Tidy notes detail murderous intent

BBC News

June 28, 2006

A millionaire's daughter was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in jail on Wednesday after being found guilty of killing an elderly woman. What lay behind the killing of Anne Mendel?

Eighteen pages of neatly hand-written notes found in Kemi Adeyoola's prison cell describe in graphic detail her murderous plan to get rich quick.

Entitled "Prison and After. Making Life Count", the manual talks of finding a wealthy and elderly victim who she would rob and kill.

"She must be wealthy, quite elderly and defenceless," it said of the potential victim.

She talked of finding a victim to rob and kill. This would involve staking out houses worth millions of pounds in isolated areas.

The teenager said it was a work of fiction inspired by her fascination for crime writers James Patterson and Martina Cole.

But an Old Bailey jury disagreed in favour of the prosecution's view that it was a blueprint for murder.

They found the 18-year-old, of Camden, north London, guilty of murdering 84-year-old Anne Mendel at her home in Golders Green in north-west London.

Grisly plan

Sir Allan Green, QC prosecuting, said the significance of the "horror" script was only appreciated when Adeyoola was linked to the brutal attack.

"We say there is written evidence that Kemi had earlier written out plans to murder an elderly woman and steal from that woman's home," he told the court.

The prosecution said Adeyoola had chosen Mrs Mendel as a "soft target" on which to practise before finding a "rich, elderly and defenceless" woman to kill for her money.

It listed items required for her grisly plan, including guns, silencers, bullet-proof vests, drugs, two sharp knives, a Jamie Oliver baby blue scooter and handcuffs.

The victim would first be watched: "Visit them disguised as an A-level student from a nearby school," said the notes.

The victim would be attacked as she arrived home under the cover of darkness.

"Show the knife to her - then place it against her throat."

The woman would be injected with a tranquiliser and quizzed about bank account PINs and safe combinations.

She would be forced to write a letter telling her husband she was leaving him for someone else.

She would then be killed - her head and limbs cut off with a butcher's knife and put in cling film and black bags and dumped in bins.

An alternative plan was to drive the victim to the top of a cliff, slit her throat, set fire to the car and send it over the edge.

Defensive and arrogant

Adeyoola was quizzed by prison authorities who were concerned after finding the notes in her cell at Bullwood Hall in October 2004.

Forensic psychologist Lydia Sear said: "There was concern what was behind it. She would not explain herself."

But Adeyoola refused to be drawn on her book.

Miss Sear said: "She was defensive, arrogant and assertive. She was asked 'Is this something you are going to do?'

"She said: 'I want it back - it's a story'. I asked whether she had considered what the intention was before writing the book.

"She refused to answer. She left the room."

A psychiatric report carried out after the discovery of the document said there was nothing to suggest she was capable of such violence.

"The psychiatric report did not predict any likely occurrence of this," said a spokesman for Barnet Youth Offending Team.

"Once her supervision was completed, there was no mechanism for stopping her re-offending."

The schoolgirl who was born to kill

By Michael Seamark - DailyMail.co.uk

June 28, 2006

An 18-year-old former public schoolgirl who wrote and executed a 'blueprint' for the murder of an elderly woman was sentenced today.

Kemi Adeyoola wrote the document in a young offenders' institution and on her release stabbed 84-year-old Anne Mendel 14 times in a 'fiendish' murder. She was convicted at the Old Bailey yesterday and was sentenced today with a recommendation that she serves at least 20 years behind bars.

Their worlds could not have been further apart.

All that elderly Anne Mendel and multimillionaire's daughter Kemi Adeyoola shared was a brief spell as neighbours in a north London suburb. Grey-haired great-grandmother Mrs Mendel, seven stone and barely 4ft 10in, had devoted her life to her family, charity and community and despite her 84 years and increasing frailty would, say friends, 'travel miles to help people'.

Public schoolgirl Adeyoola cared only for herself. She had served time for shoplifting, boasted of working as a £500 a night prostitute and, most chillingly of all, written a 'blueprint for murder'. Over 18 pages written while she was in a young offenders' institution, she dreamed up a plan to make £3million by killing a 'wealthy, quite elderly and defenceless' victim.

