A man has been found guilty of murdering convicted child killer David Gaut.
A jury at Newport Crown Court took five hours to reach the conclusion that 23-year-old Ieuan Harley had murdered Gaut, who was convicted in 1985, by stabbing him.
Gaut was found dead at his flat on Long Row in New Tredegar on Saturday, August 4, last year. The trial has been told how he had been stabbed more than 150 times while he was alive and a further 26 times when he was dead.
The prosecution had argued that Gaut had been lured to a neighbour’s flat – on the pretence of borrowing some DVDs – and killed.
Gaut’s neighbour David Osborne was cleared of murder and manslaughter while Darran Evesham, 47, from Powell’s Terrace, New Tredegar, was also cleared earlier in the trial.
However, Harley and Evesham were both found guilty of perverting the course of justice, while Osbourne had previously admitted the charge.
The trial was told how Gaut’s body had been dragged back to his flat by the trio who later tried to dispose of blood-stained clothes and destroy evidence in a car fire.
During the course of the four-week trial, the court heard how Gaut had claimed he had been jailed for killing a soldier when he moved next door to Osborne, six weeks before his death. However internet searches by neighbours revealed the truth about his past.
All three will be sentenced on March 25.
• David Gaut, then 21, was jailed for life in July 1985 for the murder and torture of a 17-month-old boy just 11 miles from New Tredegar.
Gaut was babysitting his girlfriend’s son Chi Ming Shek – known as Marky – when he battered, kicked, and burned the sole of the child’s foot.
The baby’s mum Jane Pickthall, then 23, had been out drinking and left Gaut to look after her two young children.
She arrived home in Caerphilly and made love to Gaut – but the next day she found her son’s dead body under a chest of drawers.
A murder trial at Cardiff Crown Court heard Gaut tried to make the death look accidental.