by Julia Roberts

A convicted killer - jailed today for 37 years for decapitating a stranger in the street - had been freed from a secure mental health unit in Dartford just two years earlier.

Schizophrenia sufferer Nicola Edgington, 32, was found guilty last month of murdering grandmother Sally Hodkin, 58, and attempting to murder Kerry Clark, 22, in Bexleyheath, south-east London, in 2011. She also killed her mother in 2005.

Minutes earlier she had tried to stab another woman, Kerry Clark, as she waited to catch a bus to her work in Dartford Heath.

Edgington denied murder and attempted murder but was convicted by a jury at the Old Bailey in February.

Now Recorder for London, Judge Brian Barker, has jailed her for life with a minimum term of 37 years for murder. He also gave her a concurrent sentence of life with a minimum term of 20 years for attempted murder.

The court had earlier heard she had spent three years being treated as an inpatient at the Bracton Centre, off Leyton Cross Road, after admitting the manslaughter of her mother, Marion. She had been stabbed to death in 2005.

The unit is part of Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, which is based in Pinewood Place, Dartford, and, according to its website, offers a range of ‘specialist forensic mental health services’ for people aged 18 to 65.

Edgington had been made subject to an indefinite hospital order under the Mental Health Act and was at the centre from 2006 to 2009.

In September that year she was released into supported accommodation in Greenwich, where she was regularly monitored by a team of medical experts.

Bracton Centre, off Leyton Cross Road, Dartford

However, the court was told she had stopped taking her medication by the time she fatally stabbed Mrs Hodkin. Just hours earlier she had also been taken to Oxleas House in Woolwich, another psychiatric unit run by the trust, after she reportedly told a hospital nurse she might harm someone.

But she left the unit before she could be admitted and headed to Bexleyheath.

At the end of the trial Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust chief executive Stephen Firn apologised to Mrs Hodkin’s family and expressed his “sincere condolences”.

But he said an investigation had concluded that the decision to release her into the community was “sound”.

“The trust inquiry report concluded that the decision to recommend to the Ministry of Justice that Nicola Edgington was discharged from the Bracton Centre in 2009 was sound and the care she received in the community following her discharge was of good quality,” he said.

Mr Firn added that it was a matter of “extreme regret” that Edgington, who will be sentenced at a later date, was able to leave Oxleas House before being admitted and that an independent inquiry will now be held in line with NHS requirements.