Mark Brown: double murderer sentenced to life imprisonment

Mark Brown was found guilty in December of the 2021 murders of Leah Ware and Alexandra Morgan.

Brown, 41, was sentenced in his absence by Judge Nicholas Hilliard today after refusing to attend Hove Crown Court.

Mr Justice Hilliard sentenced him to two life sentences to be served concurrently with a minimum sentence of 49 years.

Brown killed Ms Ware and Ms Morgan on a remote farm near St Leonards after meeting them through a sex work website. He murdered Ms Ware in May 2021 and Ms Morgan six months later in November.

Brown placed Ms Morgan, 34, head first in a homemade incinerator before disposing of her remains.

The body of Ms Ware, 33, was never found but prosecutors believe Brown used a similar method and also killed her Pomeranian dog, Lady.

It took the jury of ten men and two women ten and a half hours to convict Brown of both counts of murder.

Sussex Police Detective Chief Inspector Andy Wolstenholme said the force would speak to Brown as soon as possible after the verdict to try to persuade him to say what happened to Ms Ware’s remains.

Brown met Ms. Ware in 2018 when he hired her as an escort and they formed a relationship.

He killed her on or about May 7, 2021 after tensions rose when she urged him to leave his 14-year-old partner, the court has been told.

In the six months between the murders of Ms Ware and Ms Morgan, Brown texted a friend, calling himself a “psychopath with a conscience” and saying: “I’ll be very careful how I put this – it happened again, didn’t it very long before when something is disposed of.

“It’s a very unpleasant thing – an old oil barrel, five liters of diesel and hey presto, there’s not much left.

“It’s getting hot, very hot, it’s almost white.

“The things I have done weigh heavily on my heart, my head and my soul. A psychopath with a conscience – that’s really a joke.”

The jury ruled that the message related to Brown disposing of Ms. Ware’s remains.

Brown hired Ms Morgan for sex about a dozen times before offering her a £100,000 escort job in October 2021.

But when she visited Little Bridge Farm, the site he had rented, the next month, he killed her and burned her body in an incinerator.

He then dumped her remains in a container at the site where he was working in Sevenoaks, Kent.

Brown, of Squirrel Close in St Leonards, claimed Ms Morgan died in an accident on the farm after hitting her head when she slipped in his workshop.

He said he burned her body “in a panic.”

He told the jury that he and Ms. Ware separated in early 2021 and, as far as he knew, she was still alive.