Yurev noticed Debbie’s leg was still alight. ‘She was unconscious and there were little bits of blue flame over her body,’ he said. ‘I stretched over and put my hand on her leg and put the fire out. I caught alight again and that is how I burned all over. I put myself out again and pulled her over.’ Wearing a leather glove on his left hand, he told the court how he heard the two guards die. He said Mr Vinayagamoorthy took one deep breath, then breathed out and died. Controlling his emotions, Yurev recalled: ‘The other one said something in his own language – I believe he was praying. About 20 minutes later, he went exactly the same way.’
The survivors told police: ‘Victor did it.’ When they arrested him, detectives were shocked by Castigador’s callous indifference. ‘He couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about,’ one senior officer recalled.
At the trial, prosecuting counsel Jean Southworth, QC, said the victims died as a result of ‘murder most foul’. She added: ‘What happened on this dreadful night can be put down in two words – grudge and greed. Castigador is the main villain. He obviously sees himself as a tough guy. He often bragged of his life in the Philippines, saying he had been in the commandos and the secret police. He said he was used to guns, and had killed and could not return to the Philippines.’
Miss Southworth explained that Castigador had worked as a security guard at both the Wardour Street arcade and another owned by the Leisure Group Company in Oxford Street, but he was angry because he thought he should have been promoted to assistant manager.
‘The reason for not promoting him was absenteeism and because of arguments with other staff,’ the prosecutor said. ‘Although he bragged he could cope with trouble, his employers found that when he was off duty there was not much trouble because he seemed to be creating it, rather than cooling it.’
When he turned up for work on 31 March 1989 he was already seething at his failed promotion bid days earlier. Insult added to injury when he was told that he no longer had a job at all. It was the last straw and Castigador was not a man to be messed with.
The court heard that, on the night of the killings, Yurev was forced to unlock the safe. He had a gun – albeit a plastic one – pushed into his neck by Nelson. Then Yurev, Debbie and the two guards were pushed into the wire cage while Castigador fetched the white spirit.
Miss Southworth told the jury: ‘Castigador poured it over the victims and onto the floor, and with Woodside and Clinton watching him, he and Nelson lit matches and threw them in. The two guards, who were at the back of the cage, were asphyxiated after sustaining dreadful burns, but miraculously Yurev and Debbie survived.’
Castigador denied any part in the crimes until the start of his trial when he admitted murder, attempted murder and robbery. His male accomplices, Nelson and Clinton, denied the charges but were found guilty of murder and attempted murder. Nelson was sentenced to life in a young offenders’ institution and Clinton ordered to detention during Her Majesty’s pleasure. The females were found not guilty of the murder and attempted murder charges, but guilty of robbery. Karen Dunn was given three years’ youth custody and Allison Woodside received three-and-a-half years’ imprisonment.
Prior to Castigador’s sentencing, his own counsel, James Mulcahy, conceded: ‘It would be very surprising if you had not come to the conclusion, having heard the evidence and seen the witnesses, that Castigador was a ruthless, callous and inhuman monster.’ Mulcahy told how Castigador had worked as a driver in the Philippines before being recruited, aged 21, into ‘the Philippines constabulary’, a quasi-military organisation combining military and police duties. ‘It is clear from what he has said to those instructing me, that in that body he was called upon to perform duties involving the loss of human life in circumstances which would not have even been contemplated in any of the Western democracies.’
Sentencing him, Mr Justice Rougier told Castigador: ‘I find it almost impossible to understand the workings of a mind as twisted and evil as yours.’ Referring to the Soho murders, he told him: ‘You were the man who planned this and recruited for it, and with evil determination saw it through. You have forfeited the right to walk free for a very long time. Some might say you have forfeited the right to live at all, but unlike you, we do not go to that length in this country.’ The judge said Castigador had condemned his victims to an agonising death without ‘one shred of pity or mercy.’ Debbie Alvarez, terribly disfigured by burns, was at the Old Bailey to see her attackers punished. She said: ‘I wanted to be here so that Victor could see what he had done to me.’
