Nanny’s killers had psychotic fantasy
A couple are facing life behind bars for torturing and murdering their French nanny then burning her body after descending into a fantasy world revolving around a perverted obsession with a former pop star. Suffering from a psychotic disorder known as a “folie à deux” – or a “madness of two” – Sabrina Kouider convinced Ouissem Medouni, her infatuated lover, that their nanny was plotting with Mark Walton, a founder of the band Boyzone, to destroy them.
A COUPLE are facing life behind bars for torturing, murdering and then burning the body of their French nanny after descending into a fantasy world revolving around a perverted obsession with a former pop star.
Suffering from a psychotic disorder known as a “folie à deux” – or “madness of two” – Sabrina Kouider convinced her infatuated lover, Ouissem Medouni, that their nanny was plotting with Mark Walton, a founder of the band Boyzone, to destroy them.
Sophie Lionnet, 21, was subjected to waterboarding and beatings before her body was dumped on a bonfire. After pouring nail polish remover on the blaze to keep it alight, Kouider, 35, and Medouni, 40, calmly cooked chicken on a barbecue.
When neighbours in Wimbledon, south-west London, smelt burning human flesh and raised the alarm, firemen arrived but were convinced Miss Lionnet’s remains were that of a small child because she was so emaciated from weeks of starvation.
The couple, convicted at the Old Bailey yesterday following a two-month trial, were branded by Ms Lionnet’s family as “monsters” whom God could never forgive.
Criminologists now believe it could take years before Kouider, a mother of two, and Medouni, emerge from the warped imaginary world they created.
The court heard how the pair, both born in Algeria but from Paris, had an on-off relationship for 17 years.
However, Kouider dominated her weak and malleable boyfriend, allowing her to pursue other lovers.
In 2011, after moving to London, she had a chance meeting in Notting Hill with Mr Walton, who had become a wealthy music mogul after working with artists including Jennifer Lopez, Shaggy and Enrique Iglesias.
They began what Mr Walton told jurors was “the most turbulent” relationship of his life. Describing how she would “flip and go crazy”, he said her calculating and manipulative character emerged. Once he refused to buy her a present and she stomped around Oxford Street shouting “Mr Boyzone has got no money”. On other occasions, she falsely accused him of taking drugs.
But, in 2012, she left Mr Walton, who continued to offer some financial support for rent, and rekindled her rela- with Medouni, a financial analyst for Société Générale who had followed her to London.
However, when Mr Walton stopped paying her money, her vendetta spun out of control. She reported Mr Walton, who was living in Los Angeles, to police more than 30 times, falsely accusing him of hacking into her phone and emails, spying on her from a helicopter, using black magic, sexually abusing a cat and attempting to kill her. She set up a fake Facebook account to post claims he was a paedophile.
While the police saw through her lies, Medouni was so blinded by his love that he too came to inhabit her paranoid fantasy world. On the fateful day Miss Lionnet arrived to work as
their nanny, she unwittingly stepped into a home where Kouider and Medouni had lost any grasp on reality.
Kouider, who claimed to be a fashion designer but was really on state benefits, pretended to know Donald Trump and powerful people in Hollywood, including Leonardo Dicaprio and Tom Cruise.
In a letter Miss Lionnet wrote to Catherine Devallonne, her mother, she admitted being a “stupid idiot” for being “fooled” by their absurd claims.
By then, it was too late. Her attempts to leave were repeatedly thwarted as Kouider and Medouni became convinced she too was part of Mr Walton’s “plot” and had been promised fame and fortune in return for spying on them. Jurors heard eight hours of recordings in which she was brutally attacked and told she would be arrested and locked up unless she confessed to colluding with Mr Walton.
In a filmed “confession”, the gaunt woman, who had been starved while held captive for 12 days, finally pretended she had drugged Medouni so Mr Walton could sexually assault him. She had never met Mr Walton.
Her hopes that playing a part in the fantasy would result in her release were mistaken – within hours she was dead. While it may never be known exactly how she died – her remains were too badly burned – it is believed she was tortured in the bath.
Five of her ribs were shattered and she had a cracked breastbone and broken jaw.
In court, an ex-boyfriend had detionship scribed Kouider, held at a secure mental hospital since her arrest, as quite simply a “lunatic”.
She and Medouni admitted disposing of Miss Lionnet’s body in September last year but denied murder. After his arrest, Medouni insisted he delivered the fatal punch while interrogating the nanny in the bath. He offered to admit manslaughter but retracted his confession, saying he had made it to protect Kouider, who suffered a borderline personality disorder.
In court, they blamed each other. The French woman’s mother, Mrs Devallonne, wept as the guilty verdicts were delivered.
She said: “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. No god will ever forgive you both for what you have done to our daughter.”
Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC was at pains to point out that he was convinced the extraordinary allegations the couple made against Miss Lionnet contained “no truth whatsoever”. He will sentence the pair next month.
David Wilson, professor of criminology at Birmingham University, said it could take years for the pair to realise that their shared psychosis was imaginary.