THE teenage daughter of cannibal killer victim Julie Paterson has asked her murderer to reveal where her mother's remains are buried.

Sophie Newman has written an impassioned letter to David Harker, pleading for him to show some remorse and understanding to her family.

The 15-year-old said she wanted to tell her story because she was living a nightmare after losing both her parents, her father having committed suicide last year.

In April 1998, when Sophie was seven, Harker murdered Julie in his flat before mutilating her body and eating parts of her leg.

Her torso was found dumped in the garden of a derelict house in Darlington, but, despite a massive unprecedented police search, her head and limbs have never been found.

Last year, Julie's estranged partner and Sophie's father, Freddy Newman, took his life because he could not live with the torment of her murder any longer.

Sophie returned to her then New Brancepeth home, in County Durham, last July to find that her father had hanged himself.

Interviewed in the presence of her grandmother and guardian, Eleanor Newman, she said: "I feel tormented by not having my mam's remains and by the fact that I didn't get to know her.

"Because of him, my life is very different to how it would have been and I feel very angry and upset about that.

"I wrote a letter to Harker last week asking where my mam's remains were.

"I told him that he had not just killed my mam, but he had killed my dad too, and he has ruined mine and my brother, Freddy's, lives as well."

Sophie, who is too depressed and emotionally scarred to attend school, found out the horrendous circumstances of her mother's death only 18 months ago. She said she thought she was putting a Mr Bean video on the TV, but, when the film started rolling, it was a documentary about the murder, which her father had recorded.

She knew her mother had been murdered, but had been shielded from the details by her father and grandmother.

She said that, from that moment on, her life "went into free-fall".

She started drinking and self-harming and now, having moved with her grandmother to a new address in the North-East, she said that just surviving each day was a struggle.

"I hold Harker responsible for what happened to my dad," she said.

"He started drinking when mam left, but it got much worse after she died, and he would regularly break down and cry in front of us.

"He never got over my mam's death and he always loved her. He never wanted anyone to take her place.

"He told me that, not long before she died, she had called him asking if she could come back to us all, but he had refused because she was drinking heavily.

"I think they would have got back together if she had been allowed to live."

Mrs Newman, 63, said that since Julie's death, their worlds had been turned upside down. Following her 39-year-old son's suicide, they had been merely existing.

"I haven't had time to grieve for Freddy because of the trouble I'm having with Sophie," she said.

"I feel really desperate - I just want Sophie and young Freddy to be happy, but they have had to deal with so much, how can they be? It's horrendous for them."

Sophie said her father had written to Harker, who was convicted of Julie's murder in 1999, to ask where the remains were, but had received an abusive letter back.

The teenager said she hoped he would respond with more humanity this time.

"If he tells me he still feels no remorse, as he told my dad, then I will just put the letter in the bin," she said.

"If he can't tell us, then I don't think he should ever be allowed out of prison."