logo
#

Latest news with #LehanneSergison

My aunt was raped and murdered - I tracked down her killer and seduced him on Facebook after police failed to find him
My aunt was raped and murdered - I tracked down her killer and seduced him on Facebook after police failed to find him

Daily Mail​

time5 days ago

  • Daily Mail​

My aunt was raped and murdered - I tracked down her killer and seduced him on Facebook after police failed to find him

A new documentary reveals how a tenacious British woman took justice into her own hands - turning into an online Miss Marple and seducing the man she suspected of raping and murdering a beloved aunt - after police failed to find him. The extraordinary story of how Lehanne Sergison, a retired chartered surveyor who lives in Bromley, wooed her cherished family member's killer via DMs on Facebook - telling him 'you've got sexy eyes' - is the subject of Amazon Prime Video documentary The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching A Killer, released on Sunday. Lehanne, 54, shares the astonishing story of how she turned online sleuth to track down the 26-year-old gardener who'd callously attacked and murdered Christine Robinson, 59, on the 125-acre Rra-Ditau game lodge she lived on in Thamazimbi, South Africa in July 2014. Andrea Imbayarwo, then the estate's gardener, who now called himself Andrew Ndlovu, had bundled Christine's body in a duvet after raping her and slashing her throat with a knife - which was still left in her neck when her body was discovered. A retired teacher from Liverpool, Christine, 59, had run the sprawling South African estate alone after the death of her husband Daniel from cancer in 2012. After the brutal killing, Imbayarwo fled with £3,500 in cash, wages Christine had allocated for her staff at the 30-guest estate. Receiving a phone call on July 30th 2014 with the tragic news of her aunt, who she would speak to every Sunday on the phone, Lehanne tells the documentary she assumed police would catch the killer. However, it quickly became clear that he might evade capture, with police saying they were powerless to act - after CCTV footage showed him heading towards his native Zimbabwe. Andrea Imbayarwo, Christine's gardener, who also called himself Andrew Ndlovu, was prime suspect in the killing - but in spite of Lehanne's pleas, the case was dropped - and it was six years before she herself managed to solve the crime Sleuth: Lehanne made a fake Facebook account she named 'Missy Falcao' (left) to contact Andrew Ndlovu online, who also hid behind a fake account (right) Eaten away by the idea that the case would remain unsolved, Lehanne became fixated with finding Imbayarwo, spending years trying to avenge the murder that had cut short her aunt's life. 'He could feel the sun on his face and the wind in his hair when she couldn't,' Lehanne told Weekend magazine in a recent interview. 'Hearing of Christine's murder was like an electric shock running through my body. We'd always been so close. It was a brutal, traumatic death for a lovely, kind, generous woman.' Despite being 6,000 miles away in London's leafy suburbs, the documentary reveals her dogged determination to catch Christine's killer led her to turn online detective. After delivering a petition to Downing Street in 2014 calling for action, Lehanne realised it was up to her to hunt him down - and she set to work hatching a plan. With her own health issues - she suffers with severe asthma, she decided travelling to her aunt's adopted country wasn't the right tack, and realised 'my only tool was the internet.' Lehanne decided it was futile leaving it to the hard-pressed authorities in South Africa, where around 11 women are killed every day. She told the Telegraph this week: 'I think life is cheap there [South Africa]. It's accepted. Even when they find the men responsible, cases fall apart because systems aren't robust enough.' In the new Amazon documentary, Lehanne reveals how she 'seduced' Christine's killer from her sofa at home in the UK, some 6,000 miles away from the tragedy in South Africa When she finally found her man on Facebook, she says: 'My stomach was in knots'. 'There he was having an active life. He was posting comments on some dating pages, which really concerned me. 'So I thought, "If he wants female companionship, let's see if he bites."' Without a thought for the potential danger, Lehanne, who's married and originally hails from Kent, set up a fake Facebook account, posing as flirtatious air hostess Missy Falcao. 'I sent him a message saying, "You've got sexy eyes." 'Then I panicked. I was going down a route, but I didn't know where. My emotions were a rollercoaster. 'When he replied, I could barely breathe. My stomach was doing somersaults. My husband was shocked that he'd replied, but we agreed the important thing was to keep him hooked in.' In the weeks that followed, a 'romantic' online relationship began to develop, which would ultimately bring her aunt's murderer to justice. 'I realised I had to make up a backstory for Missy Falcao,' says Lehanne. 'I decided she was a young, sassy air stewardess from Ghana. He was flattered; I knew flattery would keep him interested. 'As the messaging continued he wanted to meet on FaceTime, which would have blown my cover. But there was also the fear that as he wasn't getting what he wanted, he'd walk away. 'It hurt every time I contacted him. I wanted to say, "I know who you are and what you've done." But I did what I felt I had to do to get justice.' Having found out the phone number of the killer - who now claimed to be an electrician and living alone in Johannesburg - Lehanne tipped off South African detectives for them to arrange a sting operation. To her exasperation, the phone tracking failed because his phone was switched off. 'I was angry and disappointed. I contacted Andrew but there was no response,' recalls Lehanne. 'A couple of days later I got a message from him explaining that his phone had been stolen. 'It seemed very coincidental this had happened the night of the sting,' she says. 'There was an exchange of messages, then a chilling, "Are you for real, Missy?" It was the first time he'd actually questioned anything. I knew then that I'd lost hold of him.' Lehanne handed over Missy Falcao's Facebook account to the South African police but Imbayarwo either lost patience or became suspicious, and he ceased messaging Missy altogether. The trail went cold for nearly two years - until the sixth anniversary of Christine's death in 2020. 'It was about 4am and I couldn't sleep, so I checked his profile. He'd posted a picture of himself. There was a ferris wheel in the background and I realised he was still in Johannesburg,' she says. Incensed, Lehanne decided to post this message on Facebook: 'Six years ago today this man raped and murdered my aunt Christine Robinson. Andrew Ndlovu is still a free man, enjoying his life after taking hers.' More than 70,000 people shared the post, and it was picked up by Ian Cameron, an anti-crime activist in South Africa who posted it on his social media, sending it viral. Ian was approached by Imbayarwo's boss at the company where he worked installing garage doors, and within hours he was arrested. 'When it came to his arrest, I was on a video call with Ian telling me live what was happening,' says Lehanne. 'I was shaking so much I couldn't believe it. The next thing is I'm seeing him in handcuffs. I just wanted to shout from the rooftops.' Imbayarwo was finally convicted two years later and given two life sentences. 'If this long, traumatic journey's taught me anything, it's to never give up,' says Lehanne.

