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It was September of 2017 in the close-knit neighborhood of Southfields, London when a concerned neighbor noticed a fellow neighbor’s backyard bonfire. The flames & plumes of black smoke were reaching high into the sky & the fire seemed to be roaring dangerously close to the patio in the back of the home on Wimbledon Park Road. Most concerning was the powerful unpleasant stench that emerged from the flames. The neighbor was so concerned that they decided to call the fire brigade.
When the firefighters arrived, they were shocked at the stench in the air though everything else looked relatively normal. They found a man standing at a nearby BBQ, cooking chicken & a fire blazed nearby. When the firefighters asked him what was going on, he explained that he was cooking a lamb in the bonfire. One of the first firefighters to the scene, Thomas Hunt, decided to extinguish the fire for safety reasons since the fire was so close to the home. The man on the property insisted that he could just extinguish the fire himself but Hunt insisted that it was his responsibility. As the fire was put out, the embers were raked over with a spade to ensure the fire had been fully extinguished. To his horror, Hunt noticed human fingers, a nose, clothing & jewelry among the charred remains. When he spoke with the man of the house, Ouissem Medouni, he simply explained that it was just a carcass of a lamb that he’d purchased at a local market.
The police were immediately summoned & Ouissem was arrested while he continued to maintain that it was a lamb & not a human that was burning in the fire. This, however, was an absolute lie & the remains in the fire pit were that of 21-year-old French nanny, Sophie Lionnet.
Sophie Lionnet grew up in Troyes, a rural area in France about 62 miles northeast of Paris. The community where she was raised was very small & she lived a sheltered life. She was reserved, shy, but incredibly kind & had a small circle of friends. She had goals to get a job in her line of education which was Early Years in Child education which was scarce where she lived. When she saw a job available in London, looking for a French nanny, she made the decision to apply. As she went through the motions of the application, she had no way of knowing that her new employers would be monsters responsible for her death.
Sophie was described as a kind, quiet & reserved woman who was exceptionally nurturing & loved children & animals & she couldn’t stand to see anyone suffer. Sophie traveled to London in 2016 to care for the two young children of 35-year-old Sabrina Kouider & 40-year-old Ouissem Medouni. It was the first time Sophie had ever left France.
Sabrina was born in Algeria & raised in Paris & while she worked at a sweets stall at a fair when she was 18-years-old, Ouissem spotted her for the first time. Ouissem, a fellow French Algerian who was five years Sabrina’s senior, pursued her & they soon became a couple. By the time Sophie became their nanny, the couple had been in a long-term, tumultuous relationship.
When Sabrina left France to work as a nanny in London, Ouissem followed along & went on to earn a degree in economics where he then got a job working for a French bank. The couple were joined by a traditional Muslim marriage certificate. Despite their union, Sabrina openly disregarded their relationship & referred to Ouissem as a relative or a friend when she was out & about. She also openly dated other men while Ouissem waited in the wings for her return. Ouissem was described as a weak, submissive man who was open to suggestion. They had an untraditional arrangement & Sabrina would sometimes disappear for months at a time. From the outside, she appeared to be a beautiful & glamorous mother of two, but behind closed doors, she was volatile & prone to terrible mood swings.
In 2011, Sabrina was involved in pyramid selling for a telecommunications company when she met Mark Walton at a Knotting Hill bank. He was born in Ireland & the founder of the 1990s boy band, Boyzone. Walton went on to major success within the music industry, working with artists such as Jennifer Lopez & Enrique Iglesias. Sabrina & Walton quickly began a romantic relationship & Walton admitted that he was head over heels in love at that point.
The two moved in together & Walton began to financially support Sabrina as she tried to pave her way into the fashion industry. Walton later went on to say that the “love goggles” that he wore during the beginning of their relationship eventually wore off. As time went on, Walton was able to see the other side of Sabrina that could come unhinged. He said she could go from soft spoken with her French accent & would suddenly flip & become very angry, loud, not caring where they were when it happened. She was also a very calculating & manipulative person.
Starting in July of 2012, Sabrina began making crazy claims to the police about Walton, indicating that he was sleeping with male prostitutes. Walton discovered that Sabrina had hidden cameras in their flat & they ended up breaking up in 2014. Even after Sabrina went back to Ouissem, she continued to make bizarre, fictitious reports to the police. She accused him of sexually abusing a cat, despite the fact that she didn’t have a cat, hiring helicopters to spy on her & targeting her with black magic. She created a Facebook profile in order to falsely claim that Walton was a pedophile & she was told by police to stay away from him. Following her split with Walton, Sabrina had waged a five-year war, reporting him to police more than 30 times.