Castigador boasted to detectives that he had killed ‘around’ 20 people, indicating his proud tally with his fingers. He said he had been a member of an official assassination squad under the Marcos regime. His squad leader in the Philippines was called Colonel Lagman. Castigador chose burning to despatch some of his victims – they were wrapped in chicken wire, set on fire and once dead, dumped in water. But in the majority of cases, he was happy to simply shoot them in the head.
In the Philippines, Castigador met Englishwoman Jacqueline Haddon, who had moved there with her husband, a diver. Castigador told her he was ‘a sort of policeman’ and befriended her after her marriage broke up. The couple began an affair. Mrs Haddon returned to England in 1984, setting up home at Middleton-on-Sea, near Bognor in Sussex. The following year, Castigador followed her to get married and obtain UK citizenship, but after moving in he began to beat her up and started ill-treating her two children. She told him to leave and he moved to London, where he found accommodation with a distant relative, whom he referred to as ‘Auntie’ in a council flat in Bow, East London.
He went to work at the Leisure Investment arcades, where he enjoyed strutting about in his uniform, asserting his authority on customers. He considered himself excellent at the job and was angry when after four years he had still not been promoted. And so the grudge built up that was to lead to murder.
After the arcade raid, Castigator’s young accomplices – Nelson, Clinton, Dunn and Woodside – used their share of the stolen money to go on a spending spree in Torquay, Devon, where they laughed and joked about the horrific fate of their victims. As they were being driven from a pub in a taxi, one of the women complained of being cold and the driver offered to turn on the heater. One of the youths joked,‘We don’t want to burn’, and another started singing a pop song, ‘Burn It Up’. All four passengers collapsed in laughter.
On 12 November 2003, solicitors for Paul Clinton appeared at London’s Royal Courts of Justice to appeal for a reduction in the minimum 20-year tariff set by the trial judge. During the appeal, representations were heard on behalf of the surviving victims, who both wanted Clinton to serve his full sentence. The court heard how relief manager, Yurev Gomez, was left disabled from his ordeal 14 years earlier. Inhaling fumes during the eight hours trapped in the vault caused serious injury to his one remaining lung, putting him at risk of pneumonia for the rest of his life. He was dependent on oxygen and his skin remained terribly scarred.
Cashier Debbie Alvarez still suffered from damage to her windpipe and had trouble speaking. The court was told that she was severely disfigured and only left the house once or twice a week. She was constantly falling over because of injuries to her legs and continued to suffer fractures to her feet because of those falls.
The Lord Chief Justice was quick to deny the appeal.
‘THE FRANKENSTEIN KILLER’
‘Don’t scream – there’s nobody around, nobody will help you.’
Dembovskis (to victim)
Name: Viktors Dembovskis
Crime: Serial rape and murder
Date of Conviction: 29 March 2006
Age at Conviction: 42
Jeshma Raithatha was last seen alive on Monday, 16 May 2005, at Claremont High School in Kenton, West London, where she had been revising for her upcoming A-levels. She was a talented musician and hoped to become a professional singer after studying at university. After being accepted onto an arts degree course, J
eshma was excited and, eager to make her predicted grades in English, Computer Studies and Music, she had attended a revision class at school that day.
The 17-year-old left just after 1pm, dressed in a blue sweater and navy blue jeans. She was carrying a black school bag with red hearts on it. Jeshma also wore three silver bangles and had a nose stud.
She caught a bus and went shopping on Wembley High Road, visiting a branch of Primark, where she was captured on CCTV buying a top at about 2.20pm. Next, she bought a candle from a discount store called Pound City. She then caught a 92 bus, getting off at Sudbury Hill tube station. But Jeshma, described by her head teacher as a ‘delightful, sensitive, caring and creative young woman’, did not complete the 10-minute walk from the bus stop to her home in Greenford, West London. It was three days before her 18th birthday.
