The Mammoth Book of New Csi (29 page)

An inventory of the crime scene revealed that two Sony PSP games consoles and the victim’s mobile phones and bank cards were missing. Six days earlier the flat had been burgled and a laptop computer had been stolen. On that occasion, the burglar had fled after he was disturbed by Bonomo, who heard a noise while he was in the shower. Police believed the earlier burglary could be linked to the double murder as forensic experts had found no evidence of forced entry, suggesting that a stolen set of keys may have been used.

The robbers had returned at 5.30 a.m. on 29 June, overpowered and bound the two victims, then demanded their bank cards and PIN numbers. The two students thought it best to cooperate. The thieves managed to withdraw £360 from an ATM using Bonomo’s card, but when they tried to take money from Ferez’s account at around 7.22 a.m., the cash machine retained the card. It had blood on it. They returned to the flat to take “revenge” on the French students.

Twenty-three-year-old Daniel “Dano” Sonnex, a wanted criminal who had been left at large in error, was seen on CCTV withdrawing cash from an ATM using one of the stolen bank cards. His palmprint was also found on the frame of a foldaway bed at the crime scene.

An artist’s impression of another suspect, seen running from Sterling Gardens just after 10 p.m. on the night of the fire, was circulated. He was described as “white, thirty to forty years of age, of slight or slim build and wearing a light-coloured baseball cap, a dark top with the word ‘Junfan’ on, blue jeans and white trainers”.

Soon after, Sonnex’s flatmate, thirty-three-year-old Nigel Edward Farmer, handed himself in to the police in Lewisham and confessed to being the killer. He had third-degree burns to his face and hands, but was told by a civilian worker at the police station that he must wait his turn.

Twenty-seven-year-old Lucy Downer, who was sitting in the police station with the man while waiting to pay a motoring fine, said: “We were sitting on a row of seats when this skinny bloke walked in. He looked really out of it. His hands were bright red and his face was peeling badly. There were booths just to the right of the front door and he went into the first one and spoke with a reception officer. Then he came back out, sat down next to my cousin and started looking at her very strangely. I got a bit worried and changed places with her. Then this bloke got out a tub of antiseptic cream and rubbed it into his hands for the next few minutes. He then stood up, put his hands in the air and said: ‘I’ve got third-degree fucking burns and they are not doing anything about it.’”

Ms Downer said she asked the man to repeat what he had said and then mouthed the word “help” to a nearby policeman. She added: “The guy could have had second thoughts about giving himself up and scarpered at any point. He was off his head but he looked like he was very serious about what he said.”

Police took him to hospital before questioning him. Farmer was then charged with two counts of murder, arson and attempting to pervert the course of justice by destroying the crime scene. As it was, the crime scene investigation took several weeks.

Two days later, armed police arrested Sonnex at his brother’s council house in Deptford, south-east London, just ten minutes’ walk from the scene of the crime, after his brother had gone to the police. The police alert described Sonnex as being 6 ft 3 in. (1.90 m) tall and “extremely dangerous”. He had a previous conviction for inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent for a stabbing he carried out at the age of sixteen.

As helicopters hovered overhead, officers smashed their way into the house at 3.40 a.m., screaming at neighbours: “Keep away from your windows.” Sonnex was charged with murder and perverting the course of justice.

Farmer was a drug addict who had checked into a psychiatric hospital in Woolwich a month before the murders but left after four days, complaining about not getting the “right help”.

The prosecutor, Crispin Aylett QC, told the jury at the Old Bailey: “What the firemen found was a scene of almost unimaginable horror.”

“To take revenge for the fact that they had been unable to steal money from Mr Ferez, both men were murdered in a way that can only be described as inhuman,” he said. “The two men, dressed only in their underpants, had been tied up. They had been bound at the ankles and the wrists. Their heads had been wrapped with towels. They had been subjected to an attack of brutal and sustained ferocity . . . Both of them had been repeatedly stabbed in the head. In some instances, a knife had been used with such force that the skull had been penetrated and damage caused to the brain.”

The jury were told to brace themselves before being shown the crime scene photographs.

