Murderer jailed for 'monstrous' attack on Quyen Ngoc Nguyen is condemned to spend rest of his life in prison after losing legal appeal

William McFall, 52, and an accomplice murdered Vietnamese nail technician Quyen Ngoc Nguyen in a four-hour ordeal on Wearside in August 2017.

She was lured to the house, raped by accomplice Stephen Unwin and brutally attacked before she was dumped in a car, which was then set alight, in Shiney Row.

McFall and Unwin had met in prison in Northern Ireland, where McFall, originally from Greencastle, Co Antrim, was serving a sentence for a murder committed in the 1990s.

In February last year, they were convicted of Ms Nguyen's murder at Newcastle Crown Court and given life sentences.

The trial judge ordered that they serve "whole life tariffs", meaning they would never be freed.

But three senior judges, led by Lord Justice Gross, rejected his case at the Court of Appeal in London.

"His own role in this brutal murder and, in the light of his previous conviction for murder, amply warranted a whole life order," he said.

The court heard McFall was jailed in Northern Ireland in 1997 for the savage murder of an 86-year-old widow during a break-in.

She disturbed him and he attacked her in her Carrickfergus home, striking her repeatedly with a hammer.

Ms Nguyen was killed after being attacked at Unwin's home in Shiney Row, near Sunderland, where she had been lured.

Afterwards, her body was placed in a car, which was driven to a secluded spot and torched.

She had endured significant mental and physical suffering during an "unimaginable four-hour ordeal".

McFall claimed today that the whole life sentence he received was too tough.

But the judge said he was a previously convicted killer, capable of "monstrous" acts and who was "chillingly devoid of any human empathy".

"He was party to the sexual and financial motivation behind the luring of the victim to the house and was party to the attack while she was there," he said.

"A whole life order must never be passed as a reflex reaction or routinely. It wasn't so passed by the judge.

"It is upheld by us after careful consideration, but with no hesitation whatsoever.

"The justice of this case plainly requires that he should spend the remainder of his life in prison."

The appeal was refused.