UK's "most dangerous teen" guilty of nurse's murder

LONDON, June 29 (Reuters) A 19-year-old man described by doctors as Britain's most dangerous teenager has been guilty of stabbing a nurse to death in a frenzied attack as she took a cigarette break last year.

Stuart Harling, who had told London's Old Bailey he had rape fantasies and had wanted to carry out a gun rampage at a school where he had been bullied, said he murdered Cheryl Moss, 33, because he was bored.

The trainee accountant, wearing a fancy dress witch's wig and dark glasses, stabbed Moss 72 times with a hunting knife in a savage attack outside St George's Hospital in Hornchurch, Essex, in April last year.

The attack was so sudden she did not have time to scream and he only stopped stabbing his victim because his wig fell off.

''I cannot think of a more dangerous teenager in the country.

If released he will probably kill again,'' said Dr Philip Joseph, one of the country's top consultant forensic psychiatrists.

Harling had admitted killing Moss, who had worked at the hospital for more than 10 years, but denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Under cross-examination at the Old Bailey yesterday, Harling said he was obsessed with violent video games and regularly surfed pornographic Web sites on killing, torture and death.

He also said he had wanted to carry out a shooting similar to the massacre at Columbine High School, Colorado, in April 1999 when two students shot dead 13 people and then killed themselves.

''Harling was obsessed with being notorious and serial killers,'' said Detective Sergeant Elaine Pugh. ''If we had not caught him so quickly I fear he would have gone on to kill more innocent people.'' The court heard that Harling suffers from Asperger syndrome and also has a schizoid personality disorder.

Prosecutor Brian Altman said Harling was a loner who had developed a plan to kill someone at random to live out his fantasy which would give him some sort of sexual gratification.

''This murder was not a spontaneous act, far from it.

Inflamed and fuelled by the fantasy world he lived in, he developed a plan over time, a plan to kill someone which he executed in a chillingly, cold blooded way,'' Altman said.

Reuters DH VP0425