A coroner in England concluded on Tuesday that there was no "joined-up thinking" to how five public agencies handled a "psychopathic" man who killed a woman and raped her lifeless body on their first date on Christmas Eve in 2015, the Hatfield Coroner's Court heard.
The court noted that killer Carl Langdell, 30, from Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, pleaded guilty to murdering Katie Locke, then 23, from Buckhurst Hill, Essex in 2015. Following his guilty plea in 2016, he was sentenced to life in prison, ordered to serve a minimum of 26 years, BBC reported.
Southampton University graduate Locke, then a history teacher, was oblivious of Langdell's criminal and mental health history when they met on the dating site Plenty of Fish, the court heard.
The two reportedly spent the night drinking in an East London pub on Dec. 23. 2015 for their first date, before booking a room at Theobalds Park Hotel in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, where Langdell strangled Locke to death before he sexually assaulted her corpse on Christmas Eve.
The man then wrapped her body in bedclothes before dumping the corpse on the hotel grounds.
"Katie Locke was the innocent victim of a shocking murder," Hertfordshire's assistant coroner Alison McCormick said, concluding the inquest on Tuesday. "It is clear none of the organizations managing Langdell knew what each other knew about him."
The murderer had deliberately falsely introduced himself to the woman as a well-established law firm owner when they started talking on the dating app. At the time, Langdell was serving a suspended prison sentence following threats to kill two other women, his girlfriend's sister and a mental health worker, just three weeks before that fatal night.
He was subsequently arrested and charged for Locke's murder, believed to be "sexually motivated," according to a consultant forensic psychiatrist, who diagnosed Langdell with emotional instability and dissocial psychopathic personality disorders, according to Bristol Post.
The inquest was also told that Langdell had previously assaulted a girlfriend and his brother.
Authorities interviewed the man's previous love interests, examining his dating behavior but found no evidence of any other women reporting violence or sexual assault. It barred a previous caution for battery in 2009 over a former girlfriend.
The coroner asserted that there's little information sharing between Avon and Somerset Police, Hertfordshire Police, Somerset's and Hertfordshire mental health services as well as the Probation Service about Langdell. She noted the lack of "joined-up thinking or management" nine months leading to Locke's murder.
On March 20, 2015, Avon and Somerset Constabulary was contacted by the Intensive Support Team, alerting them that Langdell had made a menacing phone call to a community psychiatric nurse, saying he wanted to cut the throat of his girlfriend's sister, strip her naked, and have brutal sex with her corpse, Hertfordshire Mercury reported.
When Langdell found out his threats were referred to the police, he made further threats to slit the throat of the tattling nurse. The man was subsequently detained under the mental health act.
A mental health assessment was conducted on the same day, revealing that Langdell found sexual gratification in thoughts of killing people since he was 16. He later developed the desire to have sex with his victim's corpse.
The man died at the maximum security Wakefield Prison earlier this year after reportedly slashing his throat inside his cell.
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