An evil brute who raped and killed a seven-year-old after kidnapping her from a tent where she was sleeping out with friends has made a fresh bid for freedom.
Howard Hughes was caged for the rest of his life for killing little Sophie Hook from Great Budworth, Cheshire back in 1995 when the 6ft 8in tall unemployed gardener raped and strangled her then threw her body into the sea.
The disgraced 59-year-old has hired a new legal team to try 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.”
Hughes has already tried three times for a review of his case – in 1998, 2004 and 2017. Each time the Criminal Case Review Commission “made a decision not to refer the conviction to the Court of Appeal because reviews found no real possibility of it being overturned”.
The new lawyers have requested files from his 1996 trial to try and find evidence he was not responsible. Any new appeal would mean fresh agony for Sophie’s family. Her 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.”
Sophie was sleeping in a tent with other kids in her uncle’s back garden in Llandudno, north Wales, on July 30 1995 when she was snatched. Hughes’ trial heard the pervert and petty criminal – nicknamed Mad Howard – had earlier been eavesdropping on them from behind a hedge.
He spent the rest of the day leering at girls in Llandudno and tried to abduct a six-year-old who escaped into her granny’s arms. Two hours after the kids went to bed, Hughes pulled Sophie from her sleeping bag. Her body was found on Llandudno beach the next morning.
Hughes, from nearby Colwyn Bay, was well known to police having been accused of sex attacks on kids before and was arrested within hours. He confessed to his father, saying: “I did it, dad, I must tell somebody. I have been sexually frustrated since 1990.”
His lawyers argued there was no forensic evidence but the jury heard the seawater would have washed it away. As Hughes was jailed for life, 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 was told he will serve at least 50 years. His previous barrister, retired Patrick Harrington KC gets letters from the murderer, handwritten from his cell at Full Sutton near York.
In 2021 Mr Harrington said: “They are always signed ‘from the innocent Howard Hughes’ Hughes was semi-literate at best when convicted. He’s been a model prisoner for the 25 years he’s been inside and he now writes in block capitals using quite a good vocabulary and near-perfect grammar.”
Hughes has also launched a bid for £50,000 in compensation for alleged abuse at Bryn Estyn home children’s in Wrexham. He is not thought to have been successful.