India Chipchase: the man behind the murder

Self-obsessed fantasist Edward Tenniswood was an oddball who kept newspaper clippings of pretty women as house "ornaments".

But he turned his sick fantasies into violent reality when he found IndiaChipchase in a drunken state outside Northampton's NB's nightclub and took her back to his squalid home in a taxi in the early hours of Saturday, January 30.

Tenniswood, 52, described as an "oddball" by his own lawyer and afriendless loner by his landlord, steadfastly stuck to the lie in court, forcingher friends and family to listen to his claims that 20-year-old Ms Chipchase had gone willingly with him and that they had had consensual sex.

Tenniswood claimed he kept the pictures of women in his home, which was covered in dust sheets and cling film, as "memories of ex-girlfriends".

When police smashed down the door of his house, having traced Ms Chipchase's mobile to the address, they found her fully-clothed body lying on a mattress in a dimly-lit upstairs bedroom.

A sheet was drawn up to her chin and her long black hair had been arranged by Tenniswood in what police described as a "halo", near a book left open on apage showing romantic images of scantily-clad women.

She had 33 separate injuries on her body including evidence of blunt forcetrauma to her head and bruising to both hips.

When details of the allegations emerged in the press, Tenniswood complained about getting death threats from fellow prison inmates. A judge ordered the press not to report the threats until the end of the trial.

But details also emerged proving that Tenniswood was more than just a harmless fantisist.

He had once pinned a teenage girl up against a wall by her throat and tried to kiss her.

He also lied to a neighbour about having been in the Army and that he was"trained to kill" with his bare hands.

Tenniswood also lied that he had dated cover girl Heather Stewart-Whyte in the late 1980s - a claim strongly refuted by the ex-model after the trial.

He had cut-out images of the model, who bore a resemblance to Ms Chipchase, and of other women, including the pop group Little Mix, in his kitchen.

Tenniswood, originally from London where he worked with his father in afurniture store, said he had not been to the nightclub for 10 years and rarelywent out because he said he had an obsessive compulsive disorder.<

But in fact Tenniswood was captured on CCTV trying to get into the nightspot two weeks before he found Ms Chipchase.