The prosecution said that the defendants had left at around 8.15 a.m., after subjecting the students to an ordeal that had lasted nearly three hours. Bonomo, Farmer said later, “just wouldn’t die”. That evening he had returned to the flat to set it on fire.

Sonnex and Farmer denied murder, arson, false imprisonment and trying to pervert the course of justice. However, Sonnex pleaded guilty to burglary at the property on the same date as the murders, admitting taking a bank card, credit card, the two Sony PSP games consoles and two mobile phones. Farmer denied the burglary.

On 4 June 2009, they were both found guilty of murder. Sonnex was sentenced to life, serving a minimum of forty years in prison. Farmer was told he would serve at least thirty-five years.

In sentencing, trial judge Mr Justice Saunders said: “I am satisfied that the only possible reason for the number of stab wounds is that the killings were sadistic. The killers got pleasure from what they were doing.”

Sonnex should have been in prison at the time of the murders but had been set free due to a series of administrative errors. He had been jailed for a previous knife attack and had been released on licence. In a robbery in 2007, he had chained up his half-sister Louise Shine, who was pregnant, and her boyfriend Robert Sentongo and threatened them with various weapons to extort money. If they had made a formal complaint he would have been returned to jail. As it was, he was given a verbal warning by his probation officer instead.

He was then bailed for handling stolen goods when he should have been remanded in custody by magistrates. Further blunders delayed his recall to prison, and it took thirty-three days for the administrative process to be completed. It was a further sixteen days before the police went to Sonnex’s house to arrest him. By that time the two young French students were dead.

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12.13
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13 June 1994, a black-and-white patrol car carrying Officers Robert Riske and Miguel Terrazas arrived at 875 South Bundy Drive in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, California. The off-white stucco, three-level condominium was the home of Nicole Brown Simpson, ex-wife of pro-football star, actor and TV sports presenter O. J. Simpson. Nicole and O. J. had divorced two years earlier.

As the two policemen approached the house, they saw a large pool of blood. It came from the body of a female, later identified as Nicole Brown Simpson. She lay about 15 ft (4.7 m) from the sidewalk with her back towards the steps to her front door. The left side of her face was pressed against the walkway. She was wearing a short black dress. Nicole had been stabbed multiple times through the throat to the point she had nearly been decapitated, with her vertebrae almost severed. Blood from the wounds drenched her entire body.

Shortly after, the officers discovered the body of a male, later identified as waiter, part-time model and would-be actor, Ronald Goldman, behind an agapanthus bush to Simpson’s right. He was fully clothed and lay sprawled out on his right side against the garden fence. His eyes were open. His light-brown shirt and blue jeans were saturated in blood and his body perforated with stab wounds. In between Goldman and Simpson lay a beeper, a knitted cap, a set of keys, a bloody left-hand glove and a white envelope. Bloody footprints and blood drops led away from the bodies to the back of the property.

After establishing that both victims were dead, Riske and Terrazas radioed for backup. Within minutes, Sergeant Martin Coon and Officers Edward McGowan and Richard Walker arrived and secured the crime scene. At 12.45 a.m., paramedics from a nearby fire station arrived and confirmed that the man and woman lying near the entrance of the condominium were dead. By then, Riske had established that the woman was probably Nicole Brown Simpson, the owner of the townhouse. Upstairs, they found her two young children, five-year-old Justin and eight-year-old Sydney, still fast asleep. The officers woke them and got them dressed, then arranged for them to be taken to the West Los Angeles Division where they would wait until they were collected by a family member. An animal control officer picked up Nicole’s Akita dog, Kato, which first alerted neighbours to the slaughter. It was taken to a pound in West Los Angeles.

At 2.10 a.m., West Los Angeles Division Homicide Detective Supervisor Ron Phillips arrived at South Bundy Drive, accompanied by Detective Mark Fuhrman. They made a visual inspection of the crime scene. Fuhrman’s partner Brad Roberts logged in at 2.30 a.m. on the sign-in sheet set up by Officer Terrazas. There were eighteen police officers on the scene by this time. A police photographer arrived at 3.25 a.m.

Detective Phillips was notified that the investigation had been handed over to the Homicide Special Section of the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division. Division Head Captain William O. Gartland assigned Detectives Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter as the lead investigators. They arrived at the crime scene at 4.05 and 4.25 a.m. respectively.

