A FANTASIST who claimed he worked for MI5 has been sentenced to a minimum of 16 years for the murder of his teenage girlfriend.

Former Purfleet man Stuart Adcock, 34, left model Rebecca Rice, 18, to die in a pool of blood after knifing her ten times at their flat in Pettistree, Suffolk, in August 2006.

The court was told the "jealous and domineering" insurance worker, who also owned the Benfleet-based SPJ Models photographic agency, launched a frenzied attack on the "bubbly" teenager after discovering she was planning to leave him.

Members of the dead girl's family wept as prosecutor Karim Khalil gave graphic details of Adcock's attack.

Mr Khalil told Norwich Crown Court that Rebecca had become unhappy with Adcock's possessiveness. He added: "She planned to move back home with her parents. Adcock found out, whereupon he decided she would not be allowed to go.

"In a frenzied attack, he knifed her and left her to bleed to death."

Mr Khalil said said: "Stuart Adcock has shown, over a number of years, he can be charming and charismatic to women when he is courting them. Once they become his girlfriend, he is inclined to become possessive, jealous and domineering.

"The pattern I have just described repeated itself until Rebecca decided she was unhappy."

As a photographer, Adcock, who inflicted a knife wound on himself in an attempt to blame Rebecca for the incident, claimed to have had work published in Max Power, Nuts and Zoo, yet none of these publications had heard of him.

He met Rebecca, a talented runner and horse rider, while working as a photographer for a company called Streetlife TV.

The court was told Adcock, Adcock, who used to live in Beacon Hill, Purfleet, claimed he had become depressed after seeing the aftermath of the London bombings in July 2005 while working for MI5.

Adcock was sentenced after pleading guilty to murder earlier this month. Judge Peter Jacobs told him: "This was a frenzied attack in which you were completely out of control.

"After the attack, you had sufficient presence of mind to take the mobile phone and lie low and do nothing.

"You left that girl bleeding to death on the floor of the kitchen."