Five years went by & her obsession continued, even while she moved to the Wimbledon Park Road house that she would share with Ouissem. Sunil Patel, a man who owned a newsstand near their house said that while Sabrina was in his store, he brought Walton up in conversation. Based on their conversation, it was his impression that Sabrina clearly seemed obsessed with Walton. She showed him a picture of Walton & asked if he’d seen him around & told him that he was “a very dangerous person.” He told Sunil that he had hurt her family & “the nanny was complicit”, referring to Sophie.
In January of 2016, fifteen months before her death, Sophie Lionnet came to work for Sabrina & Ouissem. She was a shy, gorgeous girl with green eyes & hoped that in addition to working for the family, she would also improve her English. She came into a very dark & disturbing situation where she was forced to sleep in a bunk bed room, sharing the space with the couple’s two young children. She was often denied food & rarely allowed to leave the house. Sophie worked extremely long hours & was given little compensation. She wasn’t allowed to return to France, even when her mother was ill. She was accused of stealing Sabrina’s diamond pendant.
A local restaurant owner, Michael Cromer, had met with Sabrina & Ouissem on multiple occasions to discuss the possibility of going into business together & when they spoke, Sophie would often come along with them. She would also go to his fish & chip restaurant alone. Michael always noticed that she was very quiet & didn’t want to communicate much. He could sense she was struggling but never fathomed to what degree. At one point he grew concerned when he noticed tears in Sophie’s eyes & when he asked her about it, she told Michael that her mom wasn’t well. Sophie once opened up & told him that Sabrina beat her & when he asked why, she said because she dropped the butter. Sophie’s friend noticed that when they were together, she often gobbled her food down which gave him the impression that she was either extremely hungry or just rushing in order to get back to work.
In reality, Sabrina had fixed her delusions onto Sophie & was convinced that Sophie was involved with Walton. Soon, Sabrina swept Ouissem into the fantasy. What eventually led to Sophie’s murder bore the trademarks of psychosis known as “folie a deux” or “madness of two” which is defined as a delusion shared from one person to another. Sabrina was the driving force & Ouissem was the willing party. During the last six weeks of Sophie’s life, both Sabrina & Ouissem became convinced that Walton had seduced Sophie & that in return, Sophie was drugging Ouissem in order for Walton to sneak into the house & sexually abuse him. In reality, Walton, who left the UK in 2015 & relocated to Los Angeles, had never even met Sophie.
In May of 2017, Sabrina was diagnosed with depression & borderline personality disorder. An ex-boyfriend of Sabrina’s, Anthony Francois, later spoke out & described Sabrina as “fickle” & a “lunatic” who would manipulate & prey on the weak. She would lash out at complete strangers & grab women’s hair just for glancing in her direction.
Because of the couple’s delusions, they began to starve Sophie & subject her to intense interrogation sessions that involved dunking her head into water after they beat her, until she broke down & admitted to her involvement with Walton. They recorded these sessions on their cellphones & police ended up recovering eight hours of interrogation footage; there were seven audio recordings & one video recording. In the audio recordings, it sounded as if Sophie was being slapped as she was interrogated. During the last twelve days of Sophie’s life, she had not been allowed out of the two-bedroom home.
In one of the last sessions, Sabrina could be heard saying, “So where is [Mark Walton’s] house? Because you fancy him, he is charming.. I don’t think he abused you, you wanted it. And whenever you come back to the house, I smell sex.” Sabrina was known to make up terrible stories about people, often sexual in nature & prey on those she viewed as “weak.” Some within the community had experienced just how volatile she could be; they viewed her as quirky & temperamental but never imagined she would be capable of murder.
Sophie had never met Mark Walton before but because of the ongoing abuse, she was broken down by the couple & falsely confessed that she had had sex with Mark. Mark Walton later said in reference to one of the last photos taken of Sophie, “When I saw that picture of Sophie & how scared & vulnerable & haunted she looks, & to think she was tortured because of me, that haunts me.”
A video taken only hours before her murder showed Sophie appearing emaciated, broken down & terrified. On the day that Sophie’s life came to a tragic end, she was tortured in a way that was similar to waterboarding & her head was repeatedly dunked underwater. Because of the extent of her burns, it’s not clear what her ultimate cause of death was, but despite the burns, the torture was still evident. In her final days, she had been hit with an electrical cord & beaten badly; she had four broken ribs, a cracked sternum, a fractured jawbone & bruising to her arm & back & it was clear, based on the evidence of the autopsy, that Sophie had been murdered before her body had been burned. When her curled up remains were recovered from the fire pit, investigators assumed it was the body of a child because she was so small & frail.
