French man jailed for life for rape and murder of British pensioner

A Frenchman has been jailed for life for the rape and murder of an 80-year-old British woman in south-west France. Madi Mahaboudi, 32, cut up Violet Price's body into pieces and disposed of it in a field.

Violet Price's family and friends wait before the opening of the trial of Madi Mahaboubi AFP

 "In 15 years of practice, I had never seen such a degree of bruising on the throat and neck," the medical examiner told the court after asking the members of Price's family to leave the court before reading the list of physical and sexual injuries inflicted on the victim.

Mahaboudi had already been condemned to eight years in prison for the murder of a woman on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, where he was born, in 2005.

At the court in Agen he admitted raping and strangling Price, then cutting her body up into seven pieces and burying them in a field.

Mahaboudi, who was said to be addicted to cannabis and pornography, was the brother of the victim's daughter-in- law.

On 11 April 2015 he went to Price's house looking for his ex-girlfriend, who had recently left him.

Price let him in and offered Mahaboudi a cup of coffee, on which his DNA was found.

"I couldn't help myself," he said of the urge to murder Price. "I took hold of her neck and squeezed."

His defence lawyer claimed he had a violent and dominant father and had been raped by one of his father's acquaintances.

"I'm asking to be given a chance," Mahaboudi, who also strangled the woman he killed in 2005, told the jury before they retired to deliberate. "Deep down I know I can be rehabilitated."