Brian Whitelock brutally murdered his neighbour Wendy Buckney while on a "self-indulgent spree" of drug and alcohol abuse and in order to satisfy his own pleasures, a judge has said. Whitelock stripped his 71-year-old victim naked and beat and stabbed her to death in her own home in August 2022, inflicting so many injuries it was not possible for a pathologist to accurately count them all.

At the time of the murder 57-year-old Whitelock was out of prison on licence having been given a life sentence with a minimum term of 18 years in 2001 for beating a man to death and torching his body during a drinking session at a house in the Blaenymaes area of Swansea. The fire Whitelock started to try to cover up the murder of Nicky Morgan claimed the life of his own older brother Glenn who was asleep in the property. Whitelock had been out of prison on licence for that murder for some 10 months when he battered Miss Buckney to death.

The defendant subsequently pleaded not guilty to murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility but a jury at Swansea Crown Court took less than 30 minutes to convict him following a trial in November this year. Whitelock returned to dock on Friday (December 30) to be sentenced. The prosecution submitted that the risks Whitelock poses cannot be safely managed in the community and that a whole-life sentence was appropriate. Handing down such a sentence, the judge, Mr Justice Griffiths, told the defendant he had no doubt that there was "a sexual element to the pleasure you took in your attack" on Miss Buckney. The sentence means Whitelock will never be released from prison.

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In his detailed sentencing remarks the judge said: "Every murder is a tragedy. But the murder of Wendy Buckney was particularly senseless. She was a person about whom even you had nothing but good words to say. She was born and bred in Clydach and it was there that she died. She was one of eight children and she had sixteen nieces and nephews, all of whom had good reason to be devoted to their aunt. She also had two step-sons, who stayed close to her after her divorce. The impact on her family has been described in court today.

"As well as her family, she had a circle of good friends. She is described as having a heart of gold; a person who would give you her last penny. For over 30 years, at Pen Y Fedw farm in Morriston, she ran a riding school and livery yard, teaching countless local children and adults to ride and jump with her horses. This was more than a business. It was an expression of her love of life and of every living creature. Four years before she died, the farm was sold and she moved into Tanycoed Road, Clydach. She was over 70 years old, and a pensioner. She developed mobility issues, occasionally using a crutch, and asked her landlords for additional mobility aids, including handrails.

"In 2000, you murdered Nicholas Morgan in circumstances which had similarities with the murder of Wendy Buckney of which you have now been convicted after a trial. You had taken Valium and the effects of this were increased by alcohol. Under the influence of these intoxicants, you savagely and repeatedly attacked him with a blunt instrument, in the small hours of the morning, causing numerous skull and face fractures. You then damaged his dead body and the house, on this occasion by setting them on fire. In this fire, your brother died, and so you were convicted of your brother's manslaughter as well as the murder of Nicholas Morgan. Witnesses described you as mumbling and babbling, speaking rubbish. This was very similar to your presentation after the murder of Wendy Buckney, which was also committed under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

"You were sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 18 years which expired in October 2018. In December 2018, the Parole Board directed your release on licence from January 2, 2019. Your licence was revoked on December 5, 2020 after you had assaulted a shop worker and committed criminal damage, for which you were sentenced to 12 weeks in prison, to run concurrently with your life sentence. In less than a year, the Parole Board gave you another chance at living outside jail. You were again released on licence in October 2021.

"On release, you lived at Tanycoed Road in Clydach and you therefore became Wendy Buckney's neighbour. She gave you odd jobs to do, so she could give you money, and she bought you food. She knew you had been in prison, although not why, but when a relative expressed some anxiety about that, she said 'everyone deserves a second chance'.

"You described her as like a second mother to you. She deserved nothing but your gratitude. But you brutally murdered her anyway and you have never, ever suggested a motive. You killed her for your own pleasure. You also killed her because you were high on a combination of street Valium, and drink. You knew very well the effects of that combination on you.

"In 2015 you talked to a probation officer about the circumstances in which you had killed Nicholas Morgan and your brother in 2000. You told her that, although you had not consumed a great amount of alcohol, you were taking what you said was prescribed Valium, or diazepam, at the time, and you believed this had increased the effect of the alcohol on you.

"After your move to Tanycoed Road, you told your neighbour Paul Jones that when you take Valium, it sends you 'loopy' and causes you to 'go off on one'. Nevertheless, from about three weeks before you killed Wendy Buckney, you were taking Valium or its equivalents which you bought from street drug dealers, and you combined it with alcohol. The effects were so obvious that they caused concern to your neighbours. In August 2022, they on various occasions called in the police and ambulance services and they also took mobile phone video of you in a very advanced state of intoxication.

"All the warning signs were there. You injured your own head when you fell over and hit it against a tree and you were taken to hospital on August 1. Later that month, you were found raving on a bridge and taken to hospital again on August 16. You injured yourself a second time when you were screaming and shouting and out of control in hospital under police supervision on August 16. You randomly trashed your own flat. You were mumbling and incoherent. You were not an addict. But you were hell-bent on consuming drugs and alcohol knowing full well how dangerous this made you. All your inhibitions were swept away, and what was left was the explosively violent man inside you.

"I make it clear that your mental state when you murdered Wendy Buckney was caused by your voluntary intoxication. The bangs on the head earlier that month were caused by your intoxication. It was not the bangs on the head which caused your mental state. That was a smokescreen you put up after the offences in order to deny responsibility for your guilt. The jury rejected that on overwhelming, in fact unanimous, medical evidence, which included scans and monitoring of the head injuries by treating medical professionals as well as expert evidence called at the trial.

