EVIL foster dad Sion Jenkins was a dangerous control freak who hid behind the mask of a respectable deputy headmaster.

He had a deadly obsession with control and a vicious temper which led to the brutal murder of his foster daughter, Billie-Jo.

Jenkins, 40, was today beginning a life sentence after a Lewes Crown Court jury found him guilty of killing her.

The verdict on Jenkins, who was deputy headmaster of the William Park Boys School, Hastings, was greeted with cheers from Billie-Jo's natural family in the public gallery.

The court was told that another charge alleging that Jenkins had falsified his qualifications to obtain his job as deputy headmaster of the school will remain on the file.

Outside the court her father, Bill Jenkins, 45, an unemployed painter and decorator said: "Justice has been done. I don't feel anything for Mr Jenkins.

"For the last 16 months I've been living in a daze. The daze has gone now."

One detective in the investigation said of Jenkins: "He is delusional and an absolute control freak.

"We don't really know why he murdered Billie-Jo, except that he had a temper that didn't show itself very often. But when it did, it was extreme."

Passing sentence, the judge told Jenkins: "On February 15 last year you battered your foster daughter to death with an iron bar. This was a furious assault.

"That girl was in your care as a foster child. You yourself were a deputy headmaster at the time, a position of trust with responsibility for children. By any standards this is an horrendous crime.

"The fact that you committed this crime, the circumstances in which it was committed and the way in which it was committed in my judgement demonstrate that you are a very considerable danger to the community."

In a statement read by her solicitor, Roger Perry, Jenkins' wife Lois said: "Sixteen months ago I returned with two of my children from a quiet Saturday afternoon walk on the beach to a tragedy more horrific than any other person ever expects to encounter in a lifetime

"The loss of Billie, especially in such awful circumstances, has almost been too much to bear."

She added: "It's a terrible thing to realise that the man with whom you have lived for 14 years, father of your children, is capable of murdering your child."

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