On the 17th of December Lewis Haines took a lift to Pembroke and went to Paddles nightclub now known as The Out. While he was there he met 18 yea old Lily Sullivan who he did not know prior to that evening.
Swansea Crown Court heard the 18-year-old was later found face down and topless in the Mill Pond, a two-mile-long freshwater reservoir near the town.
CCTV footage shows Haines walking down the street with Sullivan moments before he killed her. He is then seen walking back past his victim’s mother as she waited to pick her daughter up from a nearby garage. The father-of-one has admitted murdering Miss Sullivan but denied sexual misconduct.
But after a trial of facts, Judge Paul Thomas QC concluded Haines had killed the teenager after she rebuffed his sexual advances. “It is clear that Lewis Haines wanted to ensure that Lily died. His intention was to silence her,” the judge said. “He didn’t want anyone to know what had happened in the lane. A woman who lived near the area then recalled hearing a loud scream early that morning – and Haines was later seen in the area acting “strangely” with his head in his hands. Ms Sullivan’s body was later found topless in the water – with a post-mortem examination revealing she had been strangled.
The court heard that Haines returned home to his partner and hysterically told her: “I’ve strangled somebody, they’re in the Mill Pond.” “I am sure, however, having been in that lane for some time with Lily and having had intimate contact with her up to a point, Lily decided that she was going home to meet her mother.
“She made it clear from the phone call if nothing else to her mother that she did not want the intimacy between her and Lewis Haines to go as far as sexual intercourse. “Fuelled as he was by drink, I am sure that Lewis Haines was frustrated by this because he had expectations and hopes that it would go further.”
Haines claimed Miss Sullivan threatened to accuse him of rape and he did not want his partner and family to find out. “His account of her threatening to tell people what he had done to her does in fact have an element based in truth about it,” the judge said.
“Mr Haines had a great deal to lose. Reasons such as those in my view explain why he strangled Lily in order to prevent her telling people he had tried to get her to go further than she was willing.” William Hughes QC, prosecuting, had argued that Haines “showed sexual interest in Lily” from the time he met her in the venue, despite being “warned off more than once” by friends.
The court heard how Haines admitted they kissed in the alleyway where her jacket, mobile phone and tobacco were later found. The teenager’s call to her mother at 2.47am had been cut off mid-sentence and Mr Hughes said it was the Crown’s belief that “Lily was attacked at that point”.
He also said that it was their case that Miss Sullivan’s cream-coloured lace crop top had been removed “forcibly” before she was pushed in the water. John Hipkin QC, defending, said there was no forensic evidence of a sexual contact between the pair or evidence the top had been torn from her body as it remained intact.
Anna Sullivan branded Haines “pure evil” for murdering her daughter and dumping her body in a lake, and said she could never forgive him.
She said in a victim impact statement that was read out to Swansea Crown Court: “The events of the night Lily died go over in my mind constantly and I wake up in the night picturing Lily in the water, wondering if she knew what was happening, if she was scared.
“I wish I had stopped Lily going out that night. I picture the male responsible for Lily’s death who I saw in the garage and wish I’d confronted him. “He looked me straight in the eyes, knowing what he had done. Knowing I was that close to her, I wish I’d gotten out of my car and walked. I will always wonder if I could have saved her.
“These thoughts never leave me and I can’t stop thinking about it. I have to live with the fact that I will now never know what really happened to Lily that night. I suspect the actual truth will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Other images show Lily walking with her killer thought the quiet streets of a Welsh town.
Miss Sullivan’s social media contained a number of poignant posts about misogyny, sexual violence and women being killed by men.
One of her Instagram stories contained a photograph taken of floral tributes left for Sarah Everard with a sign that read: “She was just walking home.”
Another post several weeks later listed 80 women who had been killed by men since Miss Everard was murdered by Met Police officer Wayne Couzens.
Others included words such as “Men shouldn’t be making laws about women’s bodies”, “Maybe not all men, but all women”, and a guide on how to recognise if you have been spiked.