Her mum Manula recalled: ‘She usually leaves a note for me, saying something like, “I have gone to the gym”, but there was nothing. At four or five o’clock it started raining. I called her mobile phone and left a message; it was getting a bit late. I texted her – she always replies to a text message. At about six o’clock, I started to get worried. I called the police at 10pm. I got the impression that it was not that unusual for a 17-or 18-year-old to be gone for a few hours. I was calling all her friends; they were all linked with each other. Her friends came round at night – we knew something had happened.’
Manula said her daughter had no problems at home, that she was happy and ambitious, and that ‘her life was about to take off.’ She added: ‘Jeshma was in a happy state and was looking forward to her life. She had planned a holiday with her friends to the Canary Islands. Her birthday was on a weekday and she was not sure if her friends would come, with the exams – I think they were planning to go out for a meal. We did a puja [a Hindu invocation] at home on her birthday to give her strength.’
By her birthday, Jeshma had already been dead for three days. Her partially-clothed body was found on Tuesday, 24 May, eight days after she went missing, in thick undergrowth near the David Lloyd Racquet and Fitness Club in Sudbury, a mere 500 yards from her home.
As she took a shortcut through an overgrown path, Jeshma was attacked and dragged 20 metres to a secluded woodland den. A post-mortem later revealed that her attacker had throttled her unconscious before repeatedly raping her. He then stabbed her twice in the neck and three times in the heart.
Police quickly had a prime suspect in the form of Viktors Dembovskis, a Latvian, whom the tabloid press would soon label ‘The Frankenstein Killer’ on account of his large rectangular head, vacant eyes and lumbering gait. Dembovskis, who worked at a local carwash, became a suspect when he vanished from a nearby house that he shared with a dozen or so fellow immigrants around the time of Jeshma’s disappearance. His roommate at the property – located just five minutes’ walk from the murder scene – said that on the day Jeshma went missing, Dembovskis had come back to the address with scratches on his face. He also told police that the Latvian had stolen £370 from him before leaving in a hurry. Police searched Dembovskis’ scattered belongings and found his passport missing. Colleagues told detectives he had not turned up to work on the day of Jeshma’s disappearance and had not been at the carwash since.
Police were convinced he had fled to his homeland and examined passenger lists for planes, ferries, coaches and Eurostar trains. Four days after the murder, the suspect was caught on CCTV, queuing at the ticket office at Victoria Coach Station. Records showed he had bought a one-way ticket to Latvia.
On the evening of 2 June, police swooped on Dembovskis at his mother’s home in poverty-stricken Livani, 120 miles east of Latvia’s thriving capital Riga. His 77-year-old mother, Varvara Danilova, told how police called for her son as she watched a soap opera on TV. ‘Viktors opened the door,’ she said from her dilapidated concrete flat. ‘They were in the kitchen, discussing his trip to London. Then they said he must go with them. They took his clothes, T-shirts, underpants and a sweater – I guessed it was something to do with England. Maybe now I will never see him again. Photographs will be the only memory of my boy.’
When told why her son was a wanted man in England, Mrs Danilova said: ‘The horror, the horror! I thought he could do bad things but he could never kill anyone.’
On 5 June, Dembovskis made his first court appearance in the town of Preili, 150 miles from Riga. When reporters asked him through the bars of the dock if he had killed Jeshma, he said: ‘I have no idea what happened to the girl – I did nothing wrong.’ He showed no emotion throughout the 15-minute hearing, but when the judge allowed cameras into the court, he smiled and posed for photographs. At one point he lent over to his lawyer and whispered: ‘Do I look good?’ He was remanded to custody in Riga, where the prosecutor-general had 80 days to decide whether or not to extradite him. Within three weeks, he was back on British soil.
His trial began on 14 March of the following year at the Old Bailey, where he denied raping, sexually assaulting and murdering Jeshma Raithatha. The court heard how the 42-year-old, who had twice been jailed for rape in his homeland, lay in wait in an undergrowth den before pouncing on the teenager as she made her way home.
