LONDON: A British man was jailed for life yesterday for sexually assaulting and murdering a 12-year-old girl before hiding her body in the attic of the home he shared with her grandmother.

Stuart Hazell, 37, was told by a judge at London’s Old Bailey court that he will serve a minimum of 38 years in prison for the murder of Tia Sharp in August last year.

Hazell, who was the boyfriend of Tia’s grandmother, had finally admitted killing the schoolgirl on Monday, the fifth day of his trial, after previously claiming she died by falling down the stairs.

Tia’s family were forced to sit through days of gruesome evidence, including a nude picture of the schoolgirl apparently taken after she died.

There was sobbing in the court and a shout of “beast” as Hazell was sentenced.

“She was a sparky girl who was full of life but you took that life from her,” judge Andrew Nicol told him.

“All that lay ahead of her — a career, loves and family of her own — will now never be. And the loss of her has been devastating for her mother, her father and all her relatives and friends.” The schoolgirl most likely died from being smothered, the judge said, but her body had decomposed by the time it was found.

London’s Metropolitan Police were forced to apologize after two searches of Hazell’s home in Croydon, a suburb to the south of the capital, failed to find Tia’s body.