AN inquiry into the death of a student has concluded she was murdered in the United States by a man now serving multiple life sentences for killing two women.

The inquest into the death of 18-year-old Hannah Graham was held in Harrogate today (Weds, Apr 13) after her body was brought back from America to North Yorkshire for her funeral.

Hannah was a British American student studying at the University of Virginia, but went missing in September 2014 in Charlottesville, Virginia. It sparked a huge search and desperate appeals from her parents to help them find their daughter, who had lived in Reading with her parents before moving to America with them when she was five.

The last people to hear from Hannah were her friends, who received a text message at 1.20am on September 13, 2014, to say she had got lost on her way to a party. She was last seen at a restaurant with Jesse Matthew Jr, who had his arm around her. The last person to see the student said she was with a man, telling him she did not want to get in a car with him.

But five weeks later her, on October 18, remains were discovered on an abandoned property, eight miles from where the student was last seen.

Last month Jesse Matthew Jr pleaded guilty to her murder and that of another Virginia college student Morgan Harrington in 2012 and was handed four consecutive life sentences for their deaths. He is now being held at a “super-maximum” security prison in Pound, Virginia.

In 2002 and 2003 he was accused of two separate sexual assaults at two Virginia colleges which he had attended as a student.

Two months after Hannah’s remains had been discovered, in December 2014, her body was brought back to North Yorkshire. Her funeral and cremation had been held in the Harrogate area, where her grandparents live.

Assistant Coroner Jonathan Heath, today (Wednesday, April 13) resumed the inquest into her death at the Harrogate Justice Centre. There were no witnesses or family members present and he read from an autopsy report by chief public examiner in Richmond, Virginia, Kevin Whaley, who said the cause of her death had been “homicidal violence”.

Hannah’s identity was established from DNA and her dental records.

Mr Heath concluded, as a result of the guilty plea to murder, Hannah’s death was as a result of unlawful killing.