‘Cannibal’ nurse jailed for plotting to eat girl

A NHS nurse dubbed the Canterbury Cannibal, who was convicted of sexual grooming after plotting to behead and eat a girl, has been jailed for nine years.

Dale Bolinger took a menacing selfie holding an axe he planned to use on his victims. Picture: SWNS

Dale Bolinger, 58, bought an axe from a DIY store in Broadstairs, Kent, the day before he tried to meet the 14-year-old, whom he groomed online.

He chatted with the teenager, a Mexican girl called “Eva” said to be living in Germany, on a website called the Dark Fetish Network (DFN).

In conversations, Bolinger described sex acts he wanted to perform on her and how he would murder her, which she said she wanted to happen.

After a four-day trial at Canterbury Crown Court in July, Bolinger was found guilty of attempting to meet a girl under the age of 16 following sexual grooming. Before the trial, Bolinger admitted other charges, including administering a poison or noxious substance after he put a cloth soaked in dry cleaning fluid over a friend’s mouth in 2010.

He also pleaded guilty to making indecent pseudo-photographs of children, and seven counts of publishing an obscene article.

As he was jailed for the 11 offences yesterday, a judge said his behaviour was “abhorrent, shocking and dangerous”.

Psychiatrists ruled that American national Bolinger was not suffering from mental illness.

Jailing Bolinger, judge Adele Williams told him: “You demonstrated when giving evidence that you are an arrogant and manipulative man. You have shown no remorse and indeed cannot understand why anyone should find your behaviour in any way abnormal or perverted, let alone criminal.”

Prosecutor Martin Yale told the trial that internet chats involving Bolinger on the DFN site about beheading and eating women and girls were discovered by the FBI in New York.

Investigators found that the email [email protected] was being used in Kent and Bolinger was arrested after the information was passed to Kent Police.

At his trial, chat logs were read out between Bolinger and users in which he referred to beheading a 14-year-old, eating children while their mothers watched, and cooking and eating a pregnant woman and her foetus.

The court heard that Bolinger had taken his fantasies beyond chatrooms before. In July 2010, he put a cloth soaked in dry cleaning fluid over friend Urlene King’s mouth.

Following his arrest at the hospital where he worked after the emergence of the graphic chat logs, police found at his home indecent pseudo-images of children aged four to 16 which had been digitally manipulated. The titles for the pictures included “Dinner”, “The BBQ”, “The BBQ2” and “The BBQ3”.

Mr Yale said that these pointed to Bolinger’s sexual interest in cannibalism relating to children.

Detective Superintendent Tim Smith, of Kent Police, said of the sentence: “There is no doubt in my mind Bolinger represents a very real and great danger to the public. I welcome the news he will spend time behind bars, preventing him from causing harm.”