Detective Phillips briefed Vannatter and walked him through the crime scene. They saw the set of keys, dark-blue knit cap, beeper, blood-spattered white envelope and bloodstained leather glove lying under the agapanthus plant only a few inches from Nicole’s body and the trail of blood that led towards the back of the property.

Commander Keith Bushey, chief of operations for the LAPD West Bureau, sent word that they should contact O. J. Simpson in person to make arrangements to collect his children. Fuhrman mentioned that, as a patrol officer, he had visited the Simpson residence in Rockingham Avenue, which was about 2 miles (3.2 km) away. On that occasion, back in 1985, the newly married Nicole, pregnant with her first child, had called the police. Simpson had attacked her car with a baseball bar, but no charges were brought by Nicole or the police.

Detectives Fuhrman, Roberts, Lange and Vannatter drove over to the Simpson residence, but no one answered the entry phone. Fuhrman drew Lange’s attention to blood on the driver’s door of Simpson’s white Ford Bronco. Fearing that Simpson had also become victim of murder, Fuhrman climbed over the stone wall and unlocked the gate from the inside. At 5.45 a.m., the four detectives walked up to the front door, rang the bell and started knocking. Getting no response, they walked around the side of the property to a row of three guest houses. In the first one, they roused Brian “Kato” Kaelin, a bit-part actor and family friend who was a house guest – the children had named the dog after Kaelin. In the next bungalow, they woke an attractive young woman who identified herself as Arnelle Simpson, Simpson’s daughter from his first marriage. With the help of Kaelin and Arnelle Simpson, they traced Simpson to the Chicago O’Hare Plaza Hotel. Phillips called Simpson there and told him of the murders. Apparently distraught at the news, Simpson said that he would catch the next available flight back to Los Angeles.

At 6.21 a.m., Lange called Nicole’s parents to break the news. In the background, he heard a woman’s voice screaming and wailing: “O. J. did it! O. J. killed her! I knew that son of a bitch was going to kill her!”The voice belonged to Denise, Nicole’s sister.

A few moments later, Detective Fuhrman returned to the house after an absence of ten or fifteen minutes. He led Vannatter out into the garden to show him, on the leaf-covered walkway behind the guest house occupied by Kato Kaelin, a bloodstained leather glove like the one in the garden back at South Bundy Drive. Vannatter found more blood and decided that the Rockingham Avenue estate qualified as another crime scene.

At 7 a.m., Fuhrman returned with his partner and a police photographer who had been shooting at the South Bundy crime scene. At 7.10 a.m., Dennis Fung, a LAPD criminalist, and his assistant, Andrea Mazzola, arrived to begin the collection and documentation of evidence. Leaving Fuhrman in charge of the Rockingham Avenue crime scene, Vannatter returned to join Lange at South Bundy, then went to West Los Angeles station to prepare a warrant to enter, search and seize any relevant evidence at O. J. Simpson’s home.

Inside, investigators found blood spatters in the foyer, master bedroom, the shower and the sink. Among the items taken as evidence was a pair of socks. Much later, bloodstains were discovered on them. Investigators had packaged these socks together rather than individually. Inside the Bronco, they found multiple spatters of blood and a bloody footprint. Two sets of keys to Nicole’s condominium were found in Simpson’s possession. Nicole had reported a set missing a few weeks before the slaying.

At 10.15 a.m., Dennis Fung and his assistant arrived at South Bundy Drive, having completed their work at Simpson’s home. They and the coroner’s investigators completed their examination of Nicole’s body, photographing it from every angle and recording its position relative to all other objects and the other body. Then they turned their attention to Goldman. He was lying on his right side, his body bent at the waist. His face showed scrape marks. Blood from his nose and left ear had dried in crusty rivulets. His light-brown shirt had been pulled up and was bunched around the back, indicating that the killer may have grabbed him and swung him around in the fight. Or, perhaps, he had been killed on the walkway, and then his attacker had dragged his body beneath the bush. He had stab wounds to his body and upper left thigh, and his throat appeared to have been slashed. In the back pocket of his jeans, they found his driver’s licence, giving them a positive ID.