Revealed: Mark Bridger watched brutal rape scene twice before murdering April Jones

April Jones’s murderer Mark Bridger watched a brutal gang rape scene from a horror film twice before killing the five-year-old, it can be reported for the first time.

As the 47-year-old was found guilty of April’s abduction and murder, it can be disclosed that when police first searched his cottage last year they discovered he had recorded the rape scene from the 2009 remake of The Last House On The Left.

Bridger, from Ceinws, who hoarded hundreds of images of child pornography, recorded the scene where a young teenage girl is raped by a leader of a gang in front of his gang-mates, who hold the victim down while she is attacked.

He recorded the same scene a second time when it was repeated on the +1 channel an hour later.

Bridger’s own barrister Brendan Kelly QC described the scene as ‘distressing’, while prosecutor Elwen Evans QC dubbed it ‘significant’ for the case.

She said Bridger had watched the rape scene ‘not long before’ whatever happened to April.

April’s body has never been found, despite the largest search operation in the history of British policing.

‘This is not just the playing of a rape scene on television,’ she said during the five-week trial. ‘That particular rape scene had been recorded twice. A deliberate action to capture the most distressing aspect.’

Trial judge Mr Justice Griffith Williams ruled the evidence could not form part of the trial, but it can be reported following Bridger’s conviction.

The original version of The Last House on the Left was directed by Nightmare on Elm Street creator Wes Craven and has been described as a crude but shocking ‘horror opus’ which became a cult hit largely because it went much further than ‘slasher’ films before it had been willing to go.