A MAN who murdered a homosexual and then cut up his body was jailed

for life yesterday with a recommendation that he spend at least 20 years

in prison for his ''nauseating and barbaric crimes''.

Alastair Thompson, 43, stabbed Mr Gordon Dunbar through the heart and

then dismembered his body in Dundee, while he was out on licence from a

life sentence for an earlier murder.

The jury at the High Court in Edinburgh took just 70 minutes

unanimously to convict Thompson of the murder of Mr Dunbar, 52, and of

dismembering the body in an attempt to defeat the ends of justice.

The Judge, Lord Weir, told the jury after they returned their verdict:

''I would not have wished your task on my worst enemy. You have had to

listen to sordid, distasteful and horrendous evidence.''

The court heard that the murder hunt began in Dundee when a

policeman's daughter out walking a police dog found a severed human arm.

The cut-up torso of Mr Dunbar and part of one of his arms was found

wrapped in plastic bags in a grassy area near the city's Law Road.

A second batch of human remains was later found dumped in Dundee's

Dudhope Park. It included a severed foot in a ladies' stocking. Mr

Dunbar's head has never been recovered.

Mr Dunbar, who lived in a Dundee guesthouse, had gone out on Christmas

Eve before being robbed by Thompson and stabbed through the heart in a

flat in a multi-storey block in the city's Butterburn Court.

Thompson then borrowed two hacksaws from a friend, claiming he wanted

to cut up piping, but later revealed that he had to dispose of a body.

He claimed that the victim had been killed by two men from Glasgow or

Edinburgh and that he was getting rid of the corpse as a favour.

Thompson claimed that the head was in a skip in the Kirkton area of

the city and it was alleged that he said he would like to have seen the

decapitated head put on a stake outside Dundee police headquarters in

Bell Street.

Detectives investigating the killing found blood-stained clothing --

which matched DNA samples from the corpse -- under the bed in Thompson's

room in a hostel in the city.

Thompson denied that he murdered Mr Dunbar, a qualified architect who

had lived in France for several years before returning to Dundee.

Advocate-depute Paul Cullen told the court after the jury returned its

verdict that 25 years ago this month Thompson was jailed for life at the

High Court in Edinburgh for murdering his grandmother Margaret Thompson.