A Kent nurse with a cannibal fetish who fantasised about killing and eating women in sick internet chats has been banned from the profession.

Dale Bolinger - dubbed Canterbury's Hannibal Lecter - was jailed in September for plotting to chop off a teenager's head and eat her.

Nine months on, he has now been struck off the Nursing and Midwifery Council register after chiefs ruled he remained "a clear danger to the public".

Britain's most notorious cannibal fantasist, Bolinger indulged in perverted online chats with someone he believed was a 14-year-old schoolgirl in an attempt to lure her to his Canterbury home.

The married 58-year-old, who previously worked at Kent and Canterbury and the QEQM Hospital in Margate, was convicted of making indecent photographs of children, publishing obscene material, poisoning a former colleague and child grooming.

During his trial at Canterbury Crown Court, Bolinger – who kept his sick desires a secret from his wife – discussed buying an axe and beheading his victim, before eating her.

He claimed to have murdered a five-year-old child and a 39-year-old Caribbean former colleague.

Giving evidence last July, Bolinger claimed he believed the teenage girl from Germany he was talking to was in reality a man who was also indulging in internet fantasy.

"Mr Bolinger's convictions were fundamentally incompatible with his continuing to be a registered nurse..." - NMC panel chair Martin Yates

But then the jury which convicted him heard he had bought an axe the day before he was due to meet ‘Eva’ at Ashford railway station – and then went to meet the train.

And it was told he had stored vile images of children next to an oven on his computer and had smothered a former work colleague with dry cleaning fluid in what police believe was a botched attempt to sexually assault her.

He was arrested at his home in Davidson Road, Canterbury in 2013 after an FBI investigation in America into internet chats about rape, murder and cannibalism.

Bolinger’s email address – meatmarketman@rocketmail.com – was one of those probed by police and found on a website called Dark Fetish Network.

It was there he began chatlogs with a number of people interested in the sinister world of rape, slavery and cannibalism.

Speaking at the hearing on Thursday, NMC panel chair Brian Yates said: "The panel had no doubt that Mr Bolinger's convictions were fundamentally incompatible with his continuing to be a registered nurse.

"The panel concluded that a striking-off order is the only sanction which is sufficient to protect the public and satisfy the wider public interest, and that public confidence in the professions and the NMC can only be sustained if Mr Bolinger is removed from the register.

"The panel was in no doubt that Mr Bolinger had breached fundamental tenets of the profession and brought the profession into disrepute. He was, and remains, a clear danger to the public."

Bolinger will be able to apply for his name to be re-added to the NMC register in five years.

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