A BURGLAR who cased a British granny’s house on Google Earth and then strangled her during the raid was jailed for life today.
Steven Hodgson, 33, broke into churchgoer Patricia Thompson’s bungalow two days after downloading aerial shots of it from the website, The Sun reported.
When the 85-year-old widow spotted him clambering though a window and confronted him, he tortured her to get her bank card PIN, then murdered her.
The drug addict then stuffed two of her suitcases full of valuables and called a taxi to use as a getaway car.
After carrying the cases to the taxi he calmly returned to set the house in Stockton-on-Tees, northeast England, on fire to destroy evidence of the shocking crime in September last year. Hodgson of Middlesbrough, northeast England, denied murder but a jury at Teesside Crown Court found him guilty.
Judge Nigel Davis sentenced him to a minimum term of 34 years and told him: “I could detect at no stage the slightest degree of remorse on your part for the death of this lovely lady.
“You are a very dangerous man. You are perfectly prepared to use violence if it suits your purposes.”
After the case, Thompson’s family said: “Our mum was a loving, joyful and gentle lady.
“She is and will continue to be greatly missed by her family and friends.”
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