£250,000-a-year banker ‘beat secret vice girl to death with a pestle’
A COCAINE-fuelled City trader bludgeoned an escort to death by hitting her on the head with a kitchen pestle 13 times before strangling her in a “brutal and savage” murder, a court heard yesterday.
A blood-stained bottle of brandy was found by 29-yearold Christina Abbotts’s naked body.
The pestle, also covered in blood, was discarded nearby.
Police, who forced their way into the flat where Ms Abbotts was staying in Crawley, West Sussex, also discovered highflying City financier Zahid Naseem, 48, still in the sitting room “play-acting” as if unconscious, the court heard.
A quantity of cocaine was found close by, along with a meat cleaver and some knives.
Appearing at Lewes Crown Court yesterday, Naseem denied one count of murder.
Prostitutes
The father-of-two had been living with his estranged partner in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, at the time of the killing in May this year.
He had been working as a £250,000-a-year freelance risk trader with Toronto-Dominion Bank in London and had secretly been in touch with a number of prostitutes, the court heard.
Ms Abbotts, a former student of the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester and Oxford Brookes University, had – unbeknown to her family and friends – been working as a high class escort called “Tilly Pexton”, advertising her services on an adult website.
She and Naseem were seen on the day of May 25 – her birthday – buying alcohol before returning to her third-floor flat, the court heard.
When she later failed to turn up to her own party, friends became worried and alerted police, the jury was told.
Prosecutor Christopher Tehrani said: “Naseem murdered Christina Abbotts.
“The assault she suffered, which resulted in her death, was brutal, savage, unnecessary and pointless.”
Mr Tehrani said the defendant met Ms Abbotts six weeks earlier and had been attracted to her profile because she advertised as “privately educated”. He had paid her a total of £3,500 for two previous meetings.
The pair had arranged to see each other in Crawley before her birthday celebrations. They were seen buying alcohol in a nearby shop and when police searched the flat, a bloodstained bottle of Courvoisier brandy, cocaine and poppers were found.
Ms Abbotts’s failure to meet friends to mark her birthday led them to contact police. One, Roshan Periag, was so worried he drove to the flat in the early hours of the morning to try to find her before going to the nearest police station.
When officers broke down the door, Naseem was found lying motionless on the sofa with his eyes flickering. A paramedic was “sceptical” that he was unconscious.
Naseem’s fingerprints were found in blood on the side of the bath, on a meat cleaver and on Ms Abbotts’s iPhone. Mr Tehrani said there was no sign of forced entry and that “only someone with the powers of Spiderman” would have been able to access the flat on the top floor of the block in the Gossops Green area of the West Sussex town.
A post-mortem examination found she died of blunt-forced trauma to the head and there were signs of attempted strangulation on her neck.
Naseem denies murder. The trial continues.
Please complete the coupon, call 0300 303 9876 or visit www.woodgreen.org.uk/urgent
Here’s my gift to save an abandoned animal: