Shocking: Teen obsessed with horror movie stabbed girlfriend to death before dismembering her – just as he’s watched on TV

A 17-year-old boy obsessed with TV serial killer Dexter was jailed for 25 years yesterday for murdering his girlfriend who he ferociously stabbed before dismembering her body.

Steven Miles, who was 16 at the time, committed the ‘blood-curdling’ killing of 17-year-old Elizabeth Thomas in his bedroom at the family home in Oxted, Surrey.

Having stabbed her in the head and back, he dismembered her legs and an arm – wrapping the limbs in cling film and placing them in bin bags – and covered her body in a green plastic garden sheet.

The teenage politics student, who had been diagnosed as having an autistic syndrome, used saws and tools from his father’s tree surgeon business to cut up her body.

He told his family that he had an alter ego called Ed who had instructed him to kill someone.

When the defendant’s sister Sophie returned home to the flat about an hour after the murder on January 24 this year, Miles told her: ‘Ed made me do something bad.’

During the sentencing hearing at Guildford Crown Court, the court heard that Miles had a fascination with horror movies and the macabre and had wanted to emulate the actions of Dexter.

Played by actor Michael C. Hall, Dexter is the lead character of an American TV series about a Miami police forensics officer who is also a serial killer.

Miles had even told a past girlfriend that he was going to kill someone, and said in text messages to his victim: ‘You will see a lot of similarities in the personality of Dexter and myself.’

Philip Bennetts, prosecuting, said: ‘It is the prosecution case that the killing of Elizabeth Thomas was carefully planned and pre-meditated.’

At the time of the murder Miles was said to be reading the violent Hannibal Trilogy, the court heard. The killer’s favourite films were Donny Darko, Fight Club and Psycho.