A former soldier has been sentenced to 34 years in jail after pleading guilty to the murder of estate agent Nicole Waterhouse, known as Nikki, and the attempted murder of her friend and colleague Karen Browne.

The women, who were flatmates, both worked for Hunters and were savagely attacked in their home last October.

Yesterday at Leeds Crown Court, Jeremy Peter Andrew Green, 26, was given a life sentence, and will serve 33 years and 198 days for the attempted murder. A 24-year sentence for the attempted murder will run concurrently.

The court heard that Green repeatedly stabbed and smothered the women after holding them hostage in their flat for more than eight hours on Sunday, October 20.

He then locked them in the flat and went off to raid their bank accounts of £750 with the bank cards he had forced them to give him.

After he left, Karen raised the alarm by screaming when she heard a neighbour in the landing outside the flat.

Police were called and found Nikki dead in her bedroom. She had been due to visit her family that day and was to see her baby nephew for the first time.

Nikki, 32, was a sales negotiator in York and was the daughter of John Waterhouse, a founding partner of Hunters.

Karen, 23, who worked as a sales negotiator at Hunters’ Wetherby office, had her throat cut and was stabbed in the spine, leaving her paralysed down one side. She spent three months in hospital.

At her funeral, Nikki’s father called her “a shining light” and a gentle, caring and loving daughter. Yesterday, her sister Danielle looked straight across the court at the killer and said: “I will always have three sisters. No one will ever take that away from me, not even him.

“He has destroyed all our lives and has taken away part of our family we can never replace.”

Green had said back in January at an earlier court appearance that he had committed the acts, but there was at that time uncertainty as to his mental state and his ability to plead.

He had gone out briefly with Karen after they met at a dating event, but the relationship had ended last October.

Green’s barrister Richard Wright told the court that the attacks appeared to have no motive. He said that Green’s legal team “regrets, genuinely regrets, that perhaps the one question that everyone would have wanted to be answered, the question of ‘Why’, we cannot answer”.

After his arrest Green told a psychiatrist he had intended to burgle the flat and was carrying a knife for self-defence because of being a former soldier and what had happened to Lee Rigby (who was attacked and killed in Woolwich last May).

Green should have had a promising future. He was privately educated and went to university before joining the army. A graduate of Sandhurst Military Academy, he served with the Yorkshire Regiment in Afghanistan, becoming a second lieutenant. However, he was discharged from the army a year ago after admitting to thefts.

After the sentencing, Patrick Gallager of the Crown Prosecution Service said: “This was an horrific crime – an appalling and brutal attack on two defenceless women in their own home. Nicole Waterhouse had her life tragically cut short, and her flatmate and friend Karen Browne suffered life-threatening injuries which she was extremely lucky to survive.

“Jeremy Green’s despicable actions have deprived a family of a much-loved daughter and forever changed the life of her friend.

“Our thoughts remain with the friends and families of these two young women, and we hope that the sentence handed down today gives them some measure of comfort.”