Couple found guilty over death of nanny in case branded 'stranger than fiction'
A delusional couple have been found guilty of killing their French nanny over a bizarre obsession with an ex-Boyzone popstar.
Sabrina Kouider, 35, and Ouissem Medouni, 40, of Wimbledon, south-west London, built a warped fantasy around music mogul Mark Walton and accused Sophie Lionnet of secretly working with him.
Kouider, a fashion designer, was once in a relationship with Mr Walton.
A jury at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales found both of them guilty of the murder following a two-month trial that was described as stranger than fiction.
Kouider collapsed in tears as the jury foreman returned the verdicts, while Medouni hung his head.
Miss Lionnet’s mother Catherine Devallonne also wept as Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC said he was sure the allegations against her daughter had “no truth whatsoever”.
In the weeks leading up to her death in September last year, the couple beat, starved and tortured the shy 21-year-old au pair by dunking her head into water until she confessed.
After the pair killed their nanny, they threw her body on a bonfire in the garden as they barbecued chicken nearby.
When neighbours called firefighters with reports of ‘pungent-smelling smoke’, Medouni tried to pass off the charred remains as a sheep.
The defendants later admitted disposing of her body but denied Miss Lionnet’s murder, blaming each other for her death.
Prosecutor Richard Horwell QC told jurors that neither were prepared to admit the truth – that they killed her out of ‘revenge and punishment’.
He said their ‘unhealthy, myopic, all-consuming and groundless’ obsession with Mr Walton had deprived them of reason and turned their nanny into ‘something less than human’.
The court heard how Kouider was fixated with her ex-boyfriend Mr Walton and would regularly attempt to tarnish his name on social media.
As well as a receiving a caution for branding him a paedophile on a fake Facebook profile, Kouider also accused him of sexually abusing a cat, using black magic and hiring a helicopter to spy on her.
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Giving evidence, LA-based Mr Walton said he had been ‘in love’ with Kouider but she would ‘flip’ and go ‘crazy’ for no reason.
Another ex-boyfriend Anthony Francois described her as a ‘lunatic, fickle and unstable’.
The judge is expected to sentence the pair on June 26.
