whole life tariffs, however the order was reversed by the Belfast High Court in 1997 after an appeal by the two men and they were released under the Good Friday Agreement. David Wynne Roberts was convicted of murdering a pensioner who was a friend of his grandmother in Anglesey, Wales when he was 14 in 1969 and served seven years in youth detention before being released in 1976 and moving to the North West of England. In 1985, he went to Blackpool where he met a staff from a hotel in Ambleside, Cumbria and stayed with them until he disappeared in early-1986 when the body of the hotel owner was discovered in a cottage, where she was stabbed and strangled with her own scarf. He gave himself in to police in London within a month after the crime and was convicted of murder with a recommended minimum of 18 years, with the Home Secretary setting a whole life tariff in 1988, before being reduced to 22 years in 2005 on appeal. John Cannan, who was convicted of the murder of Shirley Banks in Bristol on 8 October 1987, attempted kidnapping of Julia Holman and a rape in Reading. He was sentenced with a recommendation that should never be released from prison by Mr Justice Drake at Exeter Crown Court in April 1989, however this was overturned when the Lord Chief Justice and the Home Secretary at the time decided that he should serve at least 35 years instead. Howard Hughes, who was convicted in July 1996 of the Murder of Sophie Hook in Llandudno 12 months earlier. He denied the murder of Sophie, of Great Budworth, Cheshire, who was seven years old when she died, but was found guilty of rape and murder at Chester Crown Court – largely on the basis of his father’s claim that he admitted the murder shortly after his arrest – and jailed for life with a recommendation that he should never be released. Two subsequent appeals against his conviction were rejected, despite a number of sources casting doubt over his guilt and no forensic evidence directly linking him to the crime. In November 2002, Hughes was one of four convicted child murderers who received 50-year minimum terms imposed by the-then Home Secretary David Blunkett shortly before politicians were stripped of their powers to decide minimum terms for life sentence prisoners. The 50-year minimum term