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Jack Sepple, 23, met Ashley Wadsworth, 19, online during lockdown in 2020 and in November last year flew to the UK to meet him in person. But after enjoying a four-month fling the university-bound law student was preparing to fly home after confiding in friends that “things were not going great”.

Her family bought her a return ticket but just 36 hours before she was due to board the plane she was repeatedly stabbed in the chest by face-tattooed Sepple.

Paramedics raced to Sepple’s Essex home but found Ashley already dead.

She had previously posted photos online of her “amazing trip to London”, where she had been sightseeing with her future killer and his family.

Ashley, from Vernon, British Columbia, Canada, was on a six-month tourist visa which her great aunt Tova Wadsworth described as the “trip of a lifetime”.

In a brief hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday (Wed), Sepple’s barrister said a psychiatrist had confirmed the defendant was fit to plead.

The court clerk read the single charge of murder and Sepple, standing in the secure dock in a long white sleeved top, replied: “I’m guilty.”

The hearing was told how Ashley was pronounced dead at 4.38pm on February 1.

A post-mortem examination recorded her provisional medical cause of death as “stab wounds to the chest”.

Essex’s senior coroner, Lincoln Brookes, suspended the inquest proceedings pending the outcome of the criminal investigation.

Ashley, who was set to study to become a lawyer, hooked-up with Sepple through an online dating app while still in Canada, during the first pandemic lockdown.

Having recently converted to Mormonism, she revealed on social media how she had travelled to Chelmsford in November 2021, to “escape small-town life.”

Her friend Ana-Marie Taylor said initially planned to stay with Sepple until April after arriving in November, but had “changed her mind” and was flying home two months early.

Ms Taylor said: “She cut it short because things were not going too great. She really did love him. Things were amazing at first.”

Fellow friend Daniel Seaman, who attended the Church of the Latter-day Saints with Ashley, called her a “woman of great faith” who “even wanted to share her faith her boyfriend.”

In a family tribute released by Essex Police following her death Ashley’s family celebrated her “spontaneous, witty, kind personality” and remembered her “unforgettable laugh”.

They praised her sense of adventure, having travelled extensively within Canada and also to Mexico and California before England.

She developed her desire for life experience while abroad and a love of language – speaking English, French and Spanish, and been accepted to Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia.

They added: “Ashley, you are beautiful to us, and we will miss you very, very, much.”

Judge Christopher Morgan told Sepple he would sentence him at a later date, warning: “By your plea of guilty to murder there’s only one sentence that can be passed and that’s a life sentence.”

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