LONDON: A UK judge on Friday jailed for 42 years a man who decapitated and dismembered two people before dumping their bodies in suitcases on a landmark UK bridge.
Colombian national Yostin Mosquera murdered Albert Alfonso, 62, who was originally from France, and Paul Longworth, 71, last year at a flat the couple shared in west London where he had been staying with them.
A court earlier this year found the 35-year-old guilty of murdering both men.
Sentencing him to life with a minimum term of 42 years, Judge Joel Bennathan said the murders had been “premeditated and thoroughly wicked.”
“It was their tragedy that you, Yostin Mosquera, came into their lives,” he said, adding he was “sure” Mosquera had intended to try to sell their flat after killing them.
Mosquera filmed himself having sex with Alfonso and stabbing him to death after killing Longworth, who was struck with a hammer on the back of the head, prosecutors told the court earlier.
Police found the couple’s severed heads in a freezer at the flat, while Mosquera took their bodies to the southwestern city of Bristol in two suitcases where he left them on the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
An analysis of Mosquera’s computer showed he had looked up the value of the couple’s west London home, copied documents containing Alfonso’s online banking details, and searched the web for “serial killers of London” and “Jack the Ripper film.”
Alfonso, a swimming instructor, and Longworth, a retired maintenance worker, became civil partners in 2023.
Judge Bennathan described Alfonso as “a hardworking man who had shown (Mosquera) kindness and generosity.”
Longworth was a “harmless, amiable person who had done (the defendant) no wrong,” he added during a sentencing hearing at London’s Woolwich Crown Court.
After the killing, Mosquera traveled to Bristol where a cyclist spotted him on the bridge with a large red suitcase and a silver trunk.
Questioned by bridge staff about something leaking from the red suitcase, Mosquera told them it was oil.
When they shone their torches on the suitcases, he fled.
Bennathan said he was sure the defendant’s aim had been to “throw the cases full of body parts off the bridge in an attempt to dispose of them.”
Mosquera received two life terms which will be served concurrently along with a 16-month sentence for possessing child pornography.
Killer who dumped bodies in suitcases jailed for 42 years
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Killer who dumped bodies in suitcases jailed for 42 years
- Sentencing him to life with a minimum term of 42 years, Judge Joel Bennathan said the murders had been “premeditated and thoroughly wicked“
- Mosquera took their bodies to the southwestern city of Bristol in two suitcases
Greek coast guard search for 15 after migrant boat found adrift
- The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water
ATHENS: Greek coast guard were on Monday searching for 15 people who fell into the water from a migrant boat that was found drifting off the coast of Crete with 17 bodies on board.
The 17 fatalities, all of them men, were discovered on Saturday on the craft, which was taking on water and partially deflated, some 26 nautical miles (48 kilometers) southwest of the island.
Post-mortem examinations were being carried out to determine how they died but Greek public television channel ERT suggested they may have suffered from hypothermia or dehydration.
A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told AFP that two survivors reported that “15 people fell in the water” after the motor cut out on Thursday, then the vessel drifted for two days.
At the time, Crete and much of the rest of Greece was battered by heavy rain and storms.
The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water.
The vessel had 34 people on board and had left the Libyan port of Tobruk on Wednesday, the Greek port authorities said. Most of those who died came from Sudan and Egypt.
It was initially spotted by a Turkish-flagged cargo ship on Saturday, triggering a search that included ships and aircraft from the Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex.
Migrants have been trying to reach Crete from Libya for the last year, as a way of entering the European Union. But the Mediterranean crossing is perilous.
In Brussels, the EU’s 27 members on Monday backed a significant tightening of immigration policy, including the concept of returning failed asylum-seekers to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The UN refugee agency said more than 16,770 asylum seekers in the EU have arrived on Crete since the start of the year — more than any other island in the Aegean Sea.
Greece’s conservative government has also toughened its migration policy, suspending asylum claims for three months, particularly those coming to Crete from Libya.
