TEARS and sobs greeted the news that the evil murderer of Morecambe's Tony Marrocco and Paul Sandham will spend the rest of his life behind bars. Terence Clifton was found guilty of both murders amid incredible scenes at Preston Crown Court this week. Family members of both the murdered men broke down as the verdict was revealed. Clifton, who was due to defend himself at the two-week trial but refused to attend court, was shackled, carried into the dock and pinned to the floor by six prison as his fate was announced. It had taken the jury just half-an-hour to find him guilty of both murders.

Trial judge Mr Justice McKinnon sentenced the 26-year-old murderer to life imprisonment for each murder and said: "It is clear to me that you are an extremely dangerous man. It will be a very long time before you are released, if that day ever comes."

The court heard that Clifton carried out the double murder of 48-year-old White Lund garage owner Tony Marrocco and his associate Paul Sandham, 29, on January 23 1995 while visiting friends in Morecambe. Mr Marrocco was beaten to death with a wrench at his garage premises, TM Motors, and Mr Sandham was found brutally stabbed in a field a mile away after being enticed into a test drive. The prosecution alleged that Clifton, from Erith in South London, had been unhappy about a car he had earlier bought from the garage. He lured Paul Sandham from the garage and repeatedly stabbed him. Within minutes he returned to TM Motors where he beat Tony Marrocco to death, inflicting 41 separate injuries. He stole a Metro car from the garage to get back to London and sold it the next day to a dealer. Detectives who traced Clifton to the capital went to arrest him in February 1995 while he was staying at a friend's flat in Erith.

But when he saw the police at the front door, he made a daring escape from the flat by climbing down the outside of the tower block, leaping from balcony to balcony, and leaving behind a sawn-off shotgun. He was dubbed 'Spiderman' and eventually arrested on March 6 by armed police in Erith.

His notoriety grew when he took his solicitor hostage in the cells of Lancaster Magistrates Court later in 1995 when appearing at a remand hearing. Det Supt Graham Gooch was a member of the Morecambe-based team that tracked and arrested Clifton back in 1995 and has been heavily involved in bringing the murderer to justice. After the end of the two-week trial, he said: "It is my view that Terence Clifton is one of the most dangerous men in this country and will remain a threat to the public for many, many years to come. I hope he will never be released or at least until he is so old or infirm that he could not lift a finger to anyone."

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