Former chef Darren Osment convicted of murdering ex-partner

A former chef has been found guilty of murdering his ex-partner more than a decade ago after he confessed the crime to an undercover police officer during an extraordinary 20-month covert operation.

Darren Osment, 41, was convicted of murdering Claire Holland, who was last seen alive when she left a pub in central Bristol in June 2012, when she was 32.

It is believed Osment may have strangled Holland after arranging to meet her at a pub where he worked and could have used his knife skills to dismember her body before disposing of her remains.

Detectives decided to launch the undercover operation after Osment made a drunken partial confession to police in 2019 but then retracted it.

An officer who went by the pseudonym Paddy O’Hara was sent in to befriend Osment to see if he would let more details of what happened slip. The officer posed as a small-time gangster and told Osment that he himself had killed someone. Osment began opening up to O’Hara and made a series of confessions that led to him being put before a jury at Bristol crown court.

Osment’s defence questioned the police tactics and tried to argue that the police had tricked him into making a false confession.