‘Monsters’ jailed for killing nanny over Boyzone fixation
A COUPLE who killed their French nanny over a bizarre obsession with an ex-Boyzone pop star were branded “monsters” as they were convicted of murder.
Sabrina Kouider ( 35) and 40-year-old Ouissem Medouni built a warped fantasy around music mogul Mark Walton and accused Sophie Lionnet of being in league with him.
Having beaten, imprisoned and then tortured the shy 21-year-old to death at their home near Wimbledon, they threw her body on a bonfire, the Old Bailey heard.
Fashion designer Kouider collapsed in tears and her banker husband Medouni hung his head as a jury found them guilty of murder after nearly 30 hours of deliberations.
Miss Lionnet’s mother, Catherine Devallonne, wept as Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC said the defendants’ claims about her daughter contained “no truth whatsoever”.
Mrs Devallonne said: “They took away her dignity and finally her life painfully ebbed away until Sophie struggled to take her
From left: Sabrina Kouider, Ouissem Medouni, and a photo of Sophie Lionnet taken two days before she died
final terrified breath in the bath. Our Sophie will soon be laid to rest. No god will ever forgive you both for what you have done to our daughter.”
Kouider was fixated with her ex-boyfriend Mr Walton, and Medouni bought into the fantasy.
Over five years, Kouider reported the wealthy musician to
police more than 30 times and received a caution for branding him a paedophile on a fake Facebook profile.
She also accused him of sex- ually abusing a cat using black magic and hiring a helicopter to spy on her.
Jurors heard hours of recordings in which Miss Lionnet was slapped, likened to a Nazi collaborator and called “worse than a murderer”.
In her final days, she was hit with an electrical cable and beaten so badly she had five broken ribs and a cracked breast bone.
In a filmed ‘confession’, the emaciated and broken young woman admitted she had drugged Medouni so Mr Walton could sexually assault him. Within hours, she was dead, having been tortured in the bath.
Afterwards, the defendants tried to get away with murder by burning her body in their garden.