Cold case solved after 30 years thanks to bloody footprint

A 30-year-old cold-case murder near the fictional home of Sherlock Holmes was solved after detectives traced the killer’s bloody footprint at the scene of the crime.

Sandip Patel, who ran errands for his father’s newsagent Sherlock Holmes News on Baker Street, in central London, stabbed Marina Koppel, a prostitute, more than 140 times in her rented flat in nearby Chiltern Street on August 8, 1994.

The 21-year-old student’s finger marks were found on a carrier bag in Koppel’s kitchen but he was not treated as a suspect at the time.

He was charged with her murder after his DNA was matched to hair on the victim’s ring and he was linked by a bloody footprint on a skirting board.

During the attack, he forced Koppel to give up her pin number and used the bank card to withdraw money near his home, it was alleged.

Patel, now 51, had denied murder but declined to give evidence in his defence. The jury took three hours and 10 minutes to find him guilty.

Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC said little was known of Koppel’s last movements.

On the evening of August 7 1994, she had entered a poker tournament at the Victoria Sporting Club casino and met a client at a Heathrow hotel before returning to London.

The mother-of-two’s last known sighting was a visit to Midland Bank on Baker Street at 1.42pm the following day.

That evening, her husband returned to her flat near Baker Street Tube station to find his wife had been murdered.

Emlyn Jones said she had been stabbed more than 140 times during the “sustained and savage” attack.

He told jurors: “Marina Koppel was brutally murdered.

“It has taken a terribly long time to solve it, but we now have evidence that she had this defendant’s hair stuck to the ring she was wearing when she was attacked and killed; and his bare foot was pressed against the skirting board next to her.

“And that, the prosecution say, can only be because it was him who killed her all those years ago.”

Even though Patel’s finger marks were found on an unbranded plastic bag in the kitchen, he was not treated as a suspect because he would have likely handled bags from nearby Sherlock Holmes News.

Patel only became a confirmed suspect in 2022 after his DNA was matched to a hair found by a scientist on the ring in 2008.

Although technology was still not advanced enough then for scientists to get a DNA profile, it was preserved until 2022 and re-examined.

The bloody footprint was found at the scene in 1994 and matched to Patel after he was made a suspect, the prosecutor said.

Following his arrest, Patel denied knowing the victim but said he would run errands for his father. He was rearrested in 2023 after his footprint was identified and answered “no comment” to questions.

David Koppel died in 2005, never discovering who murdered his wife.

Members of the victim’s family, Mary and Martin Koppel, said: “Marina Koppel, our sister-in-law, was an extremely bright, highly intelligent and charismatic person, who saw good in her family and all people she met.

“She wanted to give them everything they needed, especially her two children and nephew who grew up in Colombia.

“Her family and friends would have been in a much better place because of her abundance of energy for life had she not died.

“Marina was a daughter, a sister, a mother, a loving aunt, a daughter-inlaw and a sister-in-law who was much loved by all of us as she loved all of us.”

Patel was remanded into custody to be sentenced at the Old Bailey today.