"You rejected help. You refused prescription alternatives to diazepam which might have taken you away from your drug of choice. You self-discharged from hospital against medical advice. You carried on your self-indulgent spree of drink and diazepam, or street Valium, until the night you killed Wendy Buckney.

"The last time she was seen alive was at 6.50 pm on August 22, 2022, when she got back from the shops in her car. 45 minutes later you were caught on street CCTV walking towards her ground floor flat from your flat, which was opposite. In the course of the night you inflicted a frenzy of violence on her, which caused her to die a brutal, terrifying death. She knew what you were doing to her; her injuries included injuries to her hands while she tried to defend herself, but of course she was no match for you. She was old, vulnerable, and overweight, alone in her own home at night with someone she allowed in because she trusted you as a friend. You were 55, without an ounce of spare flesh, lithe, muscular and strong.

"You used a knife, a broken table leg and some MDF shelving from her house to stab and beat her all over her body and face. You stripped her naked, and stripped off your own clothes down to your boxer shorts (which you took off at one point and put back on inside out before you went back outside the next morning).

"The pathologist provided 70 numbered descriptions of injuries all over her body, from head to toe, but some numbered descriptions were of more than one injury and not all the descriptions were numbered. As the pathologist himself said, there were simply too many injuries to count. There were stab wounds. There were bluntforce wounds. Parts of her body had been skinned. Her nose, upper lip and underlying cheek were partly detached. An injury to the back of the left side of her head left the bone of her skull exposed underneath. There was bleeding into the whites of her eyes. Her arms had fatty tissue and muscle exposed. Some of the weapons left marks on her body which showed their shape; and splinters of wood and other materials were in some places embedded in her body. Her left cheekbone was fractured into three pieces. Her right leg was broken.

"When her body was found the next morning, while you were still hanging around and ranting in your boxer shorts, it was already cold and dead. She was lying naked, face down, on the floor. She had blood from the bottom of her feet to her breasts, and around her head. You were also covered in blood. The room had been trashed, a sofa upended... Clothes and objects had been put on top of her body. After the cruelty of your attack on her in life, you degraded her body in death.

"You yourself told people afterwards that she was begging you to stop. You described it as torture and that is what it was. You also referred to lying on top of her and, when you started to blame unknown strange men for the assaults you had yourself inflicted, you referred to them as having raped her...There is no doubt that there was a sexual element to the pleasure you took in your attack.

"I will now turn from the facts to the sentencing. There is only one sentence for murder, and that is imprisonment for life. That is the sentence I pass on you. In addition to passing that life sentence, I must also decide when, if ever, you may be considered for release on licence by the Parole Board. I must also impose the statutory surcharge of £228, which I do.

"Starting point. The seriousness of this offence is exceptionally high. It is a murder by an offender previously convicted of murder. Paying due regard to the statute, the starting point in this case is a whole life order. However, where I move from the starting point will reflect the aggravating and mitigating features of your case.

"Aggravating features. The aggravating features are:

* First, sustained, exceptionally cruel and sadistic violence.

* Second, the use of a knife and other weapons.

* Third, sexual assault.

* Fourth, degradation of the victim

* Fifth, voluntary intoxication with diazepam aggravated by alcohol (with prior knowledge of the risks and effects of this on you, including the part it played in your previous act of murder).

* And, sixth, Wendy Buckney's particular vulnerability.

"Mitigating features. Two potentially mitigating features are ruled out in this case. You definitely had an intention to kill, given the number and nature of the injuries, including countless stabbings and blunt force injuries all over the body and attacks on the face and head. That is not an aggravating feature but it is absent as a mitigating feature. I also find as a fact that there was no mental disorder or mental disability which lowered your culpability. The head injuries played no part in this. It was the voluntary intoxication that did it and that is an aggravating and not a mitigating feature.

"There are three mitigating features:

* First, lack of premeditation.

* Second, some remorse which you expressed at the scene and at your trial about Wendy Buckney's death and about the fact that you killed her. However, there has never been any acceptance of responsibility. You blamed everything on head injuries which the evidence at trial proved had nothing to do with it.

* Third, I recognise that you did plead guilty to manslaughter. However, the evidence that you were the killer was overwhelming, including but by no means limited to confessions you made yourself at the scene. You then quickly changed your tune, and told your ridiculous story to the police about strange unidentified men being to blame. You pleaded not guilty until the first day of trial. Even then, you only entered a guilty plea to manslaughter, not murder, and you did that because you could not run your defence of diminished responsibility without it. That defence was rightly rejected by the jury.

"Sentence for the murder of Wendy Buckney I have not listed the aggravating and mitigating features in order of importance. Nor do I simply count them up. I have assessed all the facts in the round, in order to reach a sentence which is just and proportionate to the offending as a whole. It is obvious that the aggravating features strongly outweigh the mitigating features. Stand up now, Mr Whitelock. For the murder of Wendy Buckney, I sentence you to imprisonment for life. This is a case of the most extreme gravity. I have no doubt that the seriousness of this murder is so exceptionally high that just punishment requires you to be kept in prison for the rest of your life. Therefore, the early release provisions will not apply and you will never be considered for parole."

The judge added: "Before I leave this case, I want to express my condolences to Wendy Buckney's family, many of whom are here in court today. You conducted yourself throughout the trial and today's hearing with great dignity. But your grief is palpable. I hope that, with the passage of time, you will be able to think more and more of Wendy Buckney as she was in her life of 71 years, so that her last hours do not blot out all that was happy and good about that life, and about her. I hope that, eventually, you will be left with all those memories you and she would want to have."