Teen follows own blueprint for murder

I suppose the story really begins some years ago when Bola Adeyoola came to Britain from Nigeria as a child. He later met and married Mercuria, who was born in Barbados. The marriage lasted barely four years but it produced three children. One of these children was a girl named Kemi and it is she who is at the centre of the story.

There have been suggestions that Kemi’s mother received a ?4million settlement from Adeyoola who, at the time of the divorce, was a property developer worth ?10million. Despite this, however, she and her three children were said to live a shiftless life around the country, moving to a succession of homes and frequently alienating neighbours.

At one stage, Kemi briefly boarded at the ?2,000-a-month Wycliffe College, a private school at Stonehouse in the Cotswolds, which prides itself on its academic and sporting achievements. But her stay there lasted just a few months after which she moved with her family to Golders Green, an area of London where many Jews live.

They set up house next door to Leonard and Anne Mendel, an elderly Jewish couple. Friends of the couple say that Anne, a grey-haired great-grandmother, devoted her life to her family, charity and community, and despite her 84 years and increasing frailty, would travel miles to help people.

On the other hand, Kemi seemed to care for no one but herself. She had served time for shoplifting, boasted of working as a ?500-a-night escort and, most chillingly of all, wrote a “blueprint for murder.” The document, which was 18 pages long, was written while she was in a young offenders’ institution.

It was, in effect, a plan she developed to get money by killing a wealthy, quite elderly and defenceless victim. It was found in her cell and a council monitoring team was set up to supervise her for three months after her release. But psychiatrists decided that she did not pose a risk. How wrong they were! One month after her supervision expired, she struck.

She followed virtually every word in her killing manual, stabbing Mrs Mendel 14 times at her home. The victim’s body was discovered by her 81-year-old husband under a pile of clothes. She was still in her blood-soaked pyjamas and pink dressing gown.

In earlier years, Mrs Mendel had worked as a hospital secretary. She joined the Army during the Second World War to help track German bombers blitzing the East End of London. She and Leonard had been married for 50 years and lived a rewarding life. They had two children and more than a dozen grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Neighbours say that before the murder, Kemi subjected residents to a reign of terror and racial harassment, abusing young children and even smearing excrement on windows. She was arrested for assaulting an Asian neighbour. She laid in wait for him behind some bushes and punched him in the face, breaking his nose.

Her blueprint for murder, entitled: Prison and After — Making Life Again, included a shopping list of sharp knives or butcher’s knives, guns, drugs and handcuffs. It logged in chilling detail plans to kill, dismember and dispose of a victim in pursuit of ?3million.

She imagined stalking an elderly woman in a wealthy area, possibly posing as a schoolgirl carrying out a questionnaire for homework. She wrote: “Run lightly and silently behind her and cover her mouth with a gloved hand. Make her so scared she cooperates. Keep calm, composed and silent. She must cooperate or take a knife to her throat.”

She wrote graphically about disposing of the body. “With your butcher’s knife, remove her head, wrap it in cling film to contain the bleeding and detach the limbs one by one.” When confronted by psychiatrists and prison staff, she insisted that her notes were part of the draft for a novel she planned to write.

In a report, officials described her as a highly intelligent and sophisticated young person who, with good support, should make a good recovery and engage in her A-level studies. A prison psychiatrist, who believed her lies that she had achieved four GCSE A grades, said it was a shame that she had been jailed for the shoplifting offence.

After her release in November 2004, education was the last thing on her mind.

Four months later, she turned her “novel” into horrific reality. In the hour that Mr Mendel popped out to pick up air tickets for a trip to Israel, she struck Mrs Mendel, inflicting deep wounds to her torso, right arm and back, with a blade at least one inch wide and five inches long.

During her trial for murder, she appeared unmoved by the gravity of her crime, smiling and exchanging text messages during court recesses. She had lied brazenly to police over DNA found on her victim, claiming that the old lady accidently scratched her hand as she helped her across the road.

Police believe more victims may have been in the pipeline and that the attack on Mrs Mendel may have been a dry run for a wealthier target. Detective Seargeant Paul Belsham said: “If she had got away with this, God knows what she might have done. She is very, very dangerous.”

At the Old Bailey last week, a jury found her guilty of the “fiendish” murder of Anne Mendel and she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Her father, who is married again, has disowned her, saying: “She is no longer my daughter. I will never see her again. I don’t want her anywhere near me. She should rot in hell.”