Restaurant worker is jailed for life for strangling a teenager and dumping her body on a golf course five years after boyfriend's conviction for the killing was quashed.

Victim: Rachel Manning was murdered by Shahidul Ahmed, 41, who was convicted today - 11 years after another man was wrongly jailed for the crime(The man on the right was wrongly accused)

A restaurant worker has today been convicted of strangling to death a teenage girl - 11 years after her boyfriend was wrongly jailed for her murder.

Shahidul Ahmed, 41, killed Rachel Manning, 18, after she left a 1970s themed fancy dress party in 2000 and then dumped her body on a golf course where she was found two days later.
After killing her he disfigured her face with a car steering lock, an act which led to his arrest more than a decade later.

Today he was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 17 years, at Luton Crown Court.

The controversial case led to a huge miscarriage of justice.
Miss Manning's boyfriend Barri White was convicted of her murder in 2002, which was quashed on appeal and he was acquitted at a retrial in 2008 after six years in jail.

This morning he said he was 'over the moon' that Shahidul Ahmed had been found guilty and that 'justice has finally been done'.
Mr White added he was 'really happy that Rachel's family have finally got justice and the closure they deserve'.
Miss Manning had been to a party with Mr White and her friends on Saturday December 9, 2000.
They went on to a nightclub and left at about 2.15am after a row, with Mr White walking to stay at a friend, Keith Hyatt's, home. Miss Manning walked off alone, to catch a taxi.

She phoned her home from a phone box at 2.43am and spoke to her flatmate to say she was upset.

The flatmate, Chris Gardiner, phoned her back but the call failed. She then phoned Mr White and said she did not know where she was.



Tragic: Shahidul Ahmed strangled Rachel Manning in 2000 but the finger was wrongly pointed at her partner Barri White, who was eventually cleared in 2008

The pair, who had been drinking, agreed to meet at a Blockbuster video store and he and Mr Hyatt would pick her up.
When they arrived at 3.13am in Mr Hyatt's white van she was not there.
At the time the finger was pointed at Mr White and he was later convicted of killing her but in fact Ahmed had strangled her from behind when Miss Manning spurned his sexuial advances.
Mr Hyatt was also tried in 2002 and was jailed for two and a half years for perverting the course of justice. His conviction was also overturned.




Terrible act: Rachel Manning was found in these woods on a golf course. He face was hit with a car lock, which belonged to Ahmed, which eventually led police to him

Three years ago police discovered that DNA found on a steering lock used to attack Miss Manning matched Bangladesh-born Ahmed.
This only came to light when Ahmed was arrested for a sex attack.
The lock was discovered by the road on the direct route between the spot where the body was hidden and Shahidul Ahmed's home.
It then emerged Ahmed, of Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, sold his car eight days after Miss Manning was murdered on December 10, linking him to the woman for the first time.

Mr Justice Wilkie this morning sentenced him to life in prison.
'Rachel Manning was a charming, witty, gregarious, happy, positive person who had made to look forward,' he said.
'You snuffed all that out driven by the same demon that led you, in 2010, led you to carry out a sex assault.
'You must have accosted Rachel when she was at her most vulnerable. She was on her own in Milton Keynes. When she rebuffed your advances you resorted to a cowardly attack from behind and killed her.'




Sentencing: The judge told Ahmed: 'When she rebuffed your advances you resorted to a cowardly attack from behind and killed her'
The judge went on: 'You must have known that two other people - Barri White and Keith Hyatt - had suffered the agony of being accused, convicted and imprisoned for offences of which they were wholly innocent. Nobody can bring back Rachel's lost life and their lost years.'

Mr White gave evidence at Ahmed's trial saying he would always regret that he and his girlfriend became separated on the night she was killed. 'I wish I had never left her that night,' he said.
It was two years after Barri White's acquittal that Ahmed came to the attention of Thames Valley detectives.
He had sexually assaulted a woman who got into his car after a night out in May 2010. She believed he was a taxi driver and when she got out of the car he touched her indecently.
The woman was helped by a passerby, who got part of the registration number of Ahmed's car. He was convicted of the offence in 2011.