Triple killer Kyle Clifford has joined a list of some of the country’s most infamous criminals, after he was given a whole-life order for the crossbow murders of his ex-partner and her sister, and the “brutal” knife attack on their mother.
Clifford, 26, pleaded guilty to murdering Louise Hunt, her mother Carol Hunt and her sister Hannah Hunt at their family home on July 9 last year, and was later convicted of raping Louise in a “violent, sexual act of spite”.
A whole-life order was also handed down in January to double murderer Steve Sansom, for the “bloodthirsty” killing of Sarah Mayhew, when he was out of prison on life licence for another murder. He dumped her remains in Rowdown Fields, New Addington, south London, last spring.
Brian Whitelock was sentenced to the rest of his life behind bars in December, for committing a second murder, after he attacked and sexually assaulted his neighbour Wendy Buckney in a drug-fuelled rage at her home in Clydach, Swansea.
Louis De Zoysa murdered Metropolitan Police officer Matt Ratana in 2020 (Metropolitan Police/PA)
Other criminals who have been sentenced to whole-life orders in recent years include child serial killer Lucy Letby, Sarah Everard’s killer Wayne Couzens, necrophiliac David Fuller, and Ali Harbi Ali, who murdered MP Sir David Amess.
More than 60 criminals are serving a whole-life order, four of whom are being held in secure hospitals.
They will never be considered for release unless there are exceptional compassionate grounds to warrant it.
Only four women have faced such a punishment: Letby; Myra Hindley, who died in 2002, and who was the girlfriend of Moors murderer Ian Brady; and serial killers Rose West and Joanna Dennehy.
Letby was jailed in August 2023 for what a judge described as a “cruel, calculated and cynical campaign” of baby murder in the hospital where she worked as a nurse.
Wayne Couzens murdered marketing executive Sarah Everard in March 2021 (Metropolitan Police/PA)
Gun fanatic Louis De Zoysa was handed a whole-life order in July 2023 after shooting Metropolitan Police custody sergeant Matt Ratana while handcuffed in a police cell in 2020.
In December 2022, Damien Bendall began serving a whole-life order for murdering his partner Terri Harris, 35, her daughter Lacey Bennett, 11, her son John Paul Bennett, 13 and Lacey’s friend Connie Gent, also 11, who was staying for a sleepover.
A year earlier, Fuller was handed the same sentence for the murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in 1987, and the sexual abuse of more than 100 dead women and girls in hospital mortuaries.
Milly Dowler’s killer, Levi Bellfield, is serving two whole-life orders – for her murder, the killings of Marsha McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange, and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy.
Other notorious criminals serving whole-life orders include Michael Adebolajo, one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby; Mark Bridger, who murdered five-year-old April Jones in Wales; neo-Nazi Thomas Mair, who killed MP Jo Cox; serial killer Stephen Port; and Reading terror attacker Khairi Saadallah, who murdered three men in a park.
Michael Adebolajo was one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby (Metropolitan Police)
In the past, home secretaries could issue whole-life tariffs, as they were previously known, and these are now determined by judges.
Before they died, Brady, Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe and doctor Harold Shipman – thought to be one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers – were also among those handed such a punishment.
Under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, which became law in 2023, the Government expanded the use of whole-life orders for the premeditated murder of a child.
The reforms also allow judges to hand the maximum sentence to 18 to 20-year-olds in exceptional cases, such as for acts of terrorism leading to mass loss of life, and the discretion to impose the sentence on offenders aged 18 or over but under 21, in exceptional circumstances.
Manchester Arena bomb plotter Hashem Abedi, who was convicted of conspiring with his suicide-bomber brother Salman Abedi over the 2017 atrocity, avoided a whole-life order because he was 21 at the time.
Southport killer Axel Rudakubana could not be sentenced to a whole-life order by law because he carried out the murders of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class just nine days before his 18th birthday.
The 18-year-old was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January, one of the highest minimum custody terms on record and thought to be the longest imposed on a killer of his age.