Sophie had been murdered from “revenge & punishment” over a man that she had never even met.
Many asked the obvious question, why didn’t Sophie escape? Sophie was alone & vulnerable in a foreign country & experts believe that she was gradually broken down by the many tortures she was subjected to that made her believe that she was utterly helpless. Ruth Bowskill, a chief prosecutor at CPS said that Sophie had wanted to leave & wrote to her family in France, telling them this. Investigators never located Sophie’s passport or the plane ticket that her mother had purchased her to return to France & it’s believed that the couple confiscated them as well as her phone in order to isolate her. In the twelve days leading up to her murder, she was held as a prisoner & likely realized that she was facing death. The full extent of the horrors of Sophie’s last days & moments will never be known.
When the bonfire was extinguished by the firefighter in the backyard of their rented 900,000 pound home, Thomas Hunt, he clearly did not believe it when Ouissem told him that it was the remains of a sheep he was looking at. Hunt responded, “Bollocks” & at that time, he saw a look of resignation cross Ouissem’s face as if to say, “the game’s up.” When Sabrina was confronted about the findings in the firepit, she came across as astounded, feigning complete ignorance. She claimed she had left the house only hours earlier to take her children to the park & everything had been fine. When asked where the nanny was, she said that she had resigned & gone home two days earlier. When the fire was extinguished, a pair of glasses, a bracelet & clothing had been extracted from the embers. When the neighbors were shown these items, they believed they belonged to Sophie. Sabrina was arrested shortly thereafter as Sophie’s family was contacted & alerted of the devastating news of their daughter’s murder. Her death was absolutely inconceivable to those who knew & loved Sophie.
As police continued to speak with Sabrina, she maintained that she had nothing to do with Sophie’s death while also painting her in a very negative light. She told police that Sophie was lazy & did little to care for the children, specifically saying, “Most of the time, she was on the phone, sitting on the couch. She was waiting for us to serve her. It’s as if we were working for her & not her for us.” She went on to say that Sophie had gotten caught up in the wrong crowd & had been drinking often & on top of that, she had even stolen from them. This was when she went on to explain that she had also betrayed her in the worst way by seeking out her ex, Mark Walton. She said that the two had met on Facebook & she had found them together in houses & hotels. Sabrina also said that it was Sophie’s intention to kidnap her 4-year-old child so that he could be used for sexual reasons. According to Sabrina, when Ouissem learned this information, he lost it & accidentally killed Sophie.
Ouissem confirmed this account & to back up what she told investigators, Sabrina produced a handwritten confession from Sophie which read, “Mark Walton asked me to come & see him. He started to touch my breasts & he kissed me on the neck. Mark offered me some money & he asked me to come back with Sabrina’s youngest child.” The letter was authenticated & proved to be written by Sophie. When Sophie’s parents were informed of this, they knew that it was not possible that their daughter had freely written these words, her mom elaborating that she would not ever hurt even a fly.
Those that lived near Sabrina & Ouissem told police that the things that Sabrina accused Sophie of were completely untrue. She was absolutely attentive, loving & nurturing to the children & on further investigation, it was clear that during the year & a half that Sophie had been with the family, she was given little to no time off & was not paid.
When Mark Walton was contacted, he was fully transparent & gave investigators full permission to search his electronic devices to prove that he had never met or spoken to Sophie & hadn’t been in the country during that time frame.
During the trial, Sabrina admitted to ‘pushing’ Sophie around but denied that she had ever abused her. She claimed that it was actually her partner & it was Ouissem who had also killed Sophie while she, herself, was asleep. She claimed that when she woke up, she discovered that Sophie was dead & Ouissem told her it was an accident. She told the court that after Ouissem tortured & killed Sophie, he demanded that they have sex as her body lay dead nearby.
Initially, Ouissem confessed to ‘accidentally’ killing Sophie. He said that she died while he was interrogating her in the bathroom; he said he was demanding answers from her when he lost his temper & punched her in the face. He said that Sophie’s head flew back & hit the bathroom tiles & she slipped & lost consciousness. However, when he heard that Sabrina was blaming him, he changed his statement, mirroring exactly what Sabrina claimed, except in this story, he was asleep while she killed Sophie.
Four days before the trial started, on March 15, 2018, Ouissem gave a second statement & claimed that he previously lied in order to protect Sabrina & in actuality, he had fallen asleep, only to be awoken by Sabrina where he then found Sophie lying in the bath.
A key witness, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was Sabrina & Ouissem’s 9-year-old child, who testified that they heard Sophie screaming from the bathroom as well as “lots of splashing water” that had seeped under the door. This happened on the night of September 18th to the 19th. They could hear the defendants telling her to ‘breathe.’ The next morning, the child asked their mother what had happened the night before & he was told that Sophie was gone & they wouldn’t be seeing her again. The jury was shown a video of the last image of Sophie alive on Monday, September 18, 2017; she was wet & sitting in front of a fireplace.
After the couple killed Sophie, they placed her body into a suitcase which they hid under the bed in the children’s room where it remained for two days. During that time, the couple went about their days as if nothing had happened. They could be seen around town, running errands as Sophie’s body remained under the bed until September 20th, when they placed her body, the suitcase & her belongings into the firepit. It was clearly their goal to convince others that Sophie had simply left & disappeared.
Sabrina testified that she was not violent & “never made a false accusation against anybody” despite the number of police reports & allegations she made against Mark Walton. She denied ever being obsessed with Walton & was more concerned about her fashion business than thinking about him after they broke up.
It was clear that the purpose of the interrogations was to record Sophie making a confession, but it’s unclear as to what the defendants planned to do with the confession. The recordings reveal much more about the defendants than they do about Sophie & show how much they dominated & intimidated the young, vulnerable girl. They threatened her with imprisonment, rape & violence. It was clear during these interrogations that Sabrina didn’t want the truth & was only interested in what she wanted to hear to confirm their perverted thoughts & suspicions. It was clear they were obsessed with Sophie admitting that she had allowed Walton & another person into their home to sexually abuse them while Sophie witnessed the abuse though these allegations were absolutely untrue.
The jury listened as the recordings were played, the defendants interrogating Sophie in French; Sophie could be heard, pleading her innocence. During this portion of the trial, Sophie’s mother, Catherine Devallone could stand no more & left the courtroom. Sophie could be heard begging for them to just let her go so she could be with her family. It was clear by the end that Sophie had become completely compliant after Sabrina & Ouissem fully crushed her spirit; she was tired, emaciated & within hours of the final recordings, her life was taken from her.
The trial lasted two months & the jury deliberated for nearly thirty hours. Since Sabrina & Ouissem got what they wanted from Sophie, a full confession, they were ready to end the torture by murdering her. They were each sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison. Five & a half years were added for the destruction of the body.
After, a bizarre apology note from Sabrina was read in court & said that she wished she could “turn the clock back.” “Dear Sophie, May peace be with you. First of all, I wish everyone, especially her parents & family are well, all are suffering. How deeply sorry I am for what happened & in fact, we shared many good times.” She went on to say that she is shocked that Sophie is no longer part of this world & it all feels like a terrible dream that she wished she could just wake up from.
Sophie Lionnet was returned to France where she was laid to rest. Sophie’s aunt spoke & said, “She was a pearl. Kind & gentle. She loved everyone, she loved making people happy.” Sophie’s father, Patrick Lionnet said, “Sabrina & Ouissem have not only stolen the life of my daughter so brutally & without remorse, they have also stolen mine. My sleep, my happiness, my peace of mind & my future. The laughs,the hugs, the family celebrations, these special moments, they have all been tragically & brutally cut short by the people that had responsibility for Sophie’s care & wellbeing whilst she was employed by them.”
The British Au Pair Agencies Association said that would-be au pairs should go through a reputable agency that interviews host families & provides au pairs with support. They indicated that even with this service, there’s no guarantee that what happened to Sophie would have been prevented as a result of who the killers were, not because of who Sophie was or the fact that she was an au pair.
References:
- The Washington Post: A London couple’s shared delusions led to the torture & death of French au pair
- Daily Mail: French couple accused of killing their nanny ‘burned her body on bonfire while barbequing chicken & told firefighters her blackened corpse was a sheep carcass bought at a market’
- Medium: The French nanny who was tortured & killed
- BBC: Sophie Lionnet: The ‘toxic’ couple who murdered their au pair
- BBC: Sophie Lionnet: French au pair murderers lose appeal
- BBC: Sophie Lionnet murder: Accused ‘had sex near nanny’s body’
- Independent: Couple who tortured & killed French nanny then had sex near her dead body found guilty of murder
- New York Post: Killer writes bizarre apology to nanny she murdered
- The Guardian: Couple obsessed with Boyzone member guilty of killing French nanny
- Facebook: Stranger Than Fiction: The Nanny Killers
