Two teenage girls who murdered a 39-year-old woman by battering her to death with household objects in a five-hour ordeal have been given life sentences with a minimum of 15 years.
The pair, who cannot be named for legal reasons, showed no reaction when they were sentenced at Leeds Crown Court.
Now both 15, the girls were 13 and 14 when they attacked Angela Wrightson in the lounge of her home in Hartlepool using weapons including a shovel, a TV, a coffee table and a stick studded with screws and leaving her with more than 100 injuries.
Sentencing the pair, Mr Justice Globe said: “It was an attack that included gratuitous degradation.”
The judge said the teenagers acted in tandem in “a cowardly attack”.
He said: “This was a sustained attack over a long period of time carried out with weapons in many different ways.
“She undoubtedly suffered considerably, both mentally and physically, before she ultimately lost consciousness and died.
“Her alcoholic state, considerable though it was, may have numbed the pain but I stress the word may and it most certainly would not have taken it away.”