A British man who claimed that he had dismembered and eaten the body of a woman faced 12 years’ imprisonment in a Spanish jail after pleading guilty to her manslaughter yesterday.

Paul Durant, 47, from East London, told a court in Alicante that he had battered Karen Durrell, 41, from Ilford, Essex, to death with a mallet. In spite of having previously boasted to the contrary, in court he denied cutting up her body with a saw and disposing of it at her home in Calpe, on the Costa Blanca, in February 2004.

He was tried for murder although Mrs Durrell’s body has never been found. Prosecutors dropped the murder charge and accepted a guilty plea to manslaughter.

Mrs Durrell, a mother of two, moved to Spain in January 2004 to start a new life with her boyfriend, Miles Lanning, but within a month she disappeared.

Durant, a heroin addict and convicted armed robber, was on the run from British police after escaping arrest in 2003. He was arrested in Spain days after Mrs Durrell was reported missing by her sister, Jackie Wood. While he was in police custody, Durant wrote a letter to the Daily Mirror claiming that he had killed Mrs Durrell. In the letter, he boasted that he was a cannibal.

He wrote: “I believed God had delivered her to me and I was getting messages from the telly. After I killed her, I cut her body into small parts, eating what parts of her I found eatable. I finally disposed of what was left in small rubbish bags.”

In another letter written while he was in custody, Durant suggested to a literary agent that his story was worth publishing.

Police arrested him originally for breaking and entering a house near Mrs Durrell’s property in Calpe, a town popular with British expatriates. He confessed to the killing, claiming that they had had a row after watching a film about child sex abuse.

Although there has so far been no trace of Mrs Durrell’s body, Spanish police charged Durant with murder, claiming that scientific evidence discovered in her flat linked him to her death.

Inmaculada Palau, for the prosecution, told the court that Durant had killed Mrs Durrell by hitting her on the back of the head with a mallet. She added: “Paul took the body to the bathroom and put it in the bath, where, using a knife and a saw, he cut it up and put the parts into plastic bags.”

She said that he then hid the bags in a suitcase that he found in the house, which he placed in a container near the property. “The mutilated body was taken away unknowingly by rubbish collectors,” she added.

Mrs Durrell, who was unemployed, had two children, Jemma and Billy, who are both in their twenties, and was divorced.

Jemma Durrell travelled with her father, John Durrell, aunt and Mrs Durrell’s parents to Alicante for the court hearing, where they came face to face with Durant for the first time.

In court, Julio José Ubeda de los Cobos, the chairman of a panel of three judges, asked Durant: “Do you have anything else you wish to say to the court?” He replied “No”, before being led away to prison, where he is on remand awaiting sentence. In a statement, Mrs Durrell’s family said: “Not knowing what happened to Karen adds to our pain still further.”

The state prosecutor requested that Durant serve 12 years in prison for manslaughter. Private prosecutors acting for the victim’s family also want him to pay compensation of ¤600,000 (£415,000).

Durant, who will be sentenced by a panel of three judges at a later date, may face extradition after serving time in a Spanish jail.

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