Danielle uncle is guilty

The parents of murdered schoolgirl Danielle Jones have appealed to her uncle Stuart Campbell to tell them where their daughter's body is.

Campbell, 44, who is today beginning a life sentence for her murder, was obsessed with the teenager and killed her to stop her revealing his sex secrets.

He shook his head as he was sentenced to life at Chelmsford Crown Court. The 15-year-old's body has never been found.

Campbell, a builder who was addicted to internet porn and had an obsession with teenage girls, abducted Danielle to stop her revealing his sex secrets. Danielle disappeared shortly after she left home in East Tilbury, Essex, to catch the school bus in June 2000.

Danielle's parents Tony and Linda burst into tears as the unanimous verdict was returned after seven and a half hours' deliberations at the end of a 10-week trial.

Campbell had "groomed" Danielle for months and killed her when she threatened to tell her parents about his persistent demands for sex. Unknown to the jury he had even forced his 14-year-old daughter into posing for indecent photographs.

After the verdict Campbell was revealed as having a history of violence and indecency towards young teenage girls dating back to the Seventies.

Mr Justice McKinnon told Campbell: "You have done a thoroughly terrible thing, caused widespread horror and disbelief, and there is not a shred of mitigation in this case. You are no stranger to violence and started in crime at a young age... you merit the description 'dangerous'."

The judge said that Campbell's "particularly perverted interests were focused on schoolgirls of the 15- to 16-year-old bracket and you are quite unable to check your impulses." He added: "You have been a blatantly deceitful and thoroughly dishonest smooth operator over many years."

The judge said that only Campbell would know exactly what had happened on the day Danielle disappeared but that he had kidnapped her, taken her to his house and murdered her. Campbell, of Gray's, Essex, is married to the sister of Danielle's father.

The girl's DNA was discovered on bloodstained stockings in a bag of women's underwear in Campbell's loft. He used to approach young girls in the street and at school gates and lure them to his home to take photographs of them dressed in lingerie and school uniforms.

Campbell would surf the internet for hours on end downloading images from paedophile websites. After disposing of Danielle's body Campbell kept her mobile phone and texted his own phone with messages saying: "You are the best uncle ever" in an attempt to show she was still alive and to deflect suspicion from himself.

He was trapped by the mobile phone records and the computer and photographic evidence of his own perversions.

When his house was searched police found a note with a Pin number for Danielle's mobile phone and the words "chloroform" and "tazer stun gun".

Detectives discovered Campbell had kept a diary listing his almost daily contact with Danielle and that he had bombarded her with text messages describing her as his "princess" and "sexy legs".

Twice-married Campbell has previous convictions for taking a child without lawful authority - a 14-year-old girl he abducted and photographed semi-naked in 1989 - and a vicious mugging of a girl aged 16 in 1976, which earned him a four-year prison sentence.

His indecency conviction came before the sex offenders' register was introduced to keep a trace of convicted paedophiles. There were also convictions for robberies, assaults and burglaries.

The search for Danielle, codenamed Operation Spinaker, is the biggest inquiry ever mounted by Essex Police at a cost of £1.7 million.

Police have targeted 1,500 potential sites in a vain attempt to find her remains.

Detective Chief Superintendent Steve Reynolds said: "I will seek to reinterview Campbell in an effort to ascertain where Danielle is.

"I will appeal to him to cooperate so that Tony and Linda can have a funeral and grieve properly."