SABRINA KOUIDER AND OUISSEM MEDOUNI
A RARE CASE OF SHARED PSYCHOSIS LED TO THE SENSATIONAL MURDER OF AN INNOCENT AU PAIR: WHY DIDN’T SOPHIE LIONNET ESCAPE THE CLUTCHES OF HER CRAZED EMPLOYERS?
On the afternoon of 20 September 2017, emergency services were called to a southwest London home after receiving a concerned call from a neighbour reporting a vast plume of smoke and a foul odour emitting from a nearby garden. At the Wimbledon Park Road property, firefighters found Ouissem Medouni poking at chicken thighs on a small barbecue on the patio, while a charred mass burned on a bonfire nearby. When asked what he was burning, Medouni claimed he was “cooking a sheep”, but after the blaze was put out, something in the ashes caught the fireman’s eye: first it was some clothing, then a glint of jewellery, then a nose, and then what appeared to be fingers. Asked why he was burning a body, Medouni simply answered, “It’s a sheep”, his eyes cast down. Firefighters noticed Medouni’s demeanour shift as he watched them eyeing up the suspicious charcoaled lump beside him.
Their disbelief at his answer was obvious: “Bollocks” the firefighter exclaimed. Police were called, and they arrested Medouni and his partner Sabrina Kouider on suspicion of murder. As suspected, it wasn’t a sheep Medouni was cremating. What detectives found to be causing the foul odour was the body of 21-year-old French national Sophie Lionnet, a nanny hired by the couple 18 months earlier.
As British and French tabloids devoured the sensational details of the slaying, the chilling account of what occurred inside the Southfields property formed a bizarre tapestry of a murder plot hatched by Kouider and Medouni, which was dubbed “stranger than fiction”.
Femme Fatale
The remains in the couple’s garden were so badly burned, investigators were initially unable to determine the age or gender of the victim. Although it was Medouni who had been at the crime scene, investigators were eager to find out what his partner knew – perhaps she could provide valuable information about Medouni’s crime.
Inside London’s Metropolitan Police interrogation rooms, Kouider, unaware that police elsewhere would soon learn the identity of the body in their back garden, tried to convince investigators that her au pair of 18 months had recently run off with Kouider’s former boyfriend, a founding member o
