Former teacher Dieter Pfennig has been sentenced to jail for 35 years for the murder of Adelaide schoolgirl Louise Bell.
The twice-convicted child killer, was convicted in November, more than thirty years after the schoolgirl went missing in 1983.
Today it was established that 68-year-old Pfennig will likely die in prison as he will have to live to 103 before he is eligible for parole.
The ABC reports Justice Michael David told Pfennig his was “the most evil” of crimes and it was in no way “ameliorated by the passage of time”.
“The shock and anxiety that your offence caused the South Australian community cannot be compared to the distress that must have been suffered by the parents and family of Louise Bell,” he said.
“The effect of my sentence will be that you most certainly spend the rest of your days in jail.”
Louise was abducted through her bedroom window in Hackham West in Adelaide’s south in January 1983. Her body has never been found.
Her disappearance sparked a police search of unprecedented scale in suburban Adelaide and it remained one of South Australia’s most enduring cold cases.
Pfennig was charged in 2013 after DNA scientists in the Netherlands linked him to Louise’s pyjama top, which was found after her death.
He is already serving a life sentence with a non-parole period of 38 years for murdering Murray Bridge boy Michael Black in 1989 and later abducting and raping a 13-year-old boy.
