He went on holiday with her and her two children to Cornwall and France and hoped they could all live together. By now Bridger was drinking heavily and on anti-depressants. Five weeks before April's death, he moved into Mount Pleasant, a rented cottage in the village of Ceinws, 3 miles from Machynlleth.
Fenner never moved in. Bridger tended to sleep downstairs in front of the fire in the living room with his old sheepdog. Police found evidence of sexual activity in front of the fireplace where Bridger admitted he lay April's body, as well in the back of his Land Rover. Two pairs of handcuffs were also found at his home but Bridger said in court he had no interest in bondage.
What is clear is that by the time he got to Mount Pleasant, Bridger had put together a library of images of child sexual abuse and pictures of girls who had been killed in notorious sex crimes.
When police raided his home the tape in his video player was paused at a brutal rape and murder scene from the slasher movie The Last House on the Left, the re-make of the banned s film.
Bridger also knew April's mother, Coral, because they played in the same darts team. Bridger appears to have been fascinated by April's three teenage half-sisters. He collected their images from Facebook and sorted them into folders. April appeared in eight of these pictures, though there is no suggestion he specifically targeted her. But quite what triggered his attack on April on 1 October may always be a mystery. Asked by a detective during one of his interviews if it had been a buildup of "sexual frustrations", Bridger replied that if he intended to "go out and abduct a child" every time he accessed a sexual picture on his computer "there would not be any young children left in Machynlleth".
It was only after Bridger's arrest that police discovered a shocking store of indecent images of children on his computer. Bridger appeared frequently to shed tears as details of the allegations against him were examined in court. But throughout the days and nights of searching by hundreds of local volunteers, the months of forensic investigations by teams of professionals and the desperate pleas of April's mother he maintained his denial - refusing to reveal exactly what he had done with April's body.
Watch Live. Mark Bridger: The Man With Two Lives To many he was a sociable pub-goer who enjoyed a game of pool, but he had a secret interest in child abduction and murder. Fill 2 Copy 11 Created with Sketch. Thursday 30 May , UK. Why you can trust Sky News. He was the man with two lives. Indeed, when interviewed by police over April's disappearance he told them how he had "excelled" during his military service. But that was complete fantasy.
Bridger had never joined the army. In fact, far from having a distinguished military career, the court was told that as a teenager Bridger had been in trouble with the police. Later, senior detectives pointed out he did not have the criminal past they would have expected from a predatory paedophile. He had pleaded guilty to offences including possession of a firearm, having an imitation firearm with intent to commit an offence and theft when he was about In the early s, he was also convicted of criminal damage, affray and driving with no insurance.
In , when he was 20, he became a firefighter in London. Within six months, he had quit due to "personal problems". He told the jury how it was around the time he had split up with his partner, soon after the birth of their son. It was at this point that Bridger turned his attentions to Wales.
He knew south Wales because his grandmother lived there. I lived on the beach for a couple of months," he told the court. He said he lived in places including Porthmadog, Blaenau Ffestiniog and Bala in Gwynedd, where he had a variety of jobs, including bar work, being a chef, a waiter, a car recovery mechanic and a forestry worker. Perhaps surprisingly, those in the community who had regular contact with Bridger said there was nothing particularly remarkable about him.
He was well-known for his string of failed relationships - he fathered six children with four different women - and for his tendency for changing jobs. During his time in Machynlleth he worked as a lifeguard at the local leisure centre, at an abattoir, as a welder, a kitchen hand, a bouncer and was most recently working as a labourer helping with the renovation of a hotel in Ceinws. Those who got close to Bridger on the other hand, painted a more sinister picture of him. Bridger, who had lived in Machynlleth for more than 20 years, was known to police as a petty criminal.
One man who did see the violent side of Bridger is local businessman Mark Hodge. Mr Hodge, 56, was recovering from cancer when Bridger attacked him on his own doorstep in the middle of the night. Bridger was prosecuted for the assault and received a four-month suspended sentence at Welshpool Magistrates Court. One of his former neighbours also told how he kept an arsenal of weapons above his fireplace in a property he rented in the nearby village of Llanbrynmair.
Paul Edwards, 22, said Bridger was also known for his heavy drinking during the day and could often be seen drinking cans of cider in his garden. He used to drink Strongbow a lot during the day and I understand he was very depressed. There was always something mysterious about Mark. According to another Llanbrynmair neighbour, Bridger was later evicted from the house after the owner of the property took exception to the chickens he kept.
When he couldn't control his women any more, Mark Bridger set his sights on little girls. They had scoured every inch of the town, an entire community banding together to find April Jones. But one man among the hundreds out searching that day knew precisely where she was.
Her blood had not even dried on the floor of his home when he changed into camouflage clothes and walked calmly towards the market town of Machynlleth. He could, of course, have shut himself away in the rented, woodside cottage where he took April the previous evening. But so many people had turned out to look for her that his absence would have aroused suspicion — especially because Bridger had long-standing links with her family.
Friends and acquaintances had already joined the search, as would his estranged son and at least one of his many former girlfriends. What could appear more natural than to be seen with the search parties?
Like just about every other aspect of his life, it was a sham. For Mark Leonard Bridger, we now know, was a dangerous and manipulative paedophile who fantasised about local schoolgirls, downloaded child porn and created a photo gallery of youngsters on his computer. April was there, in a Facebook photo that showed her smiling beside one of her teenage half-sisters. On the evening of October 1, their paths would fatally cross. The story Bridger concocted about running April over and losing all recollection of what he did with her body was as ludicrous as it was incredible.
When interviewed by police, he even wove in some colourful fiction about his background. He was none of these. He never had any military service and the stories he spun about being shot in the back, or being invalided out of the Army after smashing two vertebrae in a parachute jump, were simply more lies. The doctorate? He bought the worthless qualification online, he once admitted, to enhance his credit rating. The sole, constant thread that ran through his life was deceit.
Not everyone was taken in. He used to lie so much, I think he actually believed it himself. His connection to the Jones family goes back decades. Instead he dropped out of an engineering course before training as a fireman in London. He left the service before qualifying, claiming he had made the wrong career choice. He was also in trouble with his relationships. Bridger, then 20, abandoned her and left her to bring up the baby. He fled to Blaenau Ffestiniog, in Snowdonia, after falling out with his parents over access to their new grandson.
He told acquaintances there that his father died from a heart attack and his grief-stricken mother committed suicide. It was all part of the fantasy life he was living.
He got Keeley Reynolds pregnant at 17 and quickly became violent, causing her almost to lose the baby by punching her in the stomach. He was certainly proud of his ability to charm the opposite sex.
His conquests were usually years younger than him, some in their mid-teens. He became particularly attracted to the vulnerability of single young mothers whose partners had walked out on them. So these women were ideal for him. He was possessive and controlling and before long he was knocking them about. In he married Julie Williams, three months after they met. She was 19 and he was Within a year they had a baby, Sean, followed by their second son, Scott.
Bridger talked his way into the role of instructor at a now-defunct outdoor adventure centre.
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