A CONVICTED murderer has been sent back to jail after confronting a teenage girl in Bury town centre with a Samurai sword.

Paul Keightley was aged just 15 when he murdered a 49-year-old man with a hammer in 1991 and badly injured another man by setting fire to his mattress.

He was finally released from jail in December last year and went to live in a bail hostel in Bury.

But Bolton Crown Court heard how, at 3.30am on August 6 he was in Silver Street, Bury, where the 19-year-old victim was enjoying a night out with friends.

Lindsay Thomas, prosecuting, said 40-year-old Keightley was behaving strangely and asked her: “Are you talking to me?”

Then Keightley turned to face her with a sword in his hand and boasted to the frightened teenager: “I’ve done 10 years for murder – it won’t stop me doing anything to you.”

After asking for a cigarette Keightley put the sword down the front of his trousers and the girl ran to a nearby club and rang police.

Officers who arrived 15 minutes later searched him a found the 18 inch long blade inside his jeans.

He initially claimed to police that he had been given the sword to hold by men who had gone inside a club to get him a cigarette.

The court heard how Keightley has spent most of his life in prison. In 1992 he was given a life sentence after killing a man by attacking him with a hammer, copper piping and pint pot before pouring bleach over him.

Keightley, then a teenager, also used a lit cigarette to set fire to a mattress where a man lay unconscious. The victim suffered serious injuries.

Following the sword incident Keightley, of Wellington Road, Bury, pleaded guilty to making threats with a bladed article.

Darren Preston, defending, told the court that Keightley had spent so long behind bars that he was institutionalised and struggled to cope after he was released last year.

“Here was a man who had never, in his entire life, lived independently and was having to live by himself,” said Mr Preston.

“He was put in a flat and effectively left to his own devices.”

He added that Keightley’s father had even contacted an MP in a bid to get assistance for his son.

Mr Preston speculated about the reason why Keightley was carrying a sword.

“This, at least subconsciously, must have been a cry for help to get himself back in custody where he feels more comfortable,” he said.

But he stressed that the threats to the woman had only been verbal and Keightley had held the sword at his side and not brandished it.

Sentencing Keightley to 30 months in prison, Judge Timothy Stead told him: “I think you are a dangerous individual.”