Lead detective on suitcase killer case reveals how TWO mistakes led to warped murderer being caught

Daily Mail​

a day ago

Puffing with exertion as he dragged his two victims' bodies down the street in a suitcase, Yostin Mosquera believed he had carried out the perfect murders.
The Colombian sadist sex worker was only rumbled on the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol when a passing cyclist saw his luggage was almost bursting open with blood leaking from the seams.
Mosquera planned to throw the remains of Albert Alfonso, 62, and Paul Longworth, 71, into the gorge below Brunel's masterpiece.
But MailOnline can reveal that the police officer leading the investigation in the West Country has set out how he believes he could have 'got away with it'.
Det Insp Neil Meade has said that had Mosquera just killed the men and then booked a flight back to Colombia - he would probably be a free man today.
'He's killed two people in a premises. They are the only two people who live in the address, so nobody else is going to come and find them', he said.
'He didn't need to dismember them, he didn't need to take them to Bristol.
'If on July 11 he had booked himself a ticket back to Colombia I am confident he could have committed those murders and in inverted commas, got away with it'.
'But he did what he did.'
Yostin Andres Mosquera, 35, faces a life sentence after he was convicted of murdering civil partners Paul Longworth, 71, and Albert Alfonso, 62, at their flat in Scotts Road, Shepherd's Bush, west London, on July 8 last year.
He had dismembered the men, stolen Albert's money and then travelled 115 miles to Bristol to dispose of their bodies in the back of a rented van.
The corpses had been chopped up after he had stored them in a chest freezer he bought on Facebook Marketplace and had it delivered to the murder scene.
He might have got away with the killings, but for the chance encounter with a passing cyclist on the 160-year-old Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, who confronted him and asked what the red liquid oozing from the suitcase was.
It was blood.
But Mosquera said it was oil from car parts but the cyclist, who spoke Spanish, persisted and asked if someone could look inside. The killer then fled but was found and arrested two hours later outside Bristol Temple Meads Station.
Back on the bridge, police officers opened up the suitcase and found two torsos - dismembered and decapitated.
'Those cops on the bridge that night - not in a million years did they expect to see what they found,' said Det Insp Meade, the senior investigating officer in the case for Avon and Somerset Police's major crime team told the BBC.
'Opening those suitcases had a massive impact on those people'.
Det Insp Meade went on: 'My reaction was "this is big".
'At the time we knew that we had bodies that had been cut up. That's really rare – that's really rare in Avon and Somerset, that's really rare nationally'.
A luggage tag led police to Shepherd's Bush in London where Scotland Yard officers found blood in every room and the chest freezer containing the men's heads.
They also found that the killings were caught on four cameras used to film extreme sex games.
The footage also showed Mosquera dancing
Det Ch Insp Ollie Stride, from the Metropolitan Police, said: 'I remember I was sat in my office when one of the officers came in... he was white as a sheet.
'At that point it became quite obvious that it was going to be quite a traumatic thing to watch... it absolutely proved to be one of the most harrowing videos I've watched in my career.
'One moment they're engaging in sexual activity together and the next moment Yostin is stabbing him and murdering him right in front of our eyes'.
Det Ch Insp Ollie Stride said was 'revelling' and "celebrating" Albert's murder on film.
'He's dropped Albert on the floor and the next thing he does is dance and sing', he said.
In a country where more than half of crimes go unreported due to fears about corruption, police inaction and reprisals, it is perhaps unsurprising that there is little documented about Mosquera's murky background.
By day, Mosquera claimed that he worked in IT in an office in Medellin, Colombia, where he lived with his wife and child.
But he spent his nights doing 'modelling', earning extra cash as a 'performer' on a pornography website where he performed various sexual acts under the name 'I am black master' and 'Mr d*** 20cm'.
Albert Alfonso first came across the tall muscular Colombian more than 10 years ago on a specialist website where he sold videos of himself performing sex acts involving defecation, urination and vomiting in return for payments between £20-£80.
The 62-year-old swimming instructor had what Prosecutor Deanna Heer, KC, described as a 'predilection for extreme sex, which he videoed and posted online on specialist websites.'
When Mr Alfonso became a regular customer, Mosquera worked hard to befriend him and his 71-year-old handyman partner, who did not engage in the sordid sessions.
In October 2023, the couple invited Mosquera to Britain where the trio enjoyed sightseeing trips around London, posing for pictures at Madame Tussauds, trips on an open top bus and a river boat.
When Mr Alfonso paid for everything, Mosquera began to formulate a plan.
On his return to Colombia, he filmed a provocative video, entitled 'For me, slave Albert' in which he appeared dressed as Father Christmas.
A short time later he invited the couple to holiday in Colombia in March 2024.
Photographs on social media show the two greying men with their arms around the laughing younger man on speed boat trips, swigging beers and sheltering from the intense heat under a parasol.
But behind the sunshine snaps, Mosquera was planning something darker.
In June last year he was invited to stay again in the couple's home in Shepherd's Bush, this time with Mr Alfonso paying for a month-long English course, gym membership, and trips to Brighton where Mosquera was seen grinning drinking beer and going on a zip-wire.
Even before he had landed in Heathrow, Mosquera had started researching the value of the victims' home.
In the days that followed, he downloaded Mr Alfonso's bank details, passwords and started searching on Facebook Marketplace for a chest freezer and an 'industrial blender'.
Other internet searches included 'serial killers of London', 'Jack the Ripper film' and he started looking for properties for sale in his home city.
On the morning July 8 after Mr Alfonso went to work, Mosquera pounced on his elderly partner shattering his skull with nine hammer blows to the head.
He bundled his body into a divan storage space under the couple's bed before going online to arrange for his flight home.
When Mr Alfonso came home at 7.45pm, a masked Mosquera led him to the bedroom to make a sex tape.
Jurors were shown graphic images from the video showing Mosquera approaching Mr Alfonso with a knife as the victim knelt naked on the floor in a submissive position.
Mosquera, who was wearing a number of strap-on prosthetic penises, plunged a knife into Mr Alfonso's neck, stabbing him 13 times asking, 'Do you like it?'.
During a prolonged struggle the two naked bloodied men fought, knocking over the web cam before Mosquera forced the victim onto the bed and slit his throat.
The prosecutor said: 'What is striking, when one considers the footage, is just how calm and in control the defendant remains throughout.
'Indeed, so unconcerned does he appear by what he has just done that, as Mr Alfonso lies on the floor dying, the defendant starts singing and breaks into a dance before making his way directly to Mr Alfonso's desktop computer, which he then begins to use, and to access Mr Alfonso's finances.'
As Mr Alfonso lay dying a few feet away from his hidden dead partner, Mosquera attempted to get into the victim's bank and Paypal account.
Ms Heer described the chilling look on Mosquera's face: 'It is not shock, it is not horror, it is not concern for anything that is happening.
'It is elation, it is behaviour unperturbed by what has happened.'
'His actions were cold and calculated. He knew he had two bodies to dispose of.
'He continued to cover his tracks all the way to Bristol.'
Over the next two days, Mosquera chopped up their remains with a saw, placing their heads in a chest freezer and body parts in suitcases before ordering an unsuspecting man with a van to take him to Bristol.
After withdrawing hundreds of pounds from the victims' accounts, Mosquera sent messages from Mr Alfonso's phone to his boss claiming the victim was flying to Costa Rica for a family emergency.
CCTV released after Mosquera was convicted offers the clearest timeline yet of his calculated plot to cover up the double murder before he was arrested outside Bristol Temple Meads station following a police manhunt.
The brutal killing of Mr Alfonso was captured on a camera which had been set up in his bedroom to record a sex session with Mosquera. With the camera still rolling, it also showed the killer's twisted reaction to his second murder of the day.
Casually walking across the bedroom, he rips off a face mask and gloves before he starts singing and dancing 'in elation' with his arms and hands visibly covered in blood.
He then threw a towel over the body and made his way to his victim's computer, accessing his online banking and withdrawing cash with his card in the early hours of the morning.
In a bid to cover his tracks, he cut off his victims' heads and hid them in a chest freezer at their flat where he had been staying.
Two days later, Mosquera hired a man with a van who unwittingly drove him from London to Bristol so he could dump a suitcase and a trunk containing their chopped-up bodies on Clifton Suspension Bridge. But was spooked at the scene by the hero cyclist.
When he was arrested he tried to blame the murders on his victims, claiming he had stabbed Mr Alfonso in self-defence after watching him kill his partner.
Jurors were unconvinced, convicting him of the double murder on Monday after just five hours of deliberations.
Mosquera showed no emotion as he was convicted at Woolwich Crown Court. He will be sentenced on October 24.
The Daily Mail revealed last week that detectives believe the Jack the Ripper obsessed double murderer may have killed before.
Police suspect that Mosquera may have been involved with the ruthless drug cartels which made his home city the murder capital of the world.
But despite extensive inquiries in the UK, Colombia and elsewhere in the world, Scotland Yard have been unable to dig up anything from Mosquera's past to explain the brutally cold efficiency with which he carried out the murders which were captured on camera.
Detective Chief Inspector Ollie Stride said: 'Our first thought was that this is not your first crime so we have done quite a lot of work looking at previous offending either here, or there or anywhere. We have not come across anything.
'We have got no evidence that he was involved in drug gangs but that was something that we thought about and looked at.'
He revealed the level of violence used by Mosquera shocked detectives after he was caught on a web cam dancing and singing in jubilation within seconds of slitting the throat of Albert Alfonso.
'Watching the video it was quite brutal, clinical, we wondered whether there was any military training,' the officer added.