Evening Standard
London
A former bank worker who killed a prostitute after hearing voices telling him that women are the devil was sent to Broadmoor indefinitely.
Police mounted a major manhunt for Robert Fraser after two attacks on escort women in central London earlier this year.
The paranoid-schizophrenic was finally arrested after being spotted by a member of the public in a Leicester Square shop.
He was found to have been treated for his psychiatric condition since 2009 and had told doctors he believed that God represented men and the devil represented women.
However he had been thrown out of a mental hospital against his will in November 2013 because he was thought to have been a malingerer, the Old Bailey heard.
Just weeks later in January he attacked an escort girl in her home in Marylebone tying her up and leaving her terrified she was going to die.
She was a 27-year-old Belgian national and Fraser stuffed her underwear in her mouth and twisted her head “as if he was trying to break her neck.”
She managed to beat him off but was so terrified she could not contact the police until the following day.
Ten weeks later he battered Maria Duque-Tunjano, a 48-year-old Columbian, in her Earl’s Court flat so brutally that she died of a heart attack.
Fraser, 40 had come to Britain from Jamaica and had lived “a stable and productive life” working in two banks.
However when his marriage broke up he turned to drug taking and became increasingly unwell leading to “hearing voices on an almost daily basis”.
Prosecutor Simon Denison QC told the court that Fraser had told doctors that “voices in his head had told him his enemies were to be found in sex workers disguised as women but were really men”.
He added: “The doctors agree that at the time of the killing he was suffering from an abnormality of mental function arising from paranoid schizophrenia.”
Today Fraser pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
He also pleaded guilty to stealing £150 and a mobile phone from Duque-Tunjano.
He pleaded not guilty to false imprisonment, sexual assault and robbery of £1,000 cash from the Belgian woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
Prosecutor Simon Denison QC said that in the light of the psychiatric reports the pleas were acceptable and it was not in the public interest to push for a trial.
Judge John Bevan QC ordered that he be detained under the Mental Health Act without limit of time.
Police have arrested two men in connection with the investigation into a nightclub shooting after a dramatic car chase through north London.
Detectives from the Met’s Trident gun crime unit pursued a white BMW before blockading it in an Esso garage in Stamford Hill on Wednesday night.
A man, wearing a green parka, blue jeans and boots, was handcuffed and ordered to sit on the forecourt as officers searched the car before arresting him and an accomplice.
A number of bags were removed and taken away by forensic teams for examination.
A witness said: “There were about 30 undercover police in 10 cars surrounding the BMW.”
The operation followed a shooting outside The Garage in Highbury Crescent at 11.40pm on Monday during a concert by rappers Southern Equilibrium.
The 25-year-old victim was shot in the leg and made his way to a nearby hospital, where he remains in a stable condition. His injuries are not life-threatening.
A concert the following night by London-based Grime MC Wiley was postponed by promoters SJM because the venue was “a crime scene”.
Scotland Yard today said two men, aged 28 and 30, had been arrested at the garage at around 8.30pm on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm and possession of a firearm.