The dossier 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 Adeyoola did not pose a risk and, a month after supervision expired, she struck. Adeyoola adhered to virtually every word of her manual, stabbing the Jewish pensioner 14 times at her home in Golders Green, North London.

The victim was discovered by her 81-year-old husband Leonard, lying under a pile of clothes in her blood-soaked pyjamas and pink dressing gown.

Adeyoola, daughter of a property tycoon reputed to be worth £10million, faces a life sentence when she is sentenced today after an Old Bailey jury found her guilty of the 'fiendish' murder. After the verdict sources close to the murder inquiry said the teenager was born to kill - a supremely arrogant psychopath with total disregard for humanity.

Her father Bola Adeyoola has disowned her. 'Nobody is born evil but what she did was evil,' he said. 'She is no longer my daughter. I will never see her again, and don't want her anywhere near me. I regret the day I ever met her mother.

'When I saw Mrs Mendel's picture I started crying. As a Christian, I can't believe anyone would do that.'

Mr Adeyoola, 49, a former boxer who has remarried and lives in a £2million Berkshire home, had briefly given his daughter a £140 a week job and free accommodation.

'She was staying with me until a month before the murder, when I found out she had been shoplifting,' he said. 'I do wonder whether this woman would still be alive if I hadn't kicked her out.

'At first I couldn't accept that somebody with my blood in her veins could do this to anyone - but then I saw the evidence. She should rot in hell.'

The marriage of Mr Adeyoola, who came here from Nigeria as a child, and Kemi's Barbados-born mother Mercuria, lasted barely four years and he had little contact during the childrens' upbringing.

The couple produced three children and Mercuria has a fourth child from another relationship.

Despite suggestions that Mrs Adeyoola received a £4million divorce settlement, she and her children led a shiftless life around the country, moving to a succession of homes in places including Cheltenham and Peterborough, frequently alienating neighbours.

At one property in Gloucestershire, Adeyoola killed the goldfish in a neighbour's pond and blamed a cat.

The teenage killer briefly boarded at £23,000-a-year Wycliffe College. The independent school at Stonehouse in the

Cotswolds prides itself on its academic and sporting achievements, but Adeyoola only lasted a few months because of a row over who was paying her fees.

The dysfunctional family moved into Elmcroft Road in Golders Green for several months, living next door to Mr and Mrs Mendel.

The elderly couple had been married for 50 years and lived a quiet, rewarding life. They had two children, and 14 grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Their son Yitzhak, appealing for help after the murder, said: 'My mother spent every day of her week performing good deeds and charity work. She devoted her

whole life to visiting the sick, helping friends and neighbours and bringing a smile to everyone she knew - even complete strangers.'

In earlier years Mrs Mendel had worked as a hospital secretary and joined the Army during the Second World War to help track German bombers blitzing the East End of London where the couple lived.

She offered the hand of friendship to the girl who was to kill her, letting the teenager into her house after she locked herself out.

But neighbours said Adeyoola subjected residents to a 'reign of terror' and racial harassment, abusing young children and even smearing excrement on windows.

She was arrested for abusing one Asian neighbour. A resident, who did not want to be identified, said: 'She gave a lot of trouble to one particular family. Once she lay in wait for the man, an Asian, behind a bush and punched him in the face, breaking his nose.

'She called his wife a "Paki lover". He said she tried to poison his dog as well.'

Other neighbours recall Mr Adeyoola sometimes turning up in his Rolls Royce to see his children, but the visits were brief and infrequent.

Criminal habits

Adeyoola ignored school and by the age of 15 had fallen into criminal habits, pilfering goods from high street stores. 'It's a skill,' she told the jury, explaining how she became expert at altering receipts to secure refunds for stolen goods.

She was not as adept as she thought however and after a string of convictions found herself facing a custodial sentence.

Her self-obsession continued and she boasted to a sibling of her acting talents when being questioned by a youth worker. She told how she wept, mumbled and arched her back to convince the woman of her 'innocence and vulnerability' to try to limit her sentence.

'It worked such a treat I could tell she was touched,' she wrote. 'I felt she sensed my anguish.'

Again she over-estimated her skill and ended up at Bulwood Hall young offenders' institute in Essex for three months.

It was there that her thoughts - and writings - turned to murder.

