Killer gets life for 'foul and savage' sex attack
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Your support makes all the difference.A MAN was jailed for life at the Old Bailey yesterday for the 'foul and savage murder' of an insurance clerk as she walked home from work along a railway footpath.
Ian Russell attacked Manzula Amlani, 43, raped her, stabbed her six times and slashed her throat near Bagshot railway station, Surrey, on 5 March last year. He was jailed for 10 years for the rape, to run concurrently with the life sentence.
Judge Kenneth Richardson told him: 'It was a foul and savage murder. Because of you, a defenceless lady, living a quiet and industrious life, met her death.' Russell, 21, later drank champagne and went to a nightclub after leaving the body on the deserted footpath. He killed Mrs Amlani three days after he was released from serving 18 months in jail for dishonesty and a drug offence.
The victim had frequently prayed for her safety as she made her regular journey home. On the day she died she had given up a day's holiday to go on a training course at her work at a Camberley insurance firm, one stop away from her Bagshot home. Her body was found by a solicitor's clerk hurrying for a train.
Russell, who lived near the railway line with his girlfriend at Bagshot Green, had taken Mrs Amlani's bag. Earlier that day he and a friend had smoked cannabis and drunk together. After killing Mrs Amlani, he returned home to drink champagne before going out to a London nightclub.
Two days later, he smoked cannabis and re-enacted the killing to his girlfriend's 14-year-old son, the court heard. He told the boy: 'It's a bit out of order to go up to someone and stab them and then slice their throat.'
Mrs Amlani came to Britain from Kenya in 1986 to start a new life after she had divorced.
She lived alone and was 'a private person but one who got on with her neighbours. No one had a bad word to say for her', John Nutting, for the prosecution, told the court.
Her brother, Shamir Amlani, said she had worried about her daily journey from work along the footpath and prayed for her safety as she went. There was no alternative route.
Russell had denied murder and rape.
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