‘Killers barbecued a chicken while they burned corpse of their nanny'
‘He could hear Sophie screaming’
A COUPLE tortured their French nanny in the bath before burning her body in the garden and barbecuing chicken to mask the smell, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.
Fashion designer Sabrina Kouider, 35, ‘beguiled’ her boyfriend Ouissem ‘Sam’ Medouni, 40, into joining her in a programme of ‘intimidation, torture and violence’ against the shy and quiet au pair Sophie Lionnet, 21, it is claimed.
A child was in the flat listening as the pair barked questions at their gasping victim while repeatedly dunking her head under the water, the murder trial heard.
A ‘harrowing’ video of the nanny was also shown, made by the pair hours before they allegedly killed her. They then burned her body in the garden in the early afternoon last September. Miss Lionnet’s mother Catherine Devallonne cried yesterday as she heard recorded extracts from more than eight hours of ‘interrogations’ of her daughter by mother-of-two Kouider and Medouni.
The court has been told that the pair forced the nanny to ‘confess’ to helping Kouider’s ex-boyfriend – Boyzone founder and singer Mark Walton – drug and sexually abuse the entire family in their £650,000 rented flat in Wimbledon, south London, and invite ‘fellow paedophiles’ to join in.
The sexual abuse allegations had no basis in truth, said prosecutor Richard Horwell, QC, but Kouider and Medouni were clearly obsessed with them, and with terrifying Miss Lionnet into ‘confessing’.
They accused her of being a paedophile herself, and of having sex with the pop star. They recorded their interrogations for use against Mr Walton, who lives in Los Angeles. He had never met the nanny and there is no suggestion he is involved in any wrongdoing.
Kouider and Medouni, both French nationals, have admitted perverting the course of justice by burning the nanny – but deny murder.
Mr Horwell told the jury key evidence would come from a child who was outside the bathroom in the small two-bed garden flat while Miss Lionnet was ‘being subjected to violence, perhaps more appropriately described as torture’, within a couple of days of her death.
Mr Horwell said: ‘He could hear the voices of both Kouider and Medouni – and Sophie screaming, and lots of splashing. He kept on hearing Sophie go under the water, and Kouider and Medouni would then say “breathe”. He could see water flowing out of the room.
‘Kouider told the boy she was not letting Sophie out of the bath until she told the truth.’
Shortly after, Miss Lionnet disappeared – leaving Kouider ‘much calmer and happier’.
In one of the recordings played in court, Kouider could be heard screaming at Miss Lionnet, accus-
ing her of being a ‘spy’. It was recorded just over a week before the death of the au pair, from Troyes, north-east France.
After the accused pair had secured a ‘confession’, they killed her to stop her retracting it, or out of ‘revenge’, it was claimed.
After her death, it was said the pair tried to burn the body in their tiny back garden, but the blaze lingered for hours with an ‘unusual smell’, leading one of their neighbours to call 999.
When firemen turned the ashes with a spade, they discovered human remains, but Medouni told them it was a sheep, claiming to have bought it from Wimbledon market.
The case continues.