During a routine cell search, staff unearthed her blueprint, entitled Prison and After - Making Life Again. It included a shopping list of sharp knives or butcher's knives, guns, drugs and handcuffs, and logged in chilling detail plans to kill, dismember and dispose of avictim in pursuit of £3milion.

She imagined stalking an elderly woman in a wealthy area, possibly posing as a schoolgirl carrying out a questionnaire for homework.

'Run lightly and silently behind her and cover her mouth with a gloved hand,' she wrote.

'Make her so scared she co-operates. Keep calm, composed and silent. She must co-operate or take a knife to her throat. Tell her, "This is your only warning".'

She described building a cling-film 'tent' and wrote graphically about disposing of the body. 'With your butcher's knife, remove her head. Wrap it in film to contain bleeding, detach limbs one by one.'

When confronted by psychiatrists and prison staff, Adeyoola insisted her notes were part of the draft for a novel.

Barnet Youth Offending Team said yesterday a psychiatric assessment carried out after the document was discovered 'did not indicate any concern that Miss Adeyoola would be pre-disposed in any way to this type of violence - nor was there any evidence of this type of violence in her past'.

The report 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 Adeyoola's lies that she had achieved four GCSE A grades, said it was a shame she had been jailed.

After her release in November 2004, education was the last thing on Adeyoola's mind. She moved into an £800-a-month Hampstead flat with another teenager, telling the court she paid the rent by working as a £500 a night 'escort'. 'It is a completely legitimate and professional business. We earned up to £5,000 a week,' she said.

In March 2005, with her supervision at an end, Adeyoola turned her 'novel' into horrific reality.

In the hour that Mr Mendel popped out to pick up air tickets for a trip to Israel, the teenager struck, inflicting deep wounds to her victim's torso, right arm and back with a blade at least 1in wide and 5in long.

A spokesman for the Barnet Youth Offending Team said: 'There was nothing in the file that would have predicted homicide. The psychiatric report did not predict any likely occurrence of this.'

During her trial Adeyoola, dressed in pinstriped suit, pink trainers and spangly belt, 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 she had visited Golders Green the day before the murder and the pensioner had scratched her hand as she helped her across the road.

With the assistance of a 16 year old girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, she then tried to construct an alibi.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Morris called her 'a callous and devious young woman', adding: 'Her cold, calculated use of extreme violence beggars belief.'

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 Sergeant Paul Belsham said: 'If she had got away with this then God knows what she might have done. She is very very dangerous.'

Mr Mendel, who has moved to Israel to live with his daughter, described his wife as someone 'whose life was taken up with kindness and giving up of herself to others.

'The unjust end she met, having so much taken away in such an undeserving manner, left us in total shock.'

Teenage killer caught testing grisly scheme she plotted in prison

By Jacqueline Maley - The Guardian

June 28, 2006

Lose weight, lease a two-bedroom flat, find a wealthy elderly woman to rob and murder. So ran the to-do list of 18-year-old Kemi Adeyoola, who was yesterday convicted of carrying out in real life the grisly plans she described in an 18-page document written in jail.

Adeyoola was found guilty of murdering 84-year Anne Mendel, who was found by her husband in March last year lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the staircase in her home. She had been stabbed 14 times. The DNA of the 18-year-old, who had formerly been a neighbour, was found on Mrs Mendel's hand, a fact Adeyoola explained away by saying she had, by chance, helped the elderly woman across the road earlier that day.

Adeyoola pleaded not guilty, but the prosecution argued successfully that she had carried out the murder herself, possibly as a "dry run" for the slaughter of a wealthy woman who would make a more lucrative "job". It was a killing the teenager had meticulously planned in a murder manual written a few months earlier when she was in juvenile custody.

Staff at the Bullwood Hall juvenile offenders' institution, where Adeyoola was serving a sentence for shoplifting, found the blueprint in October 2004, during an inspection of her cell. On being confronted the teenager claimed the whole thing was fiction. But within the space of a few months the fiction turned into reality.

The handwritten notes, entitled "Prison and After: Making life count", began innocently, with plans to "lose two stones from 11 stone eight to nine and a half stone", and "locate two-bed apartment". Adeyoola, herself the daughter of a millionaire property developer, went on to outline how she would obtain bank accounts, "make £2,000" to furnish her apartment, buy a Mercedes and clothes and DVDs. Despite having been privately educated Adeyoola left school with no qualifications, and wanted to obtain fake GCSE and A-Level qualifications over the internet, and mock up a CV stating she had attended the Chelmsford School for Girls.

