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Photo: Silas Stein/ DPA

More than 30 years after the murder of a seven-year-old girl, a man in England has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime. As the British news agency PA reported on Tuesday from the courtroom in the northeastern English city of Newcastle, the judge imposed a minimum prison term of 29 years.

The now 55-year-old man was convicted 31 years after the crime by analyzing DNA traces on his victim's clothes. For the investigation, DNA samples were taken from 800 men. The girl was discovered dead in 1992 in an empty department store in the city of Sunderland. Her lifeless body was covered with stitches and she had been attacked with a brick. According to the judge, the crime most likely had a sexual motive.

The girl's father told Britain's BBC that he was "devastated" because the man "lived his life for 30 years" while his daughter couldn't live hers.

SWE/DPA