with a hammer before strangling him with a shoelace as he lay naked on his bed, the court heard.

Hunnisett then piled suitcases, clothes hangers, sex toys, clothing, condoms and a laundry basket on top of the duvet so that someone walking into the flat would not immediately know the body was there.

The killer tried to cover his tracks by sending text messages falsely suggesting that Mr Bick believed he was meeting a 15-year-old boy.

Hunnisett's former girlfriend, Lucy Anderson, told the jury he liked to visit Soho in London and have sex with Thai "ladyboys", but when it came to their own love life he struggled to become aroused.

She said he spoke to her about killing paedophiles, but she became angry with him and said hurting people would make him as bad as them.

After his arrest for Mr Bick's murder, Hunnisett wrote to her from Belmarsh Prison in Woolwich, south-east London.

In one letter he admitted wanting to hurt Mr Bick but said he did not mean to kill him.

He wrote: "I wanted to stop him, Lucy. I would do anything to stop them.

"I just wish I did not have to sacrifice everything. My freedom, life, you. I wanted to do the right thing. Some good."

Hunnisett is facing a life term when Mr Justice Saunders passes sentence at Woolwich Crown Court today.