THE killer of Jenny Nicholl was today jailed for a minimum of 18 years after a judge told him he had shown "not the slightest regret or remorse" to the teenager's family.

Mr Justice Openshaw branded 48-year-old David Hodgson a murderer and a liar as he imposed a mandatory life sentence on the married father-of-two at Teesside Crown Court.

The judge said Hodgson, an unemployed landscape gardener, had lied to police during the lengthy investigation and to the jury during his dramatic five-week trial.

Mr Justice Openshaw told Hodgson his cruel concealment of Jenny's body had deprived her family of the opportunity of laying her to rest and prolonged their anguish.

Jenny went missing after leaving her family home in Richmond, North Yorkshire, on June 30, 2005, after telling her mother she was staying out for the night.

It emerged during the trial that Hodgson had also gone out for the night, and told his family he was going camping.

The teenager's sudden disappearance was treated as a missing person inquiry for months before detectives suspected her lover was lying about his relationship with her.

Hodgson was originally arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, but was later charged with murder after more evidence was amassed.

Police discovered that text messages had been sent from Jenny's mobile phone to her friends and her father from the borders on days when Hodgson hired cars.

They also found some of the teenager's belongings on a tip in a plantation where they felt they could prove Jenny and Hodgson had spent nights out camping.

The hillside areas overlooking Richmond were well-known to Hodgson and his older brother, Robert, and they erected had man-made hides and huts there.

The prosecution claimed Hodgson was an intensely jealous man who was angry about Jenny's blossoming relationship with his brother in the months before her disappearance.

It is suspected that he killed her - possibly after a row - on the evening she went missing, but police were never able to pinpoint a crime scene despite a huge investigation.

Numerous searches were carried out in the hills and fields above Richmond, but other than some of Jenny's personal belongings, no trace of her has been found.

Four people told the jury that they had seen the teenager after she vanished, but prosecutor James Goss said they were either mistaken about the dates or who they had spotted.

At the height of the two-and-a-half-year inquiry, more than 50 officers worked on the case, including detectives, Crime Scene Investigators, specialist searchers and community police teams.

More than 6,500 documents were generated, more than 2,700 people were spoken to, and almost 1,500 statements taken while searches covering 7,800 hectares were carried out in and around the Richmond and Catterick area.

Hodgson, of Olav Road, Richmond, who denied murder, claimed Jenny had run away from home to escape her abusive father and had been in touch since she vanished.

But the jury of six men and six women rejected his claims, which were later branded "ludicrous and vile" by Jenny's parents, and "a devious and elaborate deceit" by the judge.

The judge said: "The defendant's concealment of her body has prolonged the anguish and agony of her family and friends as they waited for news of her fate.

"After he killed her, the defendant retained her mobile phone and on two separate days he sent bogus text messages from her mobile phone - as if from her - first to her friends and then to her father, cruelly pretending that she was still alive and that she had just run away.

"He was, of course, intending, thereby, to prevent the missing person inquiry turning into a murder investigation.

"Naturally, her family found any slight hope that the messages might be genuine and so their uncertainty extended from weeks to months until the gradual realisation that she must be dead and then that she had been murdered.

"Even now, they have been denied such solace as can be found from a funeral and from providing for her a decent, dignified and reverent disposal of her remains as they wish.

"I do not doubt that the thought that she is lying somewhere up on the moors will continue to inflict further pain on her long-suffering family. The defendant has shown not the slightest regret or remorse."

He added that the evidence which suggested Hodgson killed shopworker Jenny on the night they both went out camping was "entirely overwhelming".

The judge said: "Where he has hidden and disposed of the body only the defendant knows, because on these matters he has remained silent.

"No doubt, he buried her somewhere in the woods or threw her body down one of the many potholes or mineshafts which are found throughout Swaledale."

Jamie Hill, QC, defending told the court: "Given the stance he has maintained throughout the trial, and continues to maintain, it would be inappropriate for me to say anything about the offence itself."