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Life for man who strangled tourist
By Adam Fresco
BBC News April 24, 2003

A MAN who strangled the daughter of an American financier because he wanted to know how it felt to kill was jailed for life yesterday.

Robert Noble lured Alyson Kaplan, 20, who was travelling around Europe, to a Central London hotel when she was stranded by snowstorms in January this year.

After having sex with her, Noble, 28, smothered her with a pillow before choking her with a scarf. He robbed her of £70 and her £700 Gucci watch, which he pawned for £10, before leaving her body in his bed.

Soon after the murder, Noble, a father of two who was originally from Gretna, telephoned a cousin to say that he had killed the young woman in “a cruel and nasty way”. Within hours he gave himself up to police in Brighton and confessed to the killing.

He told detectives that he had “thought about what it would be like to kill someone”, Jonathan Rees, for the prosecution, told the Old Bailey.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Beaumont said: “You took a life in circumstances of violence: the life of a young woman who had every expectation that life would be happily fulfilled. She was helpless in a situation that wasn’t her making. Her loss has left a family shattered.”