The killer of a former Tarporley wine bar owner will have to serve a minimum of 23 years and four months in jail, a judge ruled.
Murderer Jordan Davidson, 26, of Wrexham, who called himself the devil, murdered retired restaurateur Nicholas Churton and described it as the ‘greatest day of his life’.
Davidson, who had earlier posed for a mobile phone picture with the murder weapon - a machete which he called ‘his new toy’ - received life imprisonment at Mold Crown Court.
Mr Justice Clive Lewis ruled that Davidson would have to serve a minimum of 23 years and four months years before he can apply for parole.
It would have been 28 years but for his guilty plea.
He will only be released if the authorities are satisfied he is no longer dangerous.
The judge said: “This was a brutal attack on a vulnerable, frail and defenceless old man.”
There was an intention to kill, he said.
That was clear from the nature of the weapon and the injuries caused with the machete.
“Whether, if ever, you are safe to be released on licence will depend upon the assessment of the risk that you pose to members of the public after that minimum term has expired,” he said.
He received concurrent sentences for the other offences.
Davidson had gone on on a crime spree of robbery and burglary – and did not stop after he had murdered 67-year-old Nicholas Churton at his flat in Crescent Close in Wrexham.
He went on to rob and seriously injure a man during a hammer attack in Handbridge in Chester, attacked a detective who was interviewing him and then, while on remand at Altcourse Prison, slashed a prison officer with a make-shift weapon in revenge for reporting him for drugs years earlier.
Davidson was due to go on trial for murder and a series of other offences at Mold Crown Court last week.
But he pleaded guilty to the murder on March 23 – together with a series of 12 associated offences.
Mr Churton was disabled and had restricted mobility and was found dead in the living room of his flat after he had been attacked with a large machete and a hammer.
Prosecuting barrister Mr Andrew Thomas QC suggested that he targeted elderly men.
He was on licence from prison when he went on his horrendous criminal spree.
Police found he had been texting a schoolgirl he appeared to have been obsessed with, giving a running commentary of his crimes.
Davidson posed with the murder weapon for a mobile phone photograph and called it his ‘new toy’.
He held the machete he used to kill Nicholas Churton, his face masked by his clothing.
Davidson told the schoolgirl that he could guarantee that armed police would shoot him dead.
He said he was ‘on a wild one’, told how he would be shot by police in a hail of bullets and how after the murder that he had ‘gone up a level’.
The Handbridge hammer attack on victim Stephen Brown took place just a few days after Davidson had murdered Mr Churton.
Davidson was sentencing to eight years for robbery and actual bodily harm of security officer Mr Brown using a hammer. The sentence is to run concurrently with the 23 years and four months sentence for murder.
