Jailed nanny killer sent letter of apology to victim she tortured
A WOMAN who tortured and murdered her nanny before burning her body has written her a bizarre letter saying she is shocked she is dead.
Sabrina Kouider wrote the letter from prison in which she apologised for killing Sophie Lionnet, adding that she wished she could “turn back the clock”.
However, a judge at the Old Bailey yesterday rejected her claims of remorse, and jailed her and Ouissem Medouni, her partner, for a minimum of 30 years each.
The court heard that Kouider, a 35-year-old fashion designer, suffered from a psychotic disorder and convinced her infatuated 40-year-old lover that their nanny was plotting with Mark Walton, a founder of the band Boyzone, to destroy them.
Miss Lionnet, 21, suffered waterboarding and beatings, and her body was dumped on a bonfire before her killers prepared a barbecue at their home in Wimbledon, south-west London.
In a letter read out to the London court, Kouider wrote: “Dear Sophie, 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 am suffering every day thinking of you and what happened to you and I wish I could turn the clock back on what happened and you could still be alive today. Sophie I wish things could have been different and that you rest in peace with a God.”
When Miss Lionnet’s body was discovered in September last year, firefighters were convinced it was that of a small child because she was so emaciated after weeks of starvation. She had five fractured ribs and a cracked breast bone. Kouider had become obsessed with Mr Walton after a “very turbulent” two-year relationship which ended around 2013. She embarked on a campaign to ruin him before becoming paranoid that her “shy and timid” nanny was conspiring with him.
In a psychotic condition known as a “folie à deux” – or “madness of two” – Kouider and Medouni, a former banker, began to reinforce each other’s fantasy world. They were found guilty of her murder following a trial.
Jailing them for life, Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC said the killers had created a “complete fiction” about Miss Lionnet, whom they tortured in her final hours to make a “confession” about working with Mr Walton to undermine them.
He told them: “I’m sure on all the evidence you were both involved in torturing Sophie in the bath in the leadup to her death in making her think she would drown unless you gave her information you wanted, which was not in her power to give because it did not exist. The suffering and the torture you put her through before her death was prolonged and without pity.”
He added that Kouider was motivated by an unjustified desire to make Miss Lionnet and Mr Walton “suffer”.