A man who murdered his 14-year-old girlfriend by strangling her and then stuffing her body into an oil drum back in 1975 is reportedly looking for women to date online after coming back home to London after serving 38 years in an American prison.

Fifty eight-year-old Demsey Hawkins was deported back to the UK after he completed his sentence and has since been approaching women on hook-up site, Meetup.com.

It was reported that a woman, whom Hawkins had contacted under the alias Dempsey Louis, said he was "terribly forward" with her and never once mentioned his past conviction.

The woman, who was not identified, told the Daily Mail: "I thought it was an unusual name and he said he lived in Cambridge, so I googled him and there was a reference to the murderer Dempsey Hawkins. I compared their photographs and it was obviously the same man. I was horrified."

She then contacted the authorities after she found out about Hawkins' dark past. She said: "I hope he’s a contributing member of society but I think it’s important other females and males in his dating network know his face."

On being contacted by the Evening Standard, Hawkins said he understands perfectly why people find his past conviction troublesome. He claimed, however, that his messages to the woman were not inappropriate, saying: "I just asked would they like to go on a date. 'No? OK then, bye.' That’s it."

Hawkins, who was born in London, was 16-years-old when he killed his girlfriend Susan Jacobson in Staten Island, New York, in May 1976. Two years after the murder, Hawkins was sentenced to a minimum of 22 years in prison.

However, it was only after 20 years into his jail term that he finally confessed to the murder.

Hawkins and Jacobson had been dating for almost a year at the time of the murder. She had been commanded by her parents to call off the relationship after she was forced to have an abortion. Hawkins couldn't countenance ever being without his girlfriend or seeing her with someone else, and decided to kill her. In a telephone interview that Hawkins gave in 2011 from prison, he admitted: "It was a warm day. With the arm of the shirt, I put it around her neck, as if to kiss her, and I just started squeezing it. Her hands went up to the shirt and I just looked away and just kept squeezing the shirt."

When Jacobson's family and friends went out to search for the missing teenager, Hawkins also joined in on the search party and spent his time misleading the group and keeping them away from where he had dumped her body.

Janice, Jacobson's sister, told the New York Times in 2011 that Hawkins would suggest very often that her sister had fled to another state like Florida or Chicago. She recalled: "Every time we got close, he would come up with a story to take us to a different location."

Hawkins moved in with his father after the searches. They lived on a United Air Force base in Joppa, Illinois, and the teen went on living life and completing his high school education as if nothing ever happened.

He was arrested, however, after a young boy found what he believed were "dog bones" in a barrel. 

The convict finally spoke to Jacobson's family through a letter many years after he was sentenced in her death. He wrote: "I’m terribly sorry for what I’ve done, and I have been for a long time." Hawkins currently lives in Cambridge, UK, and works at a Mexican restaurant in the city.