Teen who 'brutally' murdered Lancashire teaching assistant Lindsay Birbeck jailed for life

A 17-year-old boy who murdered a teaching assistant before dumping her body in a wheelie bin has been given a life sentence.

Rocky Marciano Price had been on the prowl in the woods for lone females when he killed Lindsay Birbeck, 47, after she went for a late afternoon walk to a wooded area near her home in Accrington, Lancashire.

The mother-of-two's body was found wrapped in two plastic bags in a shallow grave at the back of a cemetery, 12 days after she went missing in August last year.

During a hearing at Preston Crown Court on Friday, Price was sentenced to life, with a minimum of 16 years in custody.

He was found guilty on Wednesday of Mrs Birbeck's murder, exactly a year on from when she disappeared.

Mrs Birbeck left her home in Burnley Road for a late afternoon walk to a nearby wooded area known as the Coppice.

The keep-fit enthusiast had invited her daughter, Sarah, 17, and Sarah’s boyfriend for tea but when she did not return as planned her family raised the alarm.

Price is thought to have killed Mrs Birbeck shortly after she entered the Coppice.

His parents took him to a police station several days after Mrs Birbeck was found, when police released a CCTV clip of a young man pulling a blue wheelie bin behind him on Burnley Road.

Price, who has autism and learning difficulties, admitted dragging the bin from the Coppice on August 17, with Mrs Birbeck inside, across Burnley Road to the cemetery.

But he claimed he was not involved in her death and that a mystery man had approached him in the area with the promise of a large cash reward if he disposed of the body.

At his sentencing hearing on Friday, Mrs Birbeck’s daughter Sarah, 17, said the lives of her family had been “completely ruined”.

In a victim impact statement read to the court by barrister Simon Driver, she said: “My mum was a higher level teaching assistant and the irony is she would have taught boys like the defendant and would have tried her best to help him.

“To know now that he murdered her for absolutely no reason is heartbreaking and has not sunk in yet. Not within me or other members of my family.

“The fact that he has made us come to court and listen to every graphic detail of my mum’s murder when he could have saved us this pain by pleading guilty is unforgivable.

“All our lives are completely ruined and I don’t see how we will ever recover as a family as the void that has been left will never be filled.”

Additional reporting by PA Media.

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