Three jailed for life after murdering woman ‘slave’

THREE people have been jailed for life for the murder of a vulnerable woman who was tortured, starved and battered to death.

Shakira Spencer, 35, died after falling under the influence of her former neighbour Ashana Studholme, 39, her lover Shaun Pendlebury, 26, and their friend Lisa Richardson, 45. The trio, from west London, “treated her like a slave”, scalded her feet and fed her only ketchup from sachets, the Old Bailey was told.

Yesterday, Studholme, Pendlebury and Richardson were each ordered to serve minimum terms of 34 years. In an impact statement to the court, Ms Spencer’s son, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: “I cannot get the horrible image of my mother looking skinny and unwell out of my head.” He called the three “heartless” and said they were “cruel and evil – they do not deserve to live a normal happy life again.”

Sentencing the trio, Judge Angela Rafferty KC said Studholme, Pendlebury and Richardson inflicted an “orgy of violence” on Ms Spencer, who was routinely and continually humiliated, degraded and dehumanised. She said: “Images of Shakira before she fell under your influence show her full of life, healthy and smiling – she is unrecognisable at the end, emaciated and broken.”

Ms Spencer’s body was found decomposed on September 25 2022 after neighbours saw maggots coming from her flat in Ealing, London, and called police. The mother-of-two had been isolated and forced into sex work in the months leading up to her death, it was claimed during the trial. In early 2021 she was reportedly a “healthy” size 16, but was “gaunt and skeletal” by July 2022.

> Shakira Spencer, pictured in 2007