But "the main changes for [a] happy future" depended on Adeyoola getting "a minimum of £3m", according to the journal. For this she would need to rob and murder an elderly woman, and frame the woman's husband for the killing. Such a feat would require equipment: petrol canisters, plastic bags, cling film, semi-automatic guns, Taser stun guns and a bullet-proof vest were all duly listed. So were various disguises - wigs, dark glasses, and bizarrely, a "full body fat suit, approximately 18 stone woman".

She sketched out her ideal victim: "She must be wealthy, quite elderly and defenceless. Find a candidate and watch her. Their routine must be closely observed. Follow her. She will probably be married. See if they get any visitors. Create a survey questionnaire and visit them disguised as an A-level student. Tell them it's field work. Ask them: 'Do you have guns to protect yourself?'"

The attack was imagined in emotionless detail: lie in wait for the victim, creep up on her, and cover her mouth with a gloved hand. Once in the house, threaten the victim with a knife, extract bank account details and the code to her safe, get her to write a fake 'I'm leaving' note, and then despatch her.

"With your butcher's knife remove her head. Wrap it in film to contain bleeding, detach limbs one by one," she wrote. "When you have completed the task, put head, body pieces in black bag."

The "job" was to be done by February 2005.

Throughout her trial Adeyoola insisted the document was a work of fiction, notes for a crime thriller she was writing in the style of a James Patterson book. Following the discovery of the papers in her cell she was interviewed by a senior staff member and psychologist, whom she told: "I want them back. It's a story."

In court she dismissed the manual as "the scribblings of a 16-year-old girl". She said she was fascinated by writers such as Martina Cole and James Patterson, and wanted to emulate them.

"I had always considered writing a book. I'd like to be an author. When I was in Bullwood Hall I thought it would be a good place to start," she told the court.

In her evidence the teenager also told how she had set up house with another girl in Belsize Park, north London, and worked as an escort to pay the rent. "All we had to do was go out on a date and we could make £500 a night. We could make up to £5,000 a week," she said. "It was safe because we shadowed each other and it was easy."

A police source described finding a cache of sex toys when Adeyoola's flat was raided after she was arrested.

"There were several vibrators, nipple clamps, lesbian pornographic magazines, edible underwear made of candy, revealing outfits, handcuffs - all sorts of equipment," the source said. Police also discovered piles of stolen designer clothes and a book entitled Great Crimes.

Adeyoola also told the court she had begun stealing from shops at age 15, something she described as a "skill". She earned a string of convictions for theft, which culminated in her serving three months in a young offenders' institution, where she hatched her murder plans.

The young woman was also charged with two counts of peverting the course of justice, after she was taped setting up a bogus alibi for the murder with a 16-year-old accomplice. She and the 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were convicted on one of those counts.

Speaking after the verdict, Detective Inspector Steve Morris of the Metropolitan police described the case as "a wicked, premeditated murder committed by a callous, devious young woman and her cold, calculated use of extreme violence beggars belief".

Her father, Bola Adeyoola, who runs a successful property management company, said: "What she did was evil."

Presiding Judge Richard Hone QC suggested she may have even committed the murder to amass "material" for her future literary endeavours.

Adeyoola was remanded in custody to await sentencing next month.

A life of privilege

Kemi Adeyoola is the daughter of Bola Adeyoola, a property manager and former boxer who is worth an estimated £10m. He said yesterday that his daughter was a spoilt, cunning girl who had been obsessed with money from an early age. He lost contact with her when she was 11. After that, he said, he passed money and messages to her through her grandparents.

Following her release from Bullwood Hall prison he set her up in a flat but they fell out when he advised her to "go straight". According to Mr Adeyoola, she responded by vandalising his office. Despite the discovery of the "blueprint for murder", psychologists at Bullwood Hall had held high hopes for Adeyoola on her release, describing her as an articulate, "intelligent and sophisticated" girl.

Kemi Adeyoola, 17

The victim

Anne Mendel, 84.