TORTURED, STARVED & THROWN ON A BONFIRE
Twisted couple guilty of horrific au pair murder
A COUPLE accused of torturing, murdering and burning their nanny on a bonfire because of a fantasy over an ex-Boyzone star have been found guilty.
The charred glasses of “shy” and “kind” French au pair Sophie Lionnet were found in the garden along with her unrecognisable remains.
Husband and wife Ouissem Medouni, 40, and Sabrina Kouider, 35, tried to blame each other for the killing during a two-month trial in which horrifying details emerged.
Yesterday Kouider sobbed and Medouni hung his head as the guilty verdicts were announced.
Outside the Old Bailey, their victim’s mother, Catherine Devallonne, branded them “monsters”.
She said: “Sophie had only just started to live her life. No one had the right to take it away.”
According to family, Sophie was offered the au pair job after meeting Kouider’s brother in France. She left her sheltered rural home “excited at fulfilling her dreams”.
But a photo taken two days before her body was found showed her frightened, pale and emaciated.
A fish-and-chip shop owner in London who befriended her said she grabbed food as if starving and told him she was beaten.
Kouider had drawn Medouni into a warped fantasy around her ex, music mogul Mark Walton.
She was fixated with the Boyzone founder, with whom she had a child, and thought he had seduced Sophie, 21, with promises of stardom.
The pair beat, starved and interrogated the au pair by dunking her head into water until she confessed to the “crimes”. And after killing her in the bath they threw her on a bonfire at their home near Wimbledon, South West London, as they barbecued chicken nearby. When firefighters arrived they found Medouni pouring caustic soda on the remains on the patio. The Algerian-born pair, who claimed they were cooking a sheep, had scattered chicken on the body in an attempt to disguise the smell. At first self-styled fashion designer Kouider told police she could not remember the surname of the nanny who had cared for her two children, aged eight and four, for 18 months. She then tried to claim Sophie had fled a few days before. Eventually the pair admitted disposing of her body but each blamed the other for her death.