Mark Bridger guilty: Loner lifestyle of the 'drifter' who killed April

From job to job, from one failed relationship to another, Mark Bridger was a drifter.
 
He was born on November 6, 1965, in the War Memorial Hospital in Carshalton in the south London borough of Sutton.
 
His father, a City of London police constable at the time of his birth, and his mother lived at the time in a cul-de-sac of 1930s semi-detached houses in nearby Wallington.
 
Bridger, who also has an older sister and younger brother, would tell people in later years that his parents were dead.

[Mark Bridger guilty of murder]

 
He eradicated that part of his existence from the timeline of his life after a family feud over the birth of his first child.
 
It was a habit that would continue throughout his adult life: making up stories to explain away difficult truths.
 
Bridger, 47, attended John Ruskin High School in Croydon, where he attained seven CSEs, before going to Croydon College, where he failed to complete a diploma in engineering.
 
He instead moved on to do a two-year engineering apprenticeship which he completed before obtaining a job as a welder and a driver.

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It did not take long for the young Bridger to get bored and he decided to apply for a job as a firefighter in the London Fire Brigade in 1984.
 
After six months of basic training as a firefighter, Bridger quit because he was failing to attain the necessary standards.
 
Aged just 19, his life was in the kind of turmoil that would come to define it.
 
He had split up with his girlfriend and she had just had a baby.

[‘Years’ before we know what Mark Bridger really did]

 
The split meant his parents could not get access to their new grandchild and that caused a rift from which the family was never to recover.
 
Bridger packed up and headed to Wales, leaving his old life behind him.
 
He had nothing but his camping equipment and spent a few months living on the beach and moving from town to town before getting a room in a B&B in Porthmadog.
 
He then got his first job working at a plastics company before he moved on after starting a three or four-year relationship with a woman, with whom he had a son.
 
That relationship was not to last and he began working at a timeshare estate as a barman, chef and waiter, before meeting a new partner, whom he married after just three months.
 

[April Jones threw 'tantrum' to go play outside with friends - 20 minutes later she was gone]

They lived in mid Wales and also in Wrexham and Chirk. Bridger had two sons from that relationship.
 
He then broke up with her but stayed in the Machynlleth area, working as a car recovery mechanic and in a forestry job and began a relationship with another woman.
 
That lasted for two or three years but there were no children until Bridger met a further woman in 1996.
 
She had a sister who at that time was in a relationship with a man who would become the future father of April Jones.
 
The relationship with Bridger's latest girlfriend lasted eight years until 2003, and they had two children.
 
In total, Bridger had six children by four different women. He had childless relationships with three other woman, including a further one, who dumped Bridger just before he abducted April.

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While in Wales, Bridger said that he briefly ran his own business fitting alarms and CCTV cameras in places such as leisure centres.
 
He also worked as an outdoor activities instructor at a local Machynlleth school which has now closed down, before working as a lifeguard in the local leisure centre for one season in 1991/92.
 
He then moved on to working in an abattoir where he became skilled with skinning and boning knives.
 
His final job was as a labourer working on the renovation of a B&B.
 
Bridger also had a criminal past but no convictions for sexual offences.
 
His first conviction came at the age of 19 at the Old Bailey, for which he received two years probation.
 
Bridger pleaded guilty to the attempted taking of a car, possession of a firearm, having an imitation firearm, theft and two counts of obtaining property by deception.
 
The charges arose when he was going to private land owned by a friend to fire some blanks and it was 15 miles away, so he tried to open a car door to take it. He was spotted, and the police were called.
 
He also wrote cheques from a stolen chequebook, he said.
 
In January 1991 he pleaded guilty at Aberystwth Magistrates' Court to criminal damage, affray and having no insurance, arising out of a "road rage" incident when he hit the bonnet of another driver's car with his hand.
 
The following year he was convicted over more motoring matters, driving while disqualified and without insurance.