Teenager  Will Cornick who murdered Leeds school teacher Ann Maguire in front of other pupils showed no emotion as he was handed a minimum of 20 years in custody.

Will Cornick, now 16, had a “deep-seated and irrational hatred” for his Spanish teacher at Corpus Christi College in Leeds West Yorkshire.

Ahead of the killing in April, he had also planned to murder two other teachers, including one who was pregnant.

Will Cornick had previously accepted responsibility for unlawful killing but this morning issued a formal guilty plea to the murder charge at Leeds Crown Court.

Two months before the murder, Cornick sent a message on Facebook which said of Mrs Ann Maguire: “The one absolute f****** bitch that deserves more than death, more than pain and more than anything that we can understand.”

He even showed some other pupils the 21cm knife he planned to attack Mrs Maguire with on the day of the murder but “many did not take him seriously”, the court heard.

Prosecutor Paul Greaney QC said the teenager stabbed Mrs Maguire seven times in the neck and back as she leaned over a desk to look at another pupil’s work.

When she tried to run away, he chased her.

Another teacher, Susan Francis, saw Mrs Maguire running down a corridor, saying: “He’s stabbed me in the neck”, with Cornick pursuing her.

The female teacher pushed her colleague into a room and then blocked the door to prevent the boy getting in.

The teacher said that as Mrs Maguire lay injured she spoke about her children and the fact that she was loved.

A paramedic who tried to save her said later that the stab wounds were the worst he had ever seen.

Meanwhile, Cornick went back to the classroom and sat down “as if nothing had happened”, Mr Greaney said

Mr Greaney said that Cornick’s parents are “decent and responsible” and at a loss to understand what has happened but that the boy was currently “highly dangerous and has psychopathic elements to his personality”.

“That his anger and hatred in fact became focused upon a person as decent and loved as Ann Maguire only makes this more tragic,” he added.

Mrs Maguire’s husband Don said the “callous cruelty” of the murder “defied comprehension”.

He said: “Now all dreams have gone forever – the centre of our lives is missing.”

Her daughter Kerry said the murder “has stripped me of my key support in life: my mummy”.

The judge said the boy showed a “total and chilling lack of remorse”, adding that the teenager’s pride in what he did and lack of remorse was “truly grotesque”.

He said that the public killing would leave many “traumatised forever” and showed a level of violence which was “savage and cowardly”.

But he paid tribute to the boy’s parents, who sat in court, and to the “calm dignity” of Mrs Maguire’s family.

Outside court, Mrs Maguire’s family paid tribute to those who had supported them during “this terrible nightmare”.

After the sentencing, the judge lifted an order banning Will Cornick’s identification.

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