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Man Gets Life In Prison For Strangling Teacher He Met On Plenty Of Fish Dating Site, Having Sexual Intercourse With Dead Body

By Angelica N. Sumter
Published on: 08:28 PST, Jun 3, 2016

Former psychiatric patient Carl Langdell, 26, of Cheshunt, Herts, in England was sentenced to life in prison today for strangling a teacher to death. He met the teacher on the Plenty of Fish dating site, and allegedly had sexual intercourse with her dead body, reported the Daily Mail.

Just two weeks before Christmas Eve of last year, 23-year-old Katie Locke, who taught history and politics at Cardinal Pole School in Hackney, East London, joined a dating site where she met a man, Langdell, who claimed to have been an attorney and an owner of a law firm.

After exchanging messages via text, the pair decided to have a meet and greet on December 23, 2015 at Trafik bar in Shoreditch, East London. Apparently, the pair hit it off, as it was reported that they didn’t leave the bar until 1:30 a.m. the following day.

In lieu of the teacher returning to her home, she and Langdell rented a room at Theobalds Park Hotel in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, where a receptionist told police officials that they both appeared to be drunk.

When Locke checked into room 626, she was never seen alive again. At approximately 2 p.m., when it was time to check out, workers at the hotel stated that Langdell was seen leaving the hotel alone. All of the “towels and bedding had gone, and the window lock was broken.”

It was later discovered after Langdell confided in another woman he met online that he strangled the teacher to death before having sexual intercourse with her dead body and taking pictures of her. He reportedly used the hotel’s towels and bedding to wrap the teacher’s dead body before dumping the body in a ditch.

When police officials were notified of the murder, Langdell was later arrested near the canal in the Lea Valley Park, where he told police officials where they could find the teacher’s body.

According to the Mirror, in March of this year, Langdell pleaded guilty to the murder of Katie Locke, and he made an appearance in St. Albans Crown Court on Thursday, where prosecutor Ann Evans said, “the tragedy of this case is that Katie Locke, like thousands of other young people, having agreed to a date with Carl Langdell accepted what he told her about himself.”

“At the end of their first date in the early hours of 24 December last year she agreed to go back to a hotel with him, he strangled her in that hotel room and then dumped her body near a skip outside the hotel.”

Evans stated that Langdell also “went on to tell his mother that he had strangled her and it had gone too far. He had too much to drink and he didn’t want to ruin their Christmas, he was going to tell them after. He claimed it was a sex game, but the crown does not accept this assertion.”

Apparently, before Langdell admitted to murdering Locke, who he met online through the Plenty of Fish dating site, he lied about being an attorney and owning a law firm. It was reported that he had spent the last 2 years in a psychiatric facility, and 2 months prior to strangling the woman to death, he was released.

However, while in court, Locke’s parents came face-to-face with their daughter’s killer, where they stated that she was a “ray of sunshine.” The victims’ father, Bill, turned to Langdell while the victim’s mother sobbed and said, “On the internet you said you were an ordinary decent person. You are ordinary, but you are not a decent person.”

“Katie was born in January 1992 like a new star. The day she was murdered, that star was extinguished.”

Bill went on to say, “Katie’s loss is huge for me. In hindsight, I did not tell her enough how pretty she was or how much I loved her. Maybe she knew it but now I feel at fault for not telling her.”

Attorney Benjamin Aina came to Langdell’s defense, stating that his client “does not know what came over him and decided to squeeze until he killed her.”

Langdell wrote a letter to the court, which stated, “No apology I give and no sentence I receive, not even my death, could make up for what I have mindlessly taken.”

However, the following day, Carl Langdell was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Katie Locke.

[Photo by John Moore/Getty Images]

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