I’m sorry I tortured and murdered you
Killer’s bizarre letter to her victim as she is jailed for life
A MOTHER who tortured her French nanny to death before burning the body has written a macabre letter to her victim to apologise for killing her.
Sabrina Kouider and her boyfriend Ouissem Medouni were both jailed for life with a minimum of 30 years at the Old Bailey yesterday for the murder of Sophie Lionnet, 21.
The pair were caught trying to burn Miss Lionnet’s body at their flat in Southfields, south-west London, last September.
But as she was sentenced yesterday, Kouider, 35, claimed she had ‘shared many good times’ with the nanny and she was ‘shocked and sad’ that she had died. In a letter addressed ‘Dear Sophie’, Kouider wrote: ‘May peace be with you. First of all I wish everyone, especially her parents and family well – all are suffering.
‘How deeply sorry I am for what happened and in fact we shared many good times. Sophie, I am shocked and sad that you are not part of this world any more. It feels like a horrible dream to me that I wish I could just wake up from.
‘I wish I could turn the clock back on what happened and you could still be alive today.’
The fashion designer’s bizarre apology came as her victim’s father Patrick Lionnet, said what the couple did to his shy and reserved daughter was ‘beyond comprehension’ and ‘unforgivable’.
Miss Lionnet’s mother, Catherine Devallonne, told the court: ‘These self-obsessed individuals who murdered Sophie did not believe Sophie had a value. Those monsters repeatedly beat Sophie.
‘They starved, tortured and broke her until she could no longer fight. They took away her dignity and finally her life painfully ebbed away until Sophie struggled to take her final terrified breath in the bath.’
After the couple’s arrest, police discovered more than eight hours of recorded ‘interrogations’ during which they slapped and humiliated Miss Lionnet, forcing her to make false confessions about Kouider’s ex, the music mogul and one of the founding members of pop group Boyzone, Mark Walton. They hoped to use her claims to blackmail him.
Miss Lionnet was beaten with an electrical cable so badly she had five fractured ribs and a cracked breast bone by the time she was drowned in the bath on September 19. Throughout the trial, Kouider and Medouni, 40, blamed each other for the murder.
Miss Lionnet, from Troyes, north-eastern France, was employed by Kouider after flying to the UK to improve her English in 2016. But she was detained in the couple’s flat and forbidden to return to France unless she admitted she was conspiring and sleeping with Mr Walton – whom the nanny had never actually met.
Defending Kouider, Icah Peart QC said her delusional disorder and emotionally unstable personality disorder had caused her ‘irrational and completely overwhelming fear’ that Miss Lionnet had been recruited by her former partner.
Orlando Pownall QC, defending Medouni, said the former banker had been ‘indoctrinated’ by a woman with the capacity for ‘sudden and extreme violence’.
Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC said the allegations levelled against ‘kind, gentle and good-natured’ Miss Lionnet were a ‘complete fiction’. He told the couple: ‘The suffering and the torture you put her through before her death was prolonged and without pity.’
‘I wish I could turn the clock back’