Jonathan Laidlaw, prosecuting, said: ‘Her murder occurred in the most brutal and horrific of ways. Jeshma was abducted as she was walking through an area of woods and a field to her family home. The defendant had planned this attack with some care. He took up a position that gave him a view down the road and also gave him access to undergrowth nearby. He was armed with a knife.
‘The defendant abducted Jeshma at about 3pm. By 4pm she was dead. Nobody saw her taken from the road, but she was led into his den. There, the defendant removed some of her clothing before he strangled her. Jeshma managed only to scratch the defendant before she lost consciousness. While she was unconscious the defendant raped her. When the sexual attack was over, he stabbed her to death, no doubt motivated by his intention that Jeshma should be in no position to identify him.’
The court heard how Dembovskis had come to Britain looking for work in November 2004. After a while he found himself living in a house rented by East Europeans in Dimmock Drive, just a street away from Jeshma’s family home. The prosecution told how shortly after Jeshma’s murder, officers met his Russian roommate Vladimir Ivanov. ‘He told the police that after Jeshma’s disappearance the defendant had come back to the address bearing scratches to his face,’ said Mr Laidlaw. ‘He also told the police the defendant carried a knife.’
Police found a blue zip-up fleece that the defendant had left behind when he fled to Latvia. ‘In one of the pockets were two necklaces that belonged to Jeshma. Her blood was found upon them’, said Mr Laidlaw. When police spoke to the defendant’s mother in Latvia, she gave them tourist photos that he had taken of his stay in London, in which he was wearing an identical blue fleece to that in which Jeshma’s jewellery was found.
Outlining the accused’s record of sex crimes in his native Latvia, Mr Laidlaw told the jury: ‘It would be an affront to common sense to deny you evidence that the defendant has a propensity to commit sexual attacks on women. In June 1990 the defendant followed Anastasia Skadinya as she was crossing a bridge. He put a knife to her throat, and said: “I want you, or I’ll cut you. Don’t scream, there’s nobody around, nobody will help you.” He then dragged her to the riverbank, put the knife to her neck and raped her.
The prosecutor went on: ‘In November 1997 he telephoned Ineta Maliseva and asked her to go to a flat, where he was drinking with friends. At about 5am she walked home accompanied by the defendant. At the stairwell to her flat, he grabbed her, put a penknife to her throat and told her to keep quiet or he would “cut her up.” He then dragged her to a cellar and raped her.’
The court also learned how Dembovskis’ house keys were found at the scene of Jeshma’s murder. All this damning evidence, said the barrister, made it clear that the defendant was the man responsible for her death.
When Mr Laidlaw concluded his summary of t
he case against Dembovskis, Jeshma’s father Suresh let out a wail of anguish before sobbing with his head in his hands. And as the shattered parent did so, Dembovskis was laughing in the dock with his female interpreter.
‘I’m suffering all my life for these awful allegations,’ said Dembovskis from the dock. He could not account for his keys being at the scene of the crime and claimed the blue jacket in which Jeshma’s jewellery was found was not his, saying he ‘had one similar.’
After less than three hours’ deliberation on 29 March 2006, the jury unanimously found him guilty on all counts. Judge Peter Beaumont told him: ‘From the first to the last you have not displayed one jot of remorse for the appalling crimes you committed that day against that girl, or for the consequences to her family, who have to live with the loss of their child for the rest of their lives.
‘They have had, thanks to you, the added trauma of having to endure a two-week trial, in which you have twisted, lied and cast about for any excuse you could think of to avoid your responsibility for the abduction of a 17-year-old girl as she made her way home in broad daylight on an afternoon in suburban London. She had nothing to defend herself with – and why should she? All she had done that day was go to school, dropped off by her mother, and do a little shopping.
‘You killed her so you could get away, and you very nearly did. For behaviour as appalling as that there is only one sentence – a life sentence from which you will never, ever be released.’
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