A COUPLE who murdered a four-year-old girl after a campaign of "deliberate and grotesque cruelty" were yesterday jailed for life.

Sharon Wright, 23, and boyfriend Peter Seaton, 22, who met in Hartlepool, were found guilty of murder and will serve a minimum of 23 years in prison.

The pair subjected Wright's daughter, Leticia, to torturous abuse and her body was found to have more than 100 injuries, including bruises, cigarette burns and bite marks.

Judge Mr Justice Walker told Wright, of Huddersfield, and Seaton, of Meadow Lane, Northallerton, North Yorkshire: "The fatal injuries were internal ones to the brain and to the abdomen.

"I can't say which of you caused those injuries, nor the other injuries that I have described.

"What I can say is that you were undoubtedly in it together."

He said the girl was "subjected to increasing violence, which on any view included deliberate and grotesque cruelty".

Bradford Crown Court heard that Leticia had suffered trauma to her head and abdomen equivalent to a major road accident, with the fatal injuries inflicted two or three days before her death.

Forensics officers found clumps of Leticia's hair in a wheelie bin outside their home in Almondbury Bank, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

Traces of her blood were left on her soiled clothes, on a pair of fur-lined handcuffs found in the kitchen, and in "swipe marks" left by her hair on the living-room wall.

Sentencing Wright, the judge told her: "I do not say you intended to kill, but you intended she should suffer really serious harm."

He told Seaton: "There has been a complete inability to appreciate the consequences of your violence."

Wright broke into sobs as she was handcuffed and led away. Seaton, who has an intellectual level in the lowest three per cent of the population, showed little emotion.

The court heard how paramedics found Leticia lying bruised and naked on the living-room floor on November 18, last year. Seaton had moved into the house with Wright three months earlier.

She was taken to Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, where she died of multiple injuries.

The judge said Leticia's biological father and family were prevented from seeing her in the weeks leading up to her death.

"They had no idea of, or any reason to suspect, the true reason for not allowing them to see her again," he added.

"When Leticia was with them, she was a happy and bubbly little girl.

"With them she had everything to live for."

He commended people living nearby who contacted social services at Kirklees Council after seeing "Leticia at her bedroom window for long periods during the day, apparently left on her own in the bedroom or possibly even alone in the house".

On October 13, two social workers visited the house.

Linda Blackie and Nicola Stephenson found Leticia to be of normal weight with no obvious marks, but she was initially quiet.

After checking back that Leticia had been registered with a local nursery, Leticia's file was closed.

She attended for one week but then "was seen to return to her lonely vigil at her bedroom window".

Wright blamed Seaton for the injuries, accusing him of going into a rage because he did not have any cannabis.

Seaton admitted biting Leticia, who had deep teeth marks on her forearms. Both denied murder.

Outside court, Detective Superintendent Paul Taylor, who led the investigation into Leticia's death, said: "Sharon Wright was a heavy-handed, pretty uncaring, pretty unloving mother.

"Peter Seaton was a man of violence and pretty inadequate in a lot of ways.

"As individual people, they were unbalanced.

"When they got together, they were a fatal cocktail. They wanted to be together, and Leticia was in the way.

"The level of cruelty that Leticia was subjected to beggars belief. She must have been in unimaginable pain during the final few days of her life.

"I believe Seaton and Wright would have been well aware of the trauma they had inflicted on Letitia, and they chose to continue the abuse until her body could take no more and she died."

Paul Johnson, the head of safeguarding at Kirklees Council and a member of the Kirklees Safeguarding Children Board, defended the council's handling of the case.

He said a council review carried out by an independent professional concluded Leticia's death could not have been foreseen.

But he conceded that certain aspects of the case could have been handled differently.