MURDERER Paul Greenan will serve at least 20 years of a life sentence behind bars for the brutal murder of nursery nurse Tracy Burns.

The 19-year-old showed no emotion as he was taken down, but the victim’s family expressed their disgust at the sentence passed by the Royal Court yesterday afternoon.

Greenan, who is likely to serve his sentence in a high security psychiatric unit like Broadmoor, will not be eligible for parole until 2024, when he will be 38 years old.

Ms Burns’s family had called for life to mean life after a jury in May unanimously convicted him of the murder committed in Paris Lane on 14 March 2004.

Greenan, an unemployed labourer from Belfast, punched, kicked and stamped on the 35-year-old nurse’s head after trying to rape her.

Before announcing sentence, the Bailiff turned to Greenan and said: ‘You murdered an innocent young woman who was in the prime of her life and a stranger to you in a vile and hideous manner.

You callously abandoned her while she was dying and you even robbed her of her purse and mobile phone.’ He was sitting with Jurats De Veulle, Le Brocq, Georgelin, Allo, Le Cornu, Morgan and Newcombe.