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11th Oct 2022

Man who killed girlfriend after she travelled across the world to meet him is jailed

Ellen Fitzpatrick

The murder occurred earlier this year.

A man in the UK has been jailed for 23 years after he murdered a Canadian teenager who he had met online.

23 year old Jack Sepple killed his 19 year old girlfriend Ashley Wadsworth after she travelled thousands of miles across the world to be with him.

Noting that it was a “brutal and cowardly attack” judge Justice Murray said that the attacker “gratuitously inflicted some 90 wounds on her body.”

Ashley was discovered unresponsive in an apartment on Tennyson Road in Chelmsford on February 1st of this year.

Sepple was then arrested at the scene and later charged with her murder.

Travelling from Vernon in British Columbia on a six month tourist visa, Ashley was thought to be on the “trip of a lifetime” when she arrived to meet Jack in November last year.

In a statement, her family said she was a “kind and beautiful woman” who had an unforgettable laugh” and a “spontaneous, witty, kind personality”.

She has also been described as “fiercely loving and loyal to her family and friends”.

Ashley had travelled within Canada and then onto Mexico and California before heading to England, speaking English, French and Spanish and always had desired to travel.

Wanting to become a lawyer, she had recently been accepted to Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC.

Sepple pleaded guilty to Ashley’s murder, landing him the life sentence, with a psychiatrist indicating that he was fit to plea.