Fury as murderer is jailed again

John Sheldon said it was a "disgrace" David Bobby was freed from prison after serving 14 years of a life sentence for a brutal stabbing.

Bobby killed art student Paul Sheldon in Whitehouse Loan, Marchmont, in 1993.

A judge sent him back to jail for five years last week after he was caught with 80,000 of heroin only seven months since his release.

His victim's brother only found out that Bobby was free after reading of his recent jailing on the Evening News website.

Mr Sheldon says he had to leave his home in Edinburgh because of his grief after his brother's death. The 37-year-old PhD graduate now lives in Montgomery, Alabama, where he works for the US Air Force. Paul Sheldon, 20, from Balerno, had been on a night out with his other brother Peter and friend, Tom Cole, in February 1993 when they met Bobby, then 19, in the street.

Mr Sheldon was stabbed through the heart and his killer continued to stab him as he lay on the ground either dying or dead.

His brother said: "There is something deeply wrong with the system. The tariff should be raised so that, in certain cases, life must mean serving 30 or 40 years. Fourteen years was frankly a joke.

"Prisons may be crowded, but murder – particularly violent attacks of this kind – should be a special case.

"Although being in prison should be about rehabilitation, it should also be retributional. Whatever efforts were made to rehabilitate Bobby clearly didn't work."

Paul Sheldon had been studying in Newcastle but had returned to Edinburgh to visit his parents when he was murdered.

Mr Sheldon added: "He was just a normal lad in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can lose family from illness or old age and rationalise that. You can't rationalise with murder.

"My family are serving a life sentence. We are a strong family but we've had to overcome a lot of challenges.

"I had to get out of the UK. There were too many memories and ultimately I ended up in the US. But I still can't escape what happened or forget it. It makes a mockery of the system when people are still suffering and he was let out so quickly to reoffend."

Mr Sheldon joined the diplomatic service following his brother's death. After being stationed around the globe, he took up a professorship at Maxwell Air Force Base at the School of Advance Air Space Studies in Alabama.

Last week, the High Court in Edinburgh heard how Bobby, now 33, was stopped on the M8 on January 30, seven months after he was released on licence.

Bobby, of Duff Street, Dalry, pleaded guilty to being concerned in the supply of heroin after being found with almost a kilo of the drug.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "Anyone convicted of murder is on licence for life, and their liberty is conditional upon them abiding by their licence conditions. (Bobby] has now been given a further sentence and will continue to serve his life sentence until the parole board is satisfied that his risk can be safely managed in the community."

He added the Scottish Government had introduced a victim notification scheme since Bobby's conviction, which allowed families of murder victims to be told when the killer is to be released.