Murderer Ashley Foster jailed for killing teenager Megan Bills and clingfilming her body in wardrobe

A man who strangled a teenager and hid her body in a clingfilm-wrapped wardrobe has been jailed for life.

Ashley Foster will serve a minimum term of 26 years for the murder of 17-year-old Megan Bills during what the prosecution described as a violent sexual attack.

Foster, 24, had been released from prison just three days before he met Megan and killed her in his room at an ex-offenders' hostel in Brierley Hill, West Midlands, on Easter Sunday last year.

Megan's body was kept in a wardrobe for more than two weeks, where it decomposed while her killer searched the internet for snuff movies, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.

Foster used a shirt as a ligature to kill Megan, and then used clingfilm to wrap the wardrobe, also covering it with a quilt and pointing a fan toward a window in an effort to get rid of the smell.

The former hairdressing student's body was found by staff at the hostel who were investigating the smell.

Judge James Burbidge QC said Foster had intended to kill Megan and that his behaviour after the murder had been "beyond belief".

He said: "Megan was vulnerable because she was young, although she was trying to live an independent life.

"Instead of acting in a compassionate, human and decent manner, you not only failed to ring the authorities, you bundled her body in a curtain or bedding and then placed her body in a wardrobe.

"You left her body there to be discovered by others. That in itself is shocking."

At the beginning of the seven-day trial, prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC had said: "Whether it was the prospect of having to dismember the body or whether it was a fear of being caught on camera or a combination of the two, Foster's nerve failed him and Megan's body was left in the wardrobe."

Foster had admitted preventing the decent and lawful burial of Megan but was found guilty by a jury of murdering her.

He wrote a letter to his sister after the killing, saying Megan had died accidentally and he had not meant to hurt her, the court heard.

In a statement issued after Foster's sentencing, Megan's parents, Martin and Dawn, said: "To have lost Megan is hard enough, but to try and understand the impact, when coupled with the fact that her body was concealed until it had rotted beyond recognition, is clearly painful beyond words, and demonstrates an evil cruelty beyond any decent comprehension.

"The ongoing trauma we are living with is due in part to being denied the closure obtained from being able to see and hold Megan after she had died."