I snared my aunt's killer by seducing him on Facebook when cops botched hunt… sick sex lie in court made my blood boil
I snared my aunt's killer by seducing him on Facebook when cops botched hunt… sick sex lie in court made my blood boil

Scottish Sun

time5 days ago

  • Scottish Sun

I snared my aunt's killer by seducing him on Facebook when cops botched hunt… sick sex lie in court made my blood boil

Two botched police operations left the grieving niece fearing her chance to get justice was 'gone forever' HONEY TRAP I snared my aunt's killer by seducing him on Facebook when cops botched hunt… sick sex lie in court made my blood boil Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) SHAKING with so much rage that she struggled to breathe, Lehanne Sergison read a flirtatious Facebook message declaring her 'one in a million'. The Kent woman, 53, had received a response from the monster responsible for raping and fatally stabbing her aunt in the neck before going on the run. 11 Christine Smith, 59, with husband Robbie, 63, who died of cancer two years before she was killed Credit: Facebook 11 Despite being on the run, Andrew Ndlovu regularly posted on Facebook Credit: Facebook 11 Christine's niece Lehanne Sergison used a fake profile to try to snare her aunt's killer Credit: Amazon Prime Using a stranger's photo under the alias Missy Falcao, she had been trying to snare evil Andrew Ndlovu by tricking him into revealing his whereabouts so that he could be arrested by police. In 2014, the brute butchered Christine Smith, 59, who was recently bereaved, at her safari lodge in South Africa where he worked as a gardener. He then fled across the Zimbabwe border before sneaking back to Johannesburg under the radar - and cops told Lehanne: 'The chances of finding him are nil." But after spotting the killer actively looking for love on Facebook, "desperation" led her to take matters into her own hands and hatch her flirty plan, writing: 'Hello handsome u've (sic) got sexy eyes." As well as two and half years of exchanges with him, it would take three undercover police operations and a viral social media post before the ghoul was snared and handed two life sentences in 2022, eight years after the chilling attack. Despite Ndlovu's incarceration, Lehanne tells The Sun about the haunting memories that plagued her, his sickening attempt to escape justice and the botched investigation. 'It was spur of the moment and out of desperation,' Lehanne tells us. 'After seeing him advertising for women on dating sites, I feared there was going to be another victim. 'Shock, surprise, hope, a whole raft of emotions ran through my body when he first replied to me. I had to think quickly, flatter him and play to his ego. 'All of the time, I just wanted to tell him 'I know what you have done and who you are'. It was a bizarre way to live your life. 'The hardest thing was trying to keep him hooked. He always wanted to speak to Missy Falcao on the phone or video call, which I couldn't do. I snared my murdered aunt's rapist as flirty Facebook honey trap when cops gave up & botched sting…then sicko told evil lie 'It was difficult protecting my own sanity too. Authorities weren't interested in catching him so it was down to me. It left me frustrated, nauseous and with nightmares." Speaking ahead of the release of Amazon Prime Video documentary The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching A Killer, which recounts her battle for justice, she says her memories of her aunt are forever tainted. 'While I remember Christine and the wonderful woman she was, the grief you experience is untold and it's hard to distinguish between the memories and her traumatic murder," she says. 'Her life was taken from her in the most awful circumstances, we know she struggled, she fought him off her and tried her best to survive but he took that away. 11 Ndlovu was handed two life sentences for rape and murder Credit: Amazon Prime 11 Lehanne (left) was always close with her aunt Christine (middle) Credit: Amazon Prime 'The attack was so cruel that it's difficult to remember the lovely memories, often all I can imagine is her lying in a bed bleeding to death.' Liverpudlian Christine was reeling from the passing of her husband Robbie, of Northern Ireland, from liver cancer, when she was violently killed in 2014. She was discovered dead in her South African lodge a day after withdrawing £1,000 to pay her staff, which had vanished when lodge manager Noelle Davis stumbled upon the grizzly crime scene. 'It's like a nightmare,' Noelle said through tears. 