Sly murderess who could bewitch men with one look
in a vain bid to disguise the shocking smell.
Anxious about the thick clouds of smoke, neighbours dialled 999 and firefighters found Sophie’s remains.
French nationals Kouider and Medouni blamed each other for Sophie’s murder.
But after 29 hours of deliberation, jurors at the Old Bailey yesterday found them both guilty.
Kouider, dressed in black, collapsed in tears as her unanimous guilty verdict was announced.
Medouni wept quietly as he was WITH her alluring dark eyes and her long, jet black hair, nanny killer Sabrina Kouider had the power to make men fall for her with a look.
“There was something bewitching about Sabrina when it came to men,” said a former friend. “She could be enchanting, charming and very sexy.
“Men would quite literally fall under her spell.”
Kouider claimed she ran a fashion design business but does not appear to have made a living out of it.
“We’ve all heard the rumours she slept with rich men for money,” the former friend said.
Kouider was born in December 1982 in El Attaf, northern Algeria.
A few years later, her parents and sister escaped the region’s growing civil conflict and moved to Paris.
In 1990 Kouider, who had stayed with relatives in a safe area of Algeria, joined her parents in the French capital but found life there “very difficult”.
After secondary school the would- be fashion designer went on a two- year business management course.
From the moment he saw her at a Paris funfair in 2001, Ouissem Medouni was besotted with 18- yearold Kouider.
Eventually, the 22- yearold economics student plucked up the courage to convicted by a 10- 2 majority. The pair had admitted perverting the course of justice by burning Sophie’s body.
They now face life in jail when they are sentenced next month.
A naive country girl from Troyes, north- east France, Sophie went to live with Kouider and Medouni in January 2016.
She was beaten, abused in public, prevented from going home and hardly paid a penny, the court heard.
Kouider became fixated with the ring her up. The couple had their first date at a McDonald’s in Paris.
Besotted, Kouider proposed several times.
She casually told him she would “think about it”. Over drinks with friends later, Medouni was horrified to learn one of them was sleeping with Kouider as well.
That betrayal was just the start, but nothing could cool Medouni’s devotion. He followed her to England in 2005 and they shared a London flat.
In 2011 Kouider cast her spell over boy band Boyzone founder Mark Walton.
The wealthy music promoter was instantly besotted when she smiled at him in the lobby of a NatWest bank in Notting Hill, west London.
“I had to find out who she was and followed her and her friend when they went to a restaurant,” Mr Walton recalled.
The fateful meeting was the start of a turbulent, two- year affair which ended when Kouider created a disturbing fantasy, with the boy band pioneer as an evil villain.
In Kouider’s warped mind Sophie was his accomplice – a delusion that led to vicious torture and murder. idea that Sophie was Mr Walton’s lover and accomplice in a series of despicable crimes.
The most bizarre was the entirely false allegation that Sophie had let the music presenter and another man into the flat where they drugged and sexually abused the couple while they were unconscious.
Mrs Devallonne said yesterday: “Sophie had only just started to live, her life had only just begun.
“No one had the right to take it away. Sophie’s precious life, it was not theirs to take.” Speaking of the killers, she added: “No one, no God will ever forgive you for the lies you have told this court, for the prolonged pain and hurt you have both inflicted on our little girl.
“You are equally as evil another.”
Mrs Devallonne, who separated from Mr Lionnet when Sophie was four, said her life is a “living nightmare” as she imagines her daughter’s horrific death every day.
She has kept Sophie’s bedroom as a shrine.
Gardener Mr Lionnet told how he as one