The 16-year-old who raped and murdered six-year-old Alesha MacPhail, inflicting “catastrophic” injuries, can now be revealed.
This is the cold and calculating teenager who raped and murdered Alesha MacPhail.
Aaron Campbell can finally be revealed as the 16-year-old killer after a judge ruled in favour of a campaign led by the Scottish Sun to remove his right to anonymity.
Under Scots law a convicted criminal cannot be identified until they turn 18.
But such was the severity of the crime, a judge has ruled that the evil killer can be unmasked.
Lord Matthews said: “Parliament has provided the court with a discretion to dispense with the prohibition.”
He went on: “I can’t think of a case in recent times that has attracted such revulsion.
“I intend to grant the application. The press may name the accused and publish images of him.”
Alesha, six, was staying with her dad and grandparents on Scotland’s Isle of Bute when Campbell, who was known to the family and lived nearby, snatched her from her bed last July.
The schoolgirl suffered “catastrophic” sexual injuries after being raped and strangled by Campbell.
In pictures and videos, the baby-faced killer masquerades as a normal boy enjoying prom, days out with friends and bouncing around on a trampoline.
But the teen was hiding a thirst for blood and violence.
Campbell had a twisted fascination with Slender Man, a faceless film monster that abducts kids.
And as a younger teen, he killed and skinned cats — sparking fears the slayings eventually built up to murdering little Alesha.
The smaller — whose girlfriend is standing by him — is understood to have tortured two moggies on Bute three years ago before burying them in his back garden.
An ex-pal told The Scottish Sun: “He was supposedly doing voodoo stuff. I was worried when I heard.
“I never asked him about it. I just thought it was weird. But now I could believe it.”
It has also emerged he allegedly sexually abused a teenage girl and showed off explicit pictures to his friends before the murder.
Locals also claim he held another little girl’s head under the water at a local swimming pool so long she feared she would drown.
Alesha’s mum Georgina Lochrane, 24, wept at court as the teenager was nailed yesterday. She was in court again today to hear the judge’s ruling to name the sadistic beast.
Jurors at the High Court in Glasgow found the beast guilty, the killer — drunk from a house party — stole a knife from his mum’s kitchen and entered the home where he swiped Alesha from her bed.
A “shadowy figure” was later captured on CCTV carrying a mystery object — believed to be Alesha — across the shoreline at Rothesay on the night she vanished.
Once at the site of a former hotel, Campbell removed the girl’s clothes and shook her “violently” as he covered her nose, mouth and neck with his hands.
Alesha, who was just 3ft 9 ins tall, suffered 117 injuries and died from “forceful pressure to her neck and face”.
But insiders close to the case said the lad has no remorse for his depraved crime.
One said: “He was obsessed with gore and violence, and he was hooked on Slender Man. But he has turned this fantasy into a horrific reality.”
Her distraught dad Robert, 26, yelled “f****** scumbag” at her killer as he was led cuffed to the cells yesterday.
It comes after the 16-year-old killer callously tried pinning the brutal murder on Toni McLachlan — Robert’s girlfriend.
He fed jurors a “pack of lies” during his trial — including that Toni had framed him by “planting” his DNA on the youngster using a condom discarded after they apparently had sex.
In over two hours of evidence he agreed in court that the schoolgirl’s murder was “extraordinarily evil and wicked”, but denied having ever met the six-year-old.
Judge Lord Matthews who presided over the case told the 16-year-old rapist the case was “one of the wickedest and most evil crimes in the history of this court”.
He went on to describe his acts as “despicable” and “evil” and as he slammed the “ridiculous” suggestion Toni was guilty.
“Billion-to-one” DNA samples matching the boy were found on 14 different parts of Alesha’s body — including intimate areas and her neck, face and ankles.
DNA was also discovered on Alesha’s shorts, pants and vest, with forensic scientist Stuart Bailey saying “traces of semen attributable to the accused” were present.
A fibre from boxing shorts later found on Rothesay beach was also discovered on Alesha’s pants, as well as fibres from jogging bottoms also ditched by the killer.
Alesha’s mutilated and naked body was found in woods on the Isle of Bute hours later after her devastated family woke up to find she was missing.
Some investigators have since claimed Campbell lacked empathy and was a serial killer in the making who would have struck again.
A source close to the probe said cops are certain the teen’s arrest has stopped more people suffering at his hands.
And they fear the violent monster would have gone on to claim even more lives if he had dodged justice yesterday.
Another source added: “His dad told close friends years ago his son has no empathy. He doesn’t have feelings for anyone else.
“He was carrying a knife from first year and his mum had to go to school daily for a report on what he’d been up to.”
Cops probing Alesha’s death trawled through the lad’s phone and internet activity in the hours after his arrest on July 4.
And during the search they discovered details of the fiend’s bloodlust for violent video games.
He will now rot behind bars instead of following ambitions of studying engineering at uni and designing computer games.
His mum said: “My son was going to be an engineer. He wanted to design games. That would have been his dream job.
“He’d have had to go and do engineering. His aim was to go to university. He wanted a good job and the good things in life.”
She admitted the fiend was “addicted” to gaming.
The mother added: “He would lock himself away until about 2am on Fridays and Saturdays. He’d be up all night on that computer and sleep all day.”
Campbell will be sentenced on March 21 pending a psychological report regarding the teen’s mental state. His name will be put on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.
This article originally appeared on The Sun and has been republished with permission.
