The To Do List: A much-loved sportscaster becomes the prime suspect in the murder of his wife. His alibi appears solid but is undone by one glaring oversight.
Twisted: The victim lay face down on the bed, the back of his head obliterated. It looked like a botched robbery but something bothered detectives. The man’s shorts were on backwards.
The Ripper’s Apprentice: We all have our heroes. For Anthony Arkwright, it was Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.
Hate Crime: Shawna was obsessed with her married lover. The only thing standing in the way of her happiness was the man’s wife. She had a plan for that.
Dearly Departed: Marie had lived a tragic life, with so many of her relatives dying before their time. At least she had a steady stream of bequests to ease her suffering.
The Body on the Train: The trunk gave off an offensive smell and, on inspection, turned out to contain the mutilated remains of a middle-aged man. Who was he and why had he been killed?
Friend Request: An online predator lures a naïve teenager into a face-to-face meeting. What happens next is both tragic and shocking.
Click the "Read More" link below to read the first chapter of
Murder Most Vile Volume 28
Kill Me Twice
On the afternoon of April 7, 2009, a 15-year-old schoolgirl
named Nishma Raithatha, climbed to the roof of a multi-story car park in
Harrow, northwest London and threw herself to the hard concrete below. Nishma
was a beautiful and intelligent young girl, a straight-A student from a loving
family. She had no problems with substance abuse and was not tormented over a
lost love. Why then had Nishma decided to commit suicide, to cut short a life
that held so much promise? It was to do with another violent death that had
occurred four years earlier in May of 2005. Nishma’s sister, Jeshma, had been
the victim of a savage rape and brutal murder.
Like her sister Nishma, Jeshma Raithatha had been a
beautiful and accomplished young woman. At seventeen, she was a talented singer
and actress with plans to study music and media after her high school
graduation and grades that would have guaranteed her entry into just about any
university in the land.
But an unfortunate hazard for beautiful young women is that
they often catch the eye of predators, and thus it was with Jeshma. A
particularly dangerous man had noticed her walking around her neighborhood of
Sudbury Hill, northwest London, had noted her movements and the route she took
home from school each afternoon. He’d even scouted a spot where he might lay in
ambush.
Viktor Dembovskis had come to London six months earlier from
his native Latvia, where he had a history of violent offences against women. In
1990 and again in 1999, he had been convicted of knifepoint rapes and had
served jail terms. Passing sentence on the latter offence, a Latvian judge had
issued the stern warning: “One day, this man will kill.” And yet, somehow,
Dembovskis had managed to circumvent Britain’s strict immigration laws and
settle in London, finding work at a carwash in Greenford. This was just a few
blocks from where Jeshma lived with her family, and that is probably how he
came to notice her, came to zero in on her as a potential victim.
Dembovskis had done this before. He had an established M.O.
which had served him well in the past. His method was to lay a snare in an
isolated place, to wait for his victim to pass, to pounce on her and force her
into a location where they would not be disturbed, to threaten her with a knife
and force her to submit. In the case of Jeshma Raithatha, he had the perfect
spot. Her daily route took her along a footpath, flanked to either side by thick
undergrowth. Walking the path, Dembovskis selected an area where the bushes
were particularly dense. There he waded in and formed the vegetation into a
hollow, constructing a den that would shield him and his victim from prying
eyes. Now all he had to do was lie in wait. Sooner or later Jeshma would pass
that way alone. That was when he would pounce.
During the first weeks of May 2005, Dembovskis waited in his
lair on a number of occasions, watching as Jeshma walked by, oblivious to his
presence. On each of these occasions, there were other people around, and so
the killer sheathed his knife and went home frustrated. But predators are patient
creatures. Dembovskis knew that his time would come. On May 16, it did.
May 16 was a normal day for Jeshma Raithatha. She was
preparing for her final exams at the time, and so she was not required to put
in a full day at Claremont High School. Nonetheless, she went in as usual, did
some studying in the morning and left just after 1 p.m. From there, she took a
bus to Wembley High Road, where she did some shopping. At around 3 o’clock, she
boarded another bus, this one bound for Sudbury Hill. She followed her usual
route from the bus stop, a short walk that took her along the familiar footpath
that ran past the leisure center. If she noticed that the path was deserted
that day, it would not have bothered her. It was broad daylight and Sudbury
Hill was a safe suburb. Nothing bad ever happened there.
But something bad did happen that day. Jeshma was halfway
down the path when a man suddenly stepped from the bushes and blocked her way.
Her instinctive reaction was to walk around him but then he shot out a hand and
grabbed her wrist in a vice-like grip. She only noticed the knife in his hand
when he brought it up to her throat. Then he told her, in a heavily-accented
voice, not to scream. In the next moment, Jeshma was being dragged back into
the bushes, acutely aware of what was about to happen to her, unable to do
anything about it.
When Jeshma failed to return home that evening, her parents
immediately reported her missing to the police. A search was launched but went
without success for eight long days. During that time, Jeshma’s 18th
birthday came and went as her distraught parents and siblings fretted over her
wellbeing. Then, on May 24, the police received reports from pedestrians about
a foul smell coming from the bushes behind the David Lloyd Leisure Center on
Greenford Road. It was there that they made a tragic discovery. Jeshma
Raithatha, three days short of her 18th birthday and with the world
at her feet, had been stabbed to death. An autopsy would later reveal that she
had been raped before she died and had also been strangled. Her life had been ended by three thrusts from
a long-bladed knife, all of which had penetrated her heart.
The deliberate nature of those knife wounds pointed to a
particularly ruthless killer. This was no frenzied attack committed by someone
who had temporarily lost control of his reason. This was a calculated murder,
designed to eliminate the only witness to the rape. Fortunately, it was not a
difficult crime to solve. The killer had dropped a set of keys at the murder
site, and there was also semen taken from the victim’s body. That was submitted
for DNA testing and returned a match to Latvian sex offender, Viktor
Dembovskis. Officers soon traced Dembovskis to an address in Greenford and paid
him a visit. When no one answered the door, they slotted in one of the keys
they’d found and gained entry. It was immediately evident that Dembovskis had
fled, although he’d left behind further evidence of his vile deed, two
blood-stained necklaces which were identified as belonging to Jeshma.
But where was the fugitive? That, too, was easily resolved.
Immigration records revealed that he’d flown back to Latvia four days after
committing the murder. With the assistance of Interpol, the Latvian authorities
quickly tracked him to his home town of Livani, 90 miles southeast of the
capital Riga, and arrested him there. Extradition procedures were given top
priority. Within weeks, Dembovskis was on his way back to Britain. There, he
was formally charged with rape and murder.
The evidence against Dembovskis was overwhelming. His DNA
had been extracted from semen found on the victim’s body; his house keys had
been found at the crime scene; Jeshma’s necklaces had been found in his
possession. And yet the brazen killer still tried to bluff his way out of a
murder conviction, pleading not guilty and denying every allegation put to him
at trial. It did him no good in the end. The jury took just three hours to
convict, and the judge then sentenced him to life in prison with the recommendation
that he should never be released.
But the conviction and sentence were of scant comfort to
Jeshma’s parents. The daughter they loved was gone, her life snatched away by a
monster who should never have been allowed into the country in the first place.
Their only consolation was that Dembovskis was behind bars where he could not
harm anyone else’s daughter.
Don’t have a Kindle? No problem. Download Amazon’s free Kindle reader here for PC or Mac
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.