Serial female attacker guilty of 1993 schoolgirl murder

Claire, who was studying for her GCSEs at Dartford Grammar School, was murdered in 1993, four days after her 16th birthday. She was repeatedly stabbed in an alleyway in Greenhithe, Kent by Ash-Smith, a former milkman, as she went to visit a friend.

Ash-Smith had received life sentences for later attacks on two other woman, close to where Claire was killed.

In October 1995 he attacked 21-year-old Charlotte Barnard with a knife in Greenhithe, leaving her for dead. She was stabbed 14 times but survived.

He was arrested hours later, and a search of his white Ford Capri found half of a school tie that had been used in the rape, kidnap and attempted murder of a 27-year-old woman in nearby Swanscombe in 1988.

At the funeral

On 20 December 1996, Ash-Smith was sentenced to life imprisonment after pleading guilty to both the 1988 and 1995 attacks, but insisted he had had nothing to do with Claire’s murder.

But the similarities between the cases meant Kent Police kept the investigation open. They found that Ash-Smith had met Claire through the local British Legion Club and had even attended her funeral (see picture)

It was later discovered that the day after Claire’s death, Ash-Smith had contacted police to say he had been driving through the area on the evening of 18 January 1993 and that he had seen someone with curly hair using a pedestrian crossing close to where she was attacked.

But it was a ploy, to provide him an alibi to cover for the possibility that he and his distinctive white Ford Capri might have been seen in Greenhithe at the time Claire was attacked.

Prison confession

Cold case investigators also found that while he was serving time in prison for the 1988 and 1995 attacks, Ash-Smith befriended a fellow prisoner and confessed to attacking someone he saw using a zebra crossing. The prisoner thought this was a reference to one of the crimes Ash-Smith had been convicted of, but police now believe it to be Claire.

Det Supt Rob Vinson from Kent Police said: “Every single one of the Kent Police officers who have worked on this case over the last two decades have refused to allow Claire’s killer to go unaccounted for and escape justice.

“The investigation team has meticulously built this case over a number of years.”

Claire was the only child of Linda and Cliff Tiltman, who both died before the case was brought to trial.