A violent killer who inflicted more than 50 horrific injuries on his victim when he murdered her in her own home after claiming he 'thought she was the devil' has been jailed for life.

Anthony Stinson had been making rap videos with friends, taking cocaine and recording himself rapping, chanting out the grimly prophetic lyrics: “I stamp on your face to the floor, I stamped your face on the floor", less than an hour before he stabbed Charlotte Wilcock to death on March 3, while her baby daughter slept upstairs.

Today, he has been jailed for life, with Judge Robert Altham ruling he must spend a minimum of 24 years and two months behind bars before he can be considered for release. 

After protesting his innocence, Stinson, 31, of Queen Victoria Street, Blackburn, pleaded guilty to her murder on the first day of a trial at Preston Crown Court on Monday (August 21).

Stinson carried out the killing firstly by kicking and stamping on Charlotte, aged 31, before inflicting multiple stab and slash wounds to her body using a Stanley knife.

The pair had never met before that night, but Stinson approached Charlotte’s address on Primrose Terrace at around 9.10pm and attacked her as she sat on her doorstep smoking a cigarette. 

He then continued the attack inside the address, eventually leaving her body behind the front door.

In his defence, Stinson claimed he had seen the devil in Charlotte's doorway that night, and the devil was laughing at him, Preston Crown Court heard.

READ MORE: Anthony Stinson: Violent rapist, abuser, and now a murderer

In order to stop the devil laughing he kicked out, then punched and finally used a knife.

It was only when he told police the 'devil's laughing stopped' did he realise it was a woman he had attacked. 

Charlotte's 15-month-old daughter was inside the address at the time - and was left alone upstairs until police were alerted to the killing the next day.

When he was arrested Stinson told officers he believed he had killed someone, claiming he had been suffering with psychosis at the time and believed he had seen the devil.

However, as part of the murder investigation, detectives analysed phone records and CCTV, piecing together Stinson’s movements before and after the killing.

They found that less than an hour before he killed Charlotte he had been making rap videos with a friend, with lyrics referring to killing somebody.

CCTV enquiries also showed just 15 minutes before the murder, he had been well enough to make conversation with a shopkeeper while buying alcohol and cigarettes.

Prosecuting, Francis McEntee told the court how Stinson had admitted from his first contact with the police that he had killed Charlotte, and had no option but to admit responsibility after realising he had left his phone at the scene of the crime, having accidentally picked up Charlotte's phone.

Charlotte's blood was also on his clothing.

Following the murder, and having changed his clothing, Stinson spent the night wandering from the Mill Hill area out towards Oswaldtwistle, where he turned off Charlotte's phone, and then borrowed another phone to call the police at 7.53 the following morning in order to hand himself in.

The court heard that in the several hours between the killing of Charlotte and the call to the police, Stinson was trying to come up with some explanation for what he had done. The best that he could come up with was that when he had passed by the front of Charlotte's home, had seen the devil’s face and believed that it was the devil he was attacking.

When he called the police, at the forefront of his explanation to them was not the admission as to what he had done, but his own self-diagnosis that he had been suffering with psychosis for a about a year.

In sentencing Stinson, Judge Altham said: "Neither immediately after the murder did he summon help, he didn't seek to raise the alarm, but instead spent the remainder of the night wandering the Mill Hill area.

"He then borrowed a phone the next morning and phoned his father and the police.

"He told the police he walked past Charlotte's house and killed her as he thought she was the devil.

"I have heard that he said he thought he was suffering from psychosis.

"He was taken to the house and Charlotte's 15-month-old daughter was crying in distress.

"It is a sobering thought that Charlotte had laid dead throughout the night with her daughter alone upstairs.

"There were more than 100 injuries - it's apparent she had been kicked and punched.

"Her voice box had been damaged as he strangled her.

"There were 11 stab wounds to her hands as she sought to defend herself.

"There were deep wounds to her neck, including damage to the jugular and wounds to her spinal column.

"The wounds to the neck were indicative to repeated stabbing and the Stanley knife was found entangled in her hair."

On Monday, Stinson changed his plea to guilty as Charlotte's family and friends sat sobbing in the public gallery and today he has been jailed for life with a minimum of 24 years and two months.