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The monster who raped vet Catherine Gowing before butchering her body was today jailed for a minimum of 37 years.

It can now be revealed that killer Clive Sharp, 46, has been a serial sex attacker for 30 years.

His sick catalogue of abuse includes raping a girl of 15.

Sharp had already been jailed three times for sex attacks when he broke into 37-year-old Catherine’s house at night, tied her to the bed and repeatedly raped her.

Pervert Sharp then strangled her, cut up the body with a hacksaw and disposed of the parts in various rural locations.

Passing sentence for the killing, judge Mr Justice Griffith-Williams told Sharp today “This is a horrific, cold-hearted murder, carried out to gratify your perverted sexual desires.

“You are in any view a very serious danger to women.”

Catherine’s sister, Emma Gowing, paid a poignant tribute to the tragic vet.

Speaking outside court, Emma said: “Our world is now a safer place, Catherine is happy that this is so.

"She was an exceptional woman. She lived her life spreading compassion and love.

“She conducted her life in accordance with this quote from Albert Pine, ‘what we do for ourselves dies with us, what we do for others and the world is and remains immortal’.

“She was our light – she shone very brightly and enriched the lives of all she encountered, all God’s creatures.

“That light is gone from our world. And it now shines elsewhere.”

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Catherine was the housemate of Sharp’s then girlfriend, Jane Doyle, 46.

Ms Doyle was away for the weekend when evil Sharp drove to the house in Mold, Flintshire, on October 12 last year.

Sharp waited outside for Catherine to go to bed, then carried out his terrifying attack.

The following day he bought a hacksaw, bleach, bin bags, a screwdriver and a Halloween mask before disposing of the body.

He also torched Catherine’s car in a quarry.

Parts of her body were discovered in North Wales and Cheshire but not all of the pieces have been found.

Sharp, of no fixed address, was arrested five days after Irish Catherine was last seen alive at a supermarket near her home.

The killer’s crimes date back 30 years when he was caught sending making indecent phone calls to women.

The following year in 1983, he was sent to jail for raping a 15-year-old girl while holding a piece of glass to her neck.

In 1994 Sharp tried to choke his friend’s wife and was jailed for three years for false imprisonment and wounding.

Two years later after his release, he throttled another woman and threatened her with a knife after he had paid her to come back to his bedsit for sex.

(Image: PA)

Reports carried out by the Probation Service around this time said Sharp had a “long-standing fantasy of imprisoning and raping women” and admitted to workers his offending “could escalate”.

Sharp showed little emotion as he was jailed for life for killing Catherine who was his girlfriend’s housemate.

Sharp's stepdad John Whyte admitted: “I knew as soon as I read in the paper that he had been arrested that he had done it.

“I said to his mother Margaret I just don’t want to know him. I have never spoken to him since that day. The things he had done were so abhorrent.”

Margaret has since died of stomach cancer, and her husband added: “It used to hurt Margaret. That’s what I have never, ever forgiven him for.

“Margaret was everything to me and for him to bring that sort of notice on the family, including his mother, it’s disgraceful.

“I used to sit with her in bed holding her because she was sobbing and I blame him for all that.”

* How our sister website Wales Online is reporting the story.