Two men who murdered a millionaire to loot her fortune – all while sending fake texts to her friends to pretend she was alive – have been found guilty.
Louise Kam, 72, was strangled with a hairdryer cord and dumped in a wheelie bin outside her Barnet, north London, home on July 26, 2021.
Kebab shop chef Kusai Al-Jundi, 25, and delivery driver Mohamed El-Abboud, 28, were found guilty of her murder today at the Old Bailey.
The defendants wept as their verdicts were handed after a jury deliberated for a day.
But capturing the ‘callous’ nature of the crime, police tracked the pair down after they posted a TikTok video of themselves dancing in Kam’s driveway.
Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector Brian Howie said it was a ‘despicable callous crime’ fuelled by greed.
He said: ‘Two young men have preyed on an elderly lady in order to try and plunder her life savings, and then take ownership of her property before unceremoniously dumping her in a rubbish bin.
‘It was all driven by greed. Louise had money, she had cars, she had property and she had a life that both of those people wanted.
‘And the only way for them to get that, they saw, was to kill Louise and then to send heartless messages to her friends and family pretending that she had fled to China.’
The scheme to ‘plunder’ Kam’s life savings was ‘hatched’ by Al-Jundi who worked as a chef at a restaurant in Willesden, north-west London, the trial heard.
He spent months befriending Kam, from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, to gain control of her life savings as well as her two north London properties (a £1.3 million house in Barnet and a shop with three flats in Willesden).
The second defendant, El-Abboud, moved into one of her houses at Gallants Farm Road, East Barnet.
Al-Jundi told Kam he had a wealthy girlfriend called Anna willing to put up £4,600,000 million to buy the homes which involved avoiding tax.
Kam believed she had been offered the millions by Al-Jundi, money she could use to pay off her mortgage and buy her children a house.
But this long-sought dream never came to pass when she arrived at her Barnet home to finalise the sale.
CCTV footage captured the three walk into the home – but 20 minutes later, only the two defendants left.
Friends grew concerned when texts sent by Kam in July 2021 didn’t sound like she had written them, prosecutor Oliver Glasgow KC said.
‘Little did those closest to her realise that when they were replying to those messages, Louise Kam was already dead,’ he said.
‘She had been strangled, her body dumped unceremoniously in a rubbish bin, and a plan was afoot to conceal her murder and plunder her life savings.’
Adjourning sentencing until February 1, Judge Mark Lucraft said to the defendants: ‘You have been convicted of the most brutal murder of Louise Kam.
‘Not just satisfied with trying to defraud her of large sums of money you left her in the rubbish to be taken away.’
Kam’s best friend, Kambiz Rohany, said in a witness statement his ‘life without Louise doesn’t have any meaning’.
‘Louise loved and cared for so many, so many. Her disabled eldest son has been left without a loving mother. So many miss her too,’ he said.
‘Time doesn’t heal. Now and for the rest of our lives, I and all that loved her, will live knowing of the brutality she suffered, to her last breath, the disregard of her remains, where no pity or mercy was had.
‘My life without Louise doesn’t have any meaning,’ Rohany added, ‘I will end my days as a lonely and broken man.’
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