Double murderer Kasim Lewis jailed for at least 40 years for second killing

An "evil" predator who killed a mother-of-one in her own home before murdering a barmaid six weeks later has been jailed for life with a minimum of 40 years.

Kasim Lewis, 32, was previously jailed for life with a minimum term of 29 years last May for the murder of 22-year-old Iuliana Tudos on Christmas Eve 2017.

Lewis's DNA was later linked to the death of Catherine Burke, who was stabbed at her home in Muswell Hill, north London, six weeks before.

After the sexually motivated killing of Ms Burke, Lewis trawled the internet for pornography referring to "granny sex".

On the day he was due to face trial, Lewis pleaded guilty to the murder of 55-year-old Ms Burke on November 16, 2017 and appeared at the Old Bailey for sentencing on Thursday.

Judge Richard Marks QC said Lewis was an "extremely dangerous individual" as he jailed him for life with a minimum term of 40 years today.

He told Lewis he had committed "as grave a murder as one can imagine".

He said: "You subjected your victim, a vulnerable middle-aged lady living alone, to an unimaginably dreadful ordeal."

Judge Marks said there was a sexual element to the murder, committed while Lewis was on the sex offenders register.

Ms Burke's son Niall Galbally earlier made an emotional statement in a courtroom packed with family members.

The 22-year-old student said: "There are simply no amount of words that can describe the sheer devastation this has caused me and my family."

He said Lewis's "wicked and senseless act" had caused an "untold amount of pain".

He added that his relationship with his mother had been "blossoming" as she finally accepted he had become a man, but "the actions of this evil being has robbed that from us and it's something I will never get back".

"A massive hole resides in my heart for my mother and no amount of justice will mend that.

"I take great comfort in the fact the man responsible for such brutality has been caught."

As he left the witness box, Mr Galbally looked at Lewis in the dock.

Opening the facts of the case, prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC said: "In May last year, the defendant pleaded guilty to the horrific murder of Iuliana Tudos on Christmas Eve 2017, and when the defendant entered that plea he knew - and the police suspected - that he had committed the equally dreadful murder of Catherine Burke just six weeks before.

"By the time of the pre-trial hearing on April 16 the police could show the defendant's DNA had been recovered on one of the ligatures that had been used to bind Catherine Burke and they could also prove he had stolen her mobile phone."

Despite the evidence, Lewis initially denied Ms Burke's murder, claiming he had only burgled her home.

Mr Aylett said: "For that to be right, there must have been some other depraved monster walking the streets of London."

He said Lewis's guilty plea at the eleventh hour "has absolutely nothing to do with contrition and everything to do with overwhelming evidence".

The court heard how divorced Ms Burke, originally from Galway in Ireland, had lived alone with her dog Al Al after her son left for university in Brighton.

Her friend Eileen Arnold was the last person to speak to her on the phone on Wednesday November 15, 2017.

Ms Arnold raised the alarm the next day when she could not contact her friend and police kicked in her door.

Officers found Ms Burke's naked body in a bedroom of her terraced house under a pile of clothes.

She had been bound and gagged with a scarf and stabbed in the neck, back and stomach.

The court heard Lewis must have got into the house by an open back door and made off with a mobile phone which was later found with a friend of his.

Mr Aylett said: "It is perhaps a statement of the obvious to say that whoever was responsible for the murder of Cathy Burke can only have been a brutal and perverted sadist.

"More particularly, his motivation can only have been sexual. After all, he would not have needed to strip Mr Burke naked in order simply to steal her mobile telephones.

"On the other hand, this obviously sexually inspired murder took place without any apparent sign of any sexual assault.

"In such circumstances there was a very real risk of the killer striking again. And so it turned out."

Less than six weeks later, Lewis attacked his second victim as she made her way home through Finsbury Park after a shift at the World's End pub in Camden on Christmas Eve.

As with Ms Burke, he stabbed Ms Tudos in the neck and abdomen, bound her wrists and ankles and stripped her naked, the court heard.

On Boxing Day, her concerned friends set out to retrace her journey and found her body in a disused cricket pavilion in the park.

Just over two hours after she entered the park, Ms Tudos's bank card was used to withdraw £100 from a cash machine in Tottenham Court Road.

Police identified the suspect from CCTV footage as Lewis.

He tried to lay a false trail by texting a friend: "How's everything today and have you watched the news....A woman's body was found yesterday. What's going on?"

When he was arrested for Ms Tudos's murder on New Year's Day, Lewis told an officer: "What do you want me to say? I did it."

The court heard the defendant had previous convictions for sexual assault, exposing himself on a bus and burglary dating back to 2005.

Lewis's 40-year sentence will run concurrently with his other life sentence.

Source: Mirror

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