Tia Sharp: Mother to confront killer in prison

THE mother of schoolgirl Tia Sharp wants to visit murderer Stuart Hazell in prison so she can ask why he killed her daughter, she said yesterday.
Tia Sharp's body was found in her grandmother's loft. Picture: GettyTia Sharp's body was found in her grandmother's loft. Picture: Getty
Tia Sharp's body was found in her grandmother's loft. Picture: Getty

Hazell, 37, was jailed for life with a minimum of 38 years on Tuesday after changing his plea to guilty on the fifth day of his trial at the Old Bailey on Monday. The family of 12-year-old Tia had by then been forced to sit through days of graphic ­evidence.

Hazell had claimed Tia was killed in an accident when she fell down the stairs, but the court heard he sexually assaulted her before hiding her body in the home he shared with her grandmother Christine Bicknell.

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Window cleaner Hazell had lived with Ms Bicknell in New Addington, south London, for more than five years before Tia died, and developed a twisted attraction for the schoolgirl who often stayed with them, and secretly filmed her while she slept.

Natalie Sharp, who briefly dated the convicted drug dealer before he began a relationship with her mother, said she would ask Hazell: “Just – ‘why?’ But then, is he going to answer the questions? Then I want to put my hands around his throat.”

Ms Sharp said justice “will never be done” for Tia and that she wants Hazell “beaten, brought back and beaten again”.

Hazell murdered Tia when the pair were left alone on 2 August last year at the New Addington house while Ms Bicknell worked a night shift.

After he murdered Tia, Hazell wrapped her body in a sheet and layers of plastic and hid it in the loft. It was not found until a week after Tia died after two failed searches of the loft, for which police apologised.

Ms Sharp said Hazell had been trusted “100 per cent” with her children and that she had not known of his violent streak.

“He was like two different people,” she said. “The person I thought we knew was soft and gentle and friendly, there wasn’t an inch of bad bone in him.”

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