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Facebook killer lured town girl, 15
A 15-YEAR-OLD Hartlepool girl was just seconds away from the clutches of Facebook killer Peter Chapman.
The convicted sex offender lured the schoolgirl to the town's B&Q car park – but she fled when she spotted him.
It was just days before he kidnapped, raped and murdered 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall after meeting her on the internet site.
Today, the town's police chief warned youngsters that such sites are a "jungle of pitfalls and traps" used by "predatory paedophiles" to lure children.
Police have revealed that during their investigation of the Darlington teenager's brutal murder, they discovered Chapman had earlier set up a meeting with the 15-year-old Hartlepool girl after also luring her on Facebook.
They said she went to meet him at the B&Q car park in Brenda Road on Tuesday, October 20, where Chapman was waiting in his car.
But luckily, the youngster fled the scene when she spotted Chapman.
She told her friends what had happened, but never told her parents so the incident was never reported to Cleveland Police.
Three days later Chapman arranged to meet another girl from Stockton, who he had also met on the internet, but he did not turn up.
On October 25, he met student Ashleigh and went on to rape and kill her, before dumping her body near Sedgefield.
He was jailed for a minimum of 35 years at Teesside Crown Court on Monday where the judge said he was, and had been for a "considerable time", a "very great" danger to young women.
Detective Inspector Mick Callan, of Durham Police, which investigated the case, said: "Chapman kept in touch with all the girls by text messages from his phone and via Facebook.
"We traced these two girls during the course of the investigation. When the first girl ran away, she told her friends what had happened, but did not tell her parents.
"Throughout the investigation Chapman contacted several other young girls, all under the age of 17, who we traced and interviewed.
"In all these cases, the girls had not told their parents or reported the matter to any authority.
"The incidents in Hartlepool and Stockton were not reported to Cleveland Police so they would not have been aware of what happened."
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is set to investigate the monitoring of Chapman, who was registered as a high-risk sex offender.
It will look into how he was allowed to move freely around the country for nine months after going missing from his Mersyside home before a nationwide alert was launched to track him down.
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Weather for Hartlepool
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North east
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Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
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