A highly active child predator who took a slumbering seven-year-old girl from a tent in a backyard before sexually assaulting, assaulting, and suffocating her has launched a new attempt for release 30 years later.
Howard Hughes was jailed for life for the savage murder and sexual assault of Sophie Hook in 1995.
The towering 6ft 8in attacker kidnapped the young Sophie from a tent in her uncle’s garden in Llandudno, Wales, and her unclothed, bruised body was discovered on a nearby beach a few hours later.
An autopsy uncovered that ‘considerable force’ had been applied to Sophie, who had been forcefully sexually assaulted, constrained, punched, and hit, all while she was still alive.
Now aged 59, the convict has hired a new legal team in the fourth attempt to review his case and win his freedom.
A source told the Mirror: ‘Hughes has never accepted his guilt. He spends his time in maximum security HMP Full Sutton telling anyone who will listen that he didn’t do it. But it would take something spectacular to overturn his conviction.’
At Hughes’s sentencing, Judge Richard Curtis told him: ‘You are a fiend. Your crimes are every parent’s worst nightmare. My recommendation is that you are never, never, ever released. Take him down.’
Hughes has tried three times to get his case reviewed – in 1998, 2004 and 2017 – but each request was turned down because no real prospect existed of overturning his conviction.
Sophie (pictured) was from Great Budworth, Cheshire, but had been visiting relatives at her uncle Danny’s seaside home in Wales for her cousin’s birthday
Howard Hughes (pictured) was jailed for life for the savage murder and sexual assault of Sophie Hook in 1995
Now, his legal representatives have requested files from the 1996 trial in an attempt to find fresh evidence of his innocence.
Sophie was from Great Budworth, Cheshire, but had been visiting relatives at her uncle Danny’s seaside home in Wales for her cousin’s birthday.
On the afternoon of July 29, 1995, she was playing with the other children in an inflatable pool as Hughes watched on from bushes on a path overlooking the property.
Able to hear their conversations, he would have been aware of their plans to sleep in the garden that night. He told one of several witnesses who saw him on the path that he was looking for dropped money on the ground.
Later that day, he tried to abduct a six-year-old girl from a park just a few minutes walk from the garden, but she managed to escape.
In the early hours of the following morning, Sophie’s cousin woke and saw her still asleep in the tent between him and his sister.
Some twenty minutes later, a police officer stopped to speak to Hughes who was strolling through town.
When Sophie’s cousin woke again at 7.15am, she had disappeared from the tent and she was later was reported missing after a frantic hour-long search of nearby fields.
Before her parents had even contacted the authorities, a man walking his dog found Sophie’s naked body washed up on shore after having been thrown into the sea (Pictured: Julie and Christopher Hook at a press conference following Hughes’s conviction)
Pictured: PC Kevin Jones of North Wales Police with a tent similar to the one Sophie was abducted from
Pathologist Dr Donald Waite concluded that all of Sophie’s injuries had been sustained while she was still alive
Before her parents had even contacted the authorities, a man walking his dog found Sophie’s naked body washed up on shore after it had been thrown into the sea.
Hughes had taken Sophie, still sleeping, from the garden tent she shared with her cousins and violently attacked her until she died.
An examination of her body found she had sustained a broken arm and ankle.
Her body was covered with bruises ‘consistent with the gripping of the child by hand’ and she had bruises around her head and face which indicated she had been punched or slapped.
Most of her injuries were comparable to those suffered by people killed in major car collisions.
Most disturbingly, pathologist Dr Donald Waite concluded that all of her injuries had been sustained while she was still alive.
The terrified child had been in so much pain that she had left teeth marks on both sides of her tongue and inside her lower lip.
Her official cause of death was manual strangulation lasting up to three minutes.
Pictured: Sophie’s father Christopher after the memorial service for Sophie at Colwyn Bay Parish Church
Pictured: Police search through bushes at the back of the house belonging to Sophie’s uncle in 1995
Pictured: Howard Hughes is driven from court after being charged with Sophie’s murder
Hughes then threw her lifeless body into the sea, which prosecutors believed to be an attempt to wash away forensic evidence.
The white and pink Winnie The Pooh nightdress and flowery socks Sophie had worn to bed that night were never found.
Howard Hughes had amassed 17 criminal convictions by the time he was 19 – including for assault, burglary and possession of weapons.
Born with Klinefelter’s – a chromosomal abnormality that meant he had an extra X chromosome – Hughes grew at an alarming rate and reached a height of 6ft when he was 11 and a peak of 6ft 8in in adulthood.
He also had behavioural problems, dyslexia and various other learning disabilities.
Hughes was found guilty on charges of abduction, rape and murder ar Chester Crown Court in June 1996.
The jury heard no forensic evidence linking Hughes to Sophie’s murder, but three key witnesses pieced the story together.
Hughes’s father Gerald – a prominent businessman – told the jury that his son had confessed to Sophie’s murder not long after his arrest, saying: ‘I did it, dad, I must tell somebody. I have been sexually frustrated since 1990.’
The then-31-year-old was handed three life sentences with a minimum term of 50 years, but has tried repeatedly to appeal the conviction, maintaining his innocence since.
Sophie’s mother Julie has said: ‘Sophie was and always will be, to us, a vivacious, fun-loving, extremely popular, beautiful, intelligent child. No child could have received or given more love to us.’
