Mother ‘begged captors to let nanny go home’
THE mother of a French nanny who was thrown on to a bonfire after being tortured and murdered had begged her daughter’s captors to release her before her death, a court heard yesterday.
It is claimed that Sabrina Kouider, 35, killed Sophie Lionnet, 21, after accusing her of sleeping with Ms Kouider’s ex-boyfriend, former Boyzone star Mark Walton.
Ms Kouider and her unemployed boyfriend Ouissem Medouni, 40, held Ms Lionnet underwater in the bath until she admitted to false claims that she had plotted against her with star, the court heard. A witness at the house in Wimbledon, southwest London, said he saw Ms Kouider attacking the nanny and heard ‘screaming and splashing’.
Ms Lionnet’s mother Catherine Devallonne, 49, told French police on September 23 last year that Ms Kouider called her in August – and that she begged her to send her daughter home.
Ms Kouider refused to let the nanny go until she ‘told the truth’, the London court heard.
Mrs Devallonne said: ‘I begged her to let my daughter come back home, she told me she would do it as soon as my daughter told her where she had been.
‘She told me she thought of my daughter as her little sister, she wanted to protect her. She would not tell me anything else.’
Speaking of Ms Lionnet’s departure for London, Mrs Devallonne said: ‘As for me, I was not so happy because she was going very far off. For Sophie it seemed to be an adventure, she seemed very happy regarding this prospect... My daughter was fragile and beautiful and I wanted to protect her.’
Mrs Devallonne also told police that Sophie was ‘naive’.
Meanwhile, a witness, who cannot be named, said he could hear ‘screaming and splashing’ coming from the couple’s Wimbledon home on the night Ms Lionnet was allegedly being tortured by the couple.
Mr Walton, who founded Boyzone while at school with Shane Lynch and later recruited Louis Walsh as manager, told the court his relationship with Ms Kouider was the ‘most turbulent’ he’d ever had, and that she would often accuse him of abuse he never committed.
Ms Medouni and Mr Kouider both deny murder but admit perverting the course of justice by burning the body. The trial continues at the Old Bailey.