London, Sep 25 (IANS): A court in Britain has jailed for nine years a nurse who was found to have a cannibalism fetish, a media report said Thursday.

The Canterbury Crown Court jailed Dale Bolinger, 58, after he was found guilty in July this year of attempting to meet a girl under 16 years of age following sexual grooming on the internet, and planning to behead and eat her.

He bought an axe the day before he was due to meet the girl, police said.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating internet chats about rape, killing and cannibalism of women when they came across an email address being used by Bolinger for accessing the online Dark Fetish Network (DFN).

The chat logs were passed on to detectives in Britain who arrested him in Feb 2013 at the hospital where he worked.

The court heard that Bolinger later told the police that he found children interesting as a food source. He also had a computer disc having an image of a girl on a serving plate with an apple in her mouth.

The judge termed as "abhorrent, shocking and dangerous" the behaviour of Bolinger, who also admitted to other charges including trying to poison a friend, making indecent pseudo photographs of children and publishing an obscene article.