'She was strangled, stabbed, raped. I was sick… I couldn't cope with it… it was so unreal.' I broke down. I physically cried and cried and cried. Police should have made it work. It felt like Christine didn't matter… there were no more chances Lehanne Sergison When she summoned all the staff to break the news, there was one notable absence - Ndlovu - and when a teammate called him he yelled 'it's not me, it's not me.' By then, he was heading 340miles away to the Zimbabwe border after forcing his friend Hope to drive him at knifepoint so he could temporarily leave South Africa. Recalling the news of her aunt's death, Lehanne says: 'It was very weird, excruciatingly painful like an electric shock running through my body.' 'Hunt the b******' With Ndlovu in another country, the investigation soon dried up and Lehanne says the Foreign Office were 'all platitudes, all ticking boxes' but didn't aid her attempts to catch the killer. After a year, the South African government had yet to see an extradition order, which made Lehanne feel Christine 'was forgotten about' so she began her own search for answers on Facebook. The internet became a 'useful tool' because she was unable to travel to South Africa due to having such severe chronic asthma that she's hospitalised every six weeks. That year, Noelle informed Lehanne that Ndlovu has been spotted at a Johannesburg church and longing to 'hunt the b****** down' she told police, who monitored the area but didn't find him. 'I was told 'the chances of finding him are nil.' We saw it as a lost opportunity,' she adds. On the second anniversary of her death, Lehanne looked again at Ndlovu's Facebook profile only to see he had multiple accounts with varied spellings and that wasn't all. 'My head was shooting off all over the place, my stomach was in knots,' she says. 'He was having an active life on Facebook.' On some the profiles, he spouted religious verses but on others she realised he was actively posting on dating pages and described wanting 'a serious partner' of 'any age'. 11 Lehanne says it turned her stomach having to flirt with her aunt's killer Credit: Amazon Prime 11 One of tens of thousands of messages between Lehanne and Ndlovu Credit: Amazon Prime Determined to bring him to justice, Lehanne created her Missy Falcao fake profile, named after her two ex-racing greyhounds, and took a generic photo from the internet. Slowly, she added friends and posted pictures and comments to make the account look more legitimate. Within a few weeks she sent Ndlovu a flirty message. Lehanne described being 'barely able to take a breath' and panicking when he replied 'thanx (sic) hey… u are 1 in a million'. 'My heart was in my mouth, my stomach was doing somersaults," she adds. She claimed to be 27 years old, originally from Ghana, and an air stewardess, which acted as cover for the weird times she messaged, due to the time difference. Soon his messages became more flirty, with him calling her 'princess' and sending kiss-face emojis and eventually he revealed he was in the Johannesburg suburb of Brixton, and she obtained his phone number. She continued to extract information from him to buy police time and to find out more details in order for them to track him down - despite saying that flirting with him 'hurt every time and sickened me'. But the South African police refused to make any arrests. She contacted Sakkie Louwrens, the detective on the case, only to find he was now a private investigator. 'It snowballed from there,' Lehanne says. Sakkie convinced cops to try to triangulate Ndlovu's phone - where they track people through their mobile signal. Unfortunately, it wasn't successful. Sakkie said they were 'not far from him' when his phone battery died, meaning he could no longer be traced. He looked like he had seen a ghost Reg Crewe, ex-army reservist After two days of silence, Ndlovu told 'Missy' his phone had been stolen but was growing suspicious of her and asked 'are you for real?' It set off alarm bells to Lehanne, fearing he was 'slipping away'. But police were planning a sting operation and took over contacting him on a local mobile phone. It gave a glimmer of hope to the Brit, who had exchanged thousands of messages with Ndlovu over nearly two and a half years. Shockingly, after the police operation date was pushed back, Ndlovu suddenly disappeared and cut all contact with Missy. Neither Lehanne nor police heard from him again. 'The moment to capture him, arrest him and get justice was gone forever, Missy Falcao was no more… and I felt lost,' she says. 'I broke down. I cried and cried. Police should have made it work. It felt like Christine didn't matter… there were no more chances.' 'To hell with it' In 2020, on the six year anniversary of her aunt's death, Lehanne disobeyed Foreign Office orders by sharing a picture of Ndlovu and his horrific crimes. For years Lehanne had been told 'never publish his photo' on Facebook in case it jeopardised the investigation but one moment pushed her over the edge. 'I thought, 'This case is dead in the water' then I saw a photo on his Facebook account of him suited and booted and enjoying life. 11 Christine and Robbie ran a safari lodge in South Africa Credit: Amazon Prime 11 Lehanne has since gone on to support others whose family members have been killed overseas Credit: Lehanne Sergison 'I thought, 'To hell with it, I have nothing to lose' and published a post showing his face and revealing the horrific things he did to Christine. And it went viral.' Doomscrolling on her phone nearly 8,000 miles away in Johannesburg, Mellisa Le Hannie saw the post - which had been shared 70,000 times - and immediately recognised the man's face. It was their family gardener of five years, who was their 'best employee', and lived at the bottom of their garden with his girlfriend in a shack. 'I couldn't believe it could be him. I left him alone with my wife, my daughters, fixing things in the house,' Mellisa's horrified father Andrew Du Preez said. Ian knew they had 'one opportunity' to snare the killer and brought onboard former army reservist Reg Crewe to accompany police and ensure he didn't get away again. 'He looked like he had seen a ghost,' Reg said, recalling how Ndlovu stumbled out of his front door to be cuffed and marched to a police van Lehanne was kept abreast with the developments and when she saw the monster in cuffs she couldn't believe it - after six years he was finally captured. 'It's still hard for me to believe it's real,' she says. 'The tears just kept coming. I contacted lots of family members and friends. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops." But in the back of her mind, Lehanne feared Ndlovu may still evade justice because in South Africa 80 per cent of murder charges fail to secure a conviction. 'Zero remorse' In the weeks leading up to the trial in 2022, her health drastically declined and she ended up in intensive care. Sickening Ndlovu denied all five charges against him and claimed in court that Christine was in love with him and that they had consensual intercourse regularly. What he didn't realise was the damning evidence against him - including semen from the crime scene - and damning witnesses testimony. Our bodies are crimes scenes Kaylynn Palm, Action Society Ndlovu's pal Hope, who gave him money and escorted him to the Zimbabwe border, testified that he had been forced to drive at knifepoint proving he was 'a man on the run'. His ex-girlfriend of three years confirmed that he phoned her to say he was fleeing South Africa because 'I just murdered a white lady' while travelling in the car. Ndlovu was said to have 'shown zero remorse' throughout the case and was sentenced to two life sentence for raping and murdering Christine. When Lehanne was told the news in her hospital bed, she recalled being 'so insanely happy' that she 'cried and cried and cried'. Civil rights organisation Action Society say every day in South Africa 153 rapes are committed, yet only nine are reported, and up to 11 women are killed. 11 Chillingly Ndlovu claimed Christine was having a fling with him Credit: Amazon Prime 11 Ndlovu was said to have shown no remorse in court Credit: Amazon Prime Kaylynn Palm, head of the non-profit organisation, says there was one three-month period where 900 women were butchered and adds: 'Our bodies are crime scenes' Andrew says: 'We wanted to show the horrendous scale of femicide in South Africa and the world. It's an important story to tell because justice was found due to Lehanne refusing to give up.' The justice system runs on limited resources and 'moves at a pregnant snail's pace', says Kaylynn, pointing out it can take as long as four years for a case to conclude, during which time evidence and documents can be lost. Fortunately Ndlovu is now locked away. Lehanne says it's a relief knowing he 'can't do that to someone again' and adds that her long fight taught her one thing. 'Never give up on anything, be tenacious, noisy, a nuisance,' she says. Reflecting on her nearly three years undercover to snare Ndlovu, Lehanne believes Christine would have thought it 'gutsy, pretty foolish'. After a few moments pause, thinking about her 'lovely, chatty Scouser' aunt, she concludes: 'But I know she would have done the same for me.' The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching A Killer is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video from July 27.

I snared my aunt's killer by seducing him on Facebook when cops botched hunt… sick sex lie in court made my blood boil
I snared my aunt's killer by seducing him on Facebook when cops botched hunt… sick sex lie in court made my blood boil

The Sun

time5 days ago

  • The Sun

I snared my aunt's killer by seducing him on Facebook when cops botched hunt… sick sex lie in court made my blood boil

SHAKING with so much rage that she struggled to breathe, Lehanne Sergison read a flirtatious Facebook message declaring her 'one in a million'. The Kent woman, 53, had received a response from the monster responsible for raping and fatally stabbing her aunt in the neck before going on the run. 11 11 Using a stranger's photo under the alias Missy Falcao, she had been trying to snare evil Andrew Ndlovu by tricking him into revealing his whereabouts so that he could be arrested by police. In 2014, the brute butchered Christine Smith, 59, who was recently bereaved, at her safari lodge in South Africa where he worked as a gardener. He then fled across the Zimbabwe border before sneaking back to Johannesburg under the radar - and cops told Lehanne: 'The chances of finding him are nil." But after spotting the killer actively looking for love on Facebook, "desperation" led her to take matters into her own hands and hatch her flirty plan, writing: 'Hello handsome u've (sic) got sexy eyes." As well as two and half years of exchanges with him, it would take three undercover police operations and a viral social media post before the ghoul was snared and handed two life sentences in 2022, eight years after the chilling attack. Despite Ndlovu's incarceration, Lehanne tells The Sun about the haunting memories that plagued her, his sickening attempt to escape justice and the botched investigation. 'It was spur of the moment and out of desperation,' Lehanne tells us. 'After seeing him advertising for women on dating sites, I feared there was going to be another victim. 'Shock, surprise, hope, a whole raft of emotions ran through my body when he first replied to me. I had to think quickly, flatter him and play to his ego. 'All of the time, I just wanted to tell him 'I know what you have done and who you are'. It was a bizarre way to live your life. 'The hardest thing was trying to keep him hooked. He always wanted to speak to Missy Falcao on the phone or video call, which I couldn't do. I snared my murdered aunt's rapist as flirty Facebook honey trap when cops gave up & botched sting…then sicko told evil lie 'It was difficult protecting my own sanity too. Authorities weren't interested in catching him so it was down to me. It left me frustrated, nauseous and with nightmares." Speaking ahead of the release of Amazon Prime Video documentary The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching A Killer, which recounts her battle for justice, she says her memories of her aunt are forever tainted. 'While I remember Christine and the wonderful woman she was, the grief you experience is untold and it's hard to distinguish between the memories and her traumatic murder," she says. 'Her life was taken from her in the most awful circumstances, we know she struggled, she fought him off her and tried her best to survive but he took that away. 11 11 'The attack was so cruel that it's difficult to remember the lovely memories, often all I can imagine is her lying in a bed bleeding to death.' Liverpudlian Christine was reeling from the passing of her husband Robbie, of Northern Ireland, from liver cancer, when she was violently killed in 2014. She was discovered dead in her South African lodge a day after withdrawing £1,000 to pay her staff, which had vanished when lodge manager Noelle Davis stumbled upon the grizzly crime scene. 'It's like a nightmare,' Noelle said through tears. 'She was strangled, stabbed, raped. I was sick… I couldn't cope with it… it was so unreal.' I broke down. I physically cried and cried and cried. Police should have made it work. It felt like Christine didn't matter… there were no more chances Lehanne Sergison When she summoned all the staff to break the news, there was one notable absence - Ndlovu - and when a teammate called him he yelled 'it's not me, it's not me.' By then, he was heading 340miles away to the Zimbabwe border after forcing his friend Hope to drive him at knifepoint so he could temporarily leave South Africa. Recalling the news of her aunt's death, Lehanne says: 'It was very weird, excruciatingly painful like an electric shock running through my body.' 'Hunt the b******' With Ndlovu in another country, the investigation soon dried up and Lehanne says the Foreign Office were 'all platitudes, all ticking boxes' but didn't aid her attempts to catch the killer. After a year, the South African government had yet to see an extradition order, which made Lehanne feel Christine 'was forgotten about' so she began her own search for answers on Facebook. The internet became a 'useful tool' because she was unable to travel to South Africa due to having such severe chronic asthma that she's hospitalised every six weeks. That year, Noelle informed Lehanne that Ndlovu has been spotted at a Johannesburg church and longing to 'hunt the b****** down' she told police, who monitored the area but didn't find him. 'I was told 'the chances of finding him are nil.' We saw it as a lost opportunity,' she adds. On the second anniversary of her death, Lehanne looked again at Ndlovu's Facebook profile only to see he had multiple accounts with varied spellings and that wasn't all. 'My head was shooting off all over the place, my stomach was in knots,' she says. 'He was having an active life on Facebook.' On some the profiles, he spouted religious verses but on others she realised he was actively posting on dating pages and described wanting 'a serious partner' of 'any age'. Determined to bring him to justice, Lehanne created her Missy Falcao fake profile, named after her two ex-racing greyhounds, and took a generic photo from the internet. Slowly, she added friends and posted pictures and comments to make the account look more legitimate. Within a few weeks she sent Ndlovu a flirty message. Lehanne described being 'barely able to take a breath' and panicking when he replied 'thanx (sic) hey… u are 1 in a million'. 'My heart was in my mouth, my stomach was doing somersaults," she adds. She claimed to be 27 years old, originally from Ghana, and an air stewardess, which acted as cover for the weird times she messaged, due to the time difference. Soon his messages became more flirty, with him calling her 'princess' and sending kiss-face emojis and eventually he revealed he was in the Johannesburg suburb of Brixton, and she obtained his phone number. She continued to extract information from him to buy police time and to find out more details in order for them to track him down - despite saying that flirting with him 'hurt every time and sickened me'. But the South African police refused to make any arrests. She contacted Sakkie Louwrens, the detective on the case, only to find he was now a private investigator. 'It snowballed from there,' Lehanne says. Sakkie convinced cops to try to triangulate Ndlovu's phone - where they track people through their mobile signal. Unfortunately, it wasn't successful. Sakkie said they were 'not far from him' when his phone battery died, meaning he could no longer be traced. After two days of silence, Ndlovu told 'Missy' his phone had been stolen but was growing suspicious of her and asked 'are you for real?' It set off alarm bells to Lehanne, fearing he was 'slipping away'. But police were planning a sting operation and took over contacting him on a local mobile phone. It gave a glimmer of hope to the Brit, who had exchanged thousands of messages with Ndlovu over nearly two and a half years. Shockingly, after the police operation date was pushed back, Ndlovu suddenly disappeared and cut all contact with Missy. Neither Lehanne nor police heard from him again. 'The moment to capture him, arrest him and get justice was gone forever, Missy Falcao was no more… and I felt lost,' she says. 'I broke down. I cried and cried. Police should have made it work. It felt like Christine didn't matter… there were no more chances.' 'To hell with it' In 2020, on the six year anniversary of her aunt's death, Lehanne disobeyed Foreign Office orders by sharing a picture of Ndlovu and his horrific crimes. For years Lehanne had been told 'never publish his photo' on Facebook in case it jeopardised the investigation but one moment pushed her over the edge. 'I thought, 'This case is dead in the water' then I saw a photo on his Facebook account of him suited and booted and enjoying life. 'I thought, 'To hell with it, I have nothing to lose' and published a post showing his face and revealing the horrific things he did to Christine. And it went viral.' Doomscrolling on her phone nearly 8,000 miles away in Johannesburg, Mellisa Le Hannie saw the post - which had been shared 70,000 times - and immediately recognised the man's face. It was their family gardener of five years, who was their 'best employee', and lived at the bottom of their garden with his girlfriend in a shack. 'I couldn't believe it could be him. I left him alone with my wife, my daughters, fixing things in the house,' Mellisa's horrified father Andrew Du Preez said. Ian knew they had 'one opportunity' to snare the killer and brought onboard former army reservist Reg Crewe to accompany police and ensure he didn't get away again. 'He looked like he had seen a ghost,' Reg said, recalling how Ndlovu stumbled out of his front door to be cuffed and marched to a police van Lehanne was kept abreast with the developments and when she saw the monster in cuffs she couldn't believe it - after six years he was finally captured. 'It's still hard for me to believe it's real,' she says. 'The tears just kept coming. I contacted lots of family members and friends. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops." But in the back of her mind, Lehanne feared Ndlovu may still evade justice because in South Africa 80 per cent of murder charges fail to secure a conviction. 'Zero remorse' In the weeks leading up to the trial in 2022, her health drastically declined and she ended up in intensive care. Sickening Ndlovu denied all five charges against him and claimed in court that Christine was in love with him and that they had consensual intercourse regularly. What he didn't realise was the damning evidence against him - including semen from the crime scene - and damning witnesses testimony. Ndlovu's pal Hope, who gave him money and escorted him to the Zimbabwe border, testified that he had been forced to drive at knifepoint proving he was 'a man on the run'. His ex-girlfriend of three years confirmed that he phoned her to say he was fleeing South Africa because 'I just murdered a white lady' while travelling in the car. Ndlovu was said to have 'shown zero remorse' throughout the case and was sentenced to two life sentence for raping and murdering Christine. When Lehanne was told the news in her hospital bed, she recalled being 'so insanely happy' that she 'cried and cried and cried'. Civil rights organisation Action Society say every day in South Africa 153 rapes are committed, yet only nine are reported, and up to 11 women are killed. Kaylynn Palm, head of the non-profit organisation, says there was one three-month period where 900 women were butchered and adds: 'Our bodies are crime scenes' Andrew says: 'We wanted to show the horrendous scale of femicide in South Africa and the world. It's an important story to tell because justice was found due to Lehanne refusing to give up.' The justice system runs on limited resources and 'moves at a pregnant snail's pace', says Kaylynn, pointing out it can take as long as four years for a case to conclude, during which time evidence and documents can be lost. Fortunately Ndlovu is now locked away. Lehanne says it's a relief knowing he 'can't do that to someone again' and adds that her long fight taught her one thing. 'Never give up on anything, be tenacious, noisy, a nuisance,' she says. Reflecting on her nearly three years undercover to snare Ndlovu, Lehanne believes Christine would have thought it 'gutsy, pretty foolish'. After a few moments pause, thinking about her 'lovely, chatty Scouser' aunt, she concludes: 'But I know she would have done the same for me.'

My aunt was murdered – so I tracked down her killer and seduced him on Facebook
My aunt was murdered – so I tracked down her killer and seduced him on Facebook

Yahoo

time6 days ago

  • Yahoo

My aunt was murdered – so I tracked down her killer and seduced him on Facebook

On July 30 2014, Lehanne Sergison was in Pizza Express with a friend when a South African number flashed up on her phone. She assumed it must be her aunt Christine Robinson who had lived in the country for the past 12 years. Instead a female voice said, 'Lehanne, Christine has been murdered'. 'It was brutal,' recalls Sergison, the shock still raw 11 years later. 'The waiter was passing me a pizza and I was taking in what I'd been told.' Her 59-year-old aunt lived nearly 6,000 miles away in Thabazimbi, South Africa. The pair were close, however, speaking on the phone every Sunday and writing emails. And now Robinson had been found, raped and murdered, in the lodge that she owned. Sergison as a child with her aunt Christine: 'She was chatty and funny. She had many friends all over the world' Initially it was thought to be a farm killing, but then it emerged the 26-year-old gardener, Andrea Imbayarwo (then known then as Andrew Ndlovu), had disappeared along with £1,400. With such an obvious suspect, Sergison and her family reasonably expected his arrest and trial to be swift, but as days became weeks, and then months turned into years, any chance of justice seemed to slip away. Catching Robinson's murderer became something the South African authorities, the UK government and, eventually, even her own family back in England gave up on. Everyone in fact, except Sergison, a retired chartered surveyor from Bromley, who never quite stopped believing that it might be possible to bring him to justice. The start of a six-year journey So began a quest that would eventually, six years to the day after her beloved aunt was murdered, result in the man responsible being arrested. That he was finally caught was all thanks to Sergison, who had single-handedly made contact with the main suspect, honey-trapping him into messaging with her on Facebook and ultimately leading the police to his whereabouts. What made her achievement even more incredible was that Sergison did all of this without ever visiting South Africa. How she managed to secure the conviction of Imbayarwo is the subject of a new documentary, The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching a Killer, available on Amazon Prime Video from July 27. Today the 54-year-old still feels astonished by her role in securing justice. As someone who has always led a quiet life, taking part in a documentary isn't something that came naturally to her. She was driven firstly by a desire for justice for the aunt who she had always shared a close bond with, but while she acknowledges that nothing she has done will bring her back, the past 11 years have proven to her how femicide is allowed to happen virtually unchallenged. In South Africa, 153 rapes are reported each day and eight women are murdered. 'I think life is cheap there', Sergison says of South Africa's endemic of murder - Rii Schroer 'I think life is cheap there. It's accepted. Even when they find the men responsible, cases fall apart because the systems aren't robust enough. And then you start to read UN reports about femicide, rape and gender-based violence and they show that right across the world women have no value.' That her plucky, vivacious aunt was all too easily reduced to yet another female murder victim photograph, a headline in a newspaper, is something she still rails against. 'She was a real person, with a real life and lots left to live, and that was taken away from her in the most violent way possible.' Christine Robinson's life and death All her life, Sergison had looked up to her aunt as someone who embraced life to the fullest. The teacher from Liverpool had lived everywhere from Moscow to Kuwait, and had travelled to the Galapagos, China and Australia. 'You'd sit next to Chris on a bus and you'd know her life story; she was chatty and funny. She had many friends all over the world. She grew up very poor but she had ambition and she wanted to travel.' 'She would come home with a suitcase full of photographs of the kids in her class and she'd talk about them as if they were her own children. She was nurturing as a teacher I suppose. She wanted children but it just didn't happen. And in 2002, after meeting and marrying Robbie, the love of her life, in her forties, the couple bought a game park near the Botswana border. While she and Robbie had been concerned about violence, the life they opted for was a long way from any of South Africa's violent townships. They had CCTV and two Alsatian dogs that were trained to protect. 'She did everything you were supposed to do,' says Sergison. And life was good. That was until Robbie was diagnosed with cancer. In 2012 he died with Robinson by his side in his native Ireland. Afterwards, still deep in grief, Robinson made the decision to return to South Africa to continue running the 30-guest lodge. Christine and her husband Robbie, whom she married in 2002 'I was driving her to the airport and I said: 'You don't need to do this, Chris. We can get a lawyer to sort it out'. But she hadn't been back for 18 months. There were all these legalities to go through, plus she had memories there to revisit and enjoy. By the time Sergison took the call in Pizza Express two years later, Robinson was in the process of selling the lodge with the intention of returning to the UK. The day of her murder she missed an appointment about the sale. The same day that Robinson was found wrapped in a duvet, her throat slashed, Imbayarwo fled to his native Zimbabwe. That someone close to her aunt, who had worked there for six years, could do such a thing shocked Sergison. 'I think there had been some petty theft, but nothing like this. Afterwards I scoured all the emails Chris had sent me, looking for mention of him, and there was never a story about him. She wrote about the chefs, and the maids, but never him.' A 'frustrating' investigation What followed was a painfully inadequate attempt to extradite him from Zimbabwe. 'There were three or four attempts at extradition but the paper work was always wrong in some way. They'd tell me it was getting done but it wasn't. The authorities were so incompetent.' Sergison found her dealings with the Foreign Office to be equally frustrating. 'Our government wouldn't put enough pressure on them to get it sorted. I went to one meeting that had been in the diary for two weeks and the case officer knew nothing about the case. He hadn't even had the decency to open the file and look at the details. All he said was: 'I'll do better next time.'' It wasn't until she made contact with the charity, Murdered Abroad, that she realised her experience was all too common. 'Everyone thinks of the Madeleine McCann case where the police swoop in. But that doesn't happen,' says Sergison plainly. And even the South African non-profit organisation Action Society, that focuses on working for reform in the justice system, especially regarding gender-based violence, went quiet. 'They'd moved on to the next case. While that's frustrating, you understand they've got to put the resource where they can.' Going to South Africa herself was out of the question due to her own health problems – Sergison suffers from severe asthma that has seen her hospitalised in intensive care. Investigators had 'moved on' from Christine's murder, according to Sergison Via text and email she maintained contact with the likes of Noelle Denis, the lodge manager as well as Robinson's friend. It was through her that, in 2015, she was told about a sighting of Imbayarwo; he was back in South Africa, living in Johannesburg. Sergison told the South African authorities. Nothing happened. Taking matters into her own hands His Facebook page had been inactive since he fled in 2014, but in 2016, turning sleuth, Sergison discovered he had three other profiles, under which he had posted more recent photos. Frustrated by the lack of any other investigations taking place, she decided to take matters into her own hands, creating a fake profile of her own; a flirty twenty-something air hostess called Missy Falcao – an amalgam of her two retired racing greyhounds' names – to reel him in. Having befriended some of his Facebook friends, she messaged him flirtatiously telling him he was 'so hot' and had 'sexy eyes'. Imbayarwo took the bait and over the next six months Sergison gleaned new information that she passed on to the South African authorities. 'I told him I was a stewardess as it meant I wasn't always contactable. I had to keep it light; I didn't want to tie myself up in lies that I couldn't remember. I thought if I kept him flattered, it would keep his interest,' she says of her messages. Sergison didn't tell her family what she was doing. She had learnt not to raise their hopes. The loss of her sister had hit Sergison's mother horribly and she was conscious of protecting her from more distress. Throughout, Sergison's husband Simone was apprehensive but supportive, she says. 'He's not one to put his head above the parapet and I wasn't before all this. I'm quite shy but when something drives you, you have to do something.' Sergison admits that there were times during her Facebook messaging where she thought, 'this isn't healthy' - Rii Schroer Still, there were moments when she backed off: 'Because I thought, 'This isn't healthy'. I needed to manage my health and wellbeing. The messaging was often late at night. It was difficult. And I had no support over what I should be saying or doing. 'I remember one time I was out for dinner with a friend and Andrew texted and I texted back. And I thought: 'What are you doing? Stop this!' I couldn't let it consume me.' Her information led to a failed triangulation of his location by the authorities in 2017. And then when a sting operation failed after Imbayarwo didn't show at a meet-up, the trail went cold in 2018. Sergison was left feeling like it had been all for nothing. Throughout, she had been told by the Foreign Office not to do anything with the information she had, that the South African authorities were dealing with it. That was no longer enough to keep Sergison quiet. 'He was still out and enjoying his life. And the South African police were too overwhelmed to be doing anything beyond ticking boxes,' she says. 'The British government had never posted his image online and foolishly I had listened to them. But I had all these new photos. I wondered if I posted them, would someone recognise him now?' On July 30 2020, the sixth anniversary of Robinson's murder, Sergison decided to go for it. Writing: 'Six years ago today this man raped and murdered my aunt Christine Robinson. Andrew Ndlovu is still a free man enjoying his life after taking hers.' Ian Cameron, of Action Society, shared the post, causing it to go viral, with more than 70,000 people sharing it. The same day a woman named Melissa got in touch; Imbayarwo had been working for her family for the past five years and living in her yard for the last year. Justice – at last That evening he was arrested. 'He'd worked for them for years and was trusted,' says Sergison. It was an incredibly swift result, after so much time. However in South Africa, conviction rates for femicide are shockingly low due to the lack of thorough evidence and prosecution. Christine Robinson's killer wasn't arrested until 2020 – six years after the murder Statistics from the Medical Research Council reveals that less than one in five sexual offence cases end up in court and only 8.6 per cent of all sexual offence cases are finalised with a guilty verdict. Here, luck was finally on the family's side. Six months before Imbayarwo's arrest, the prosecutor had looked through the case and asked for holes to be filled. As a result, police got a statement from Imbayarwo's girlfriend at the time of the murder, recounting his confession to her. While the DNA evidence against Imbayarwo was strong, he pleaded not guilty, claiming the sex was consensual. At the court case in April 2022, Sergison employed a watching brief to report on the trial. Not only was she too ill to travel to South Africa but she was in intensive care in hospital with suspected tuberculosis. Against the odds, Sergison managed to write a Victim Impact statement to be read in court. 'It was important the judge heard that she wasn't a nobody. She had family, she had friends. She was real. She wasn't just a photograph in the evidence docket,' she says. Imbayarwo was found guilty of murder and rape eight years after killing and raping Christine Robinson. Sergison has subsequently been told he had a girlfriend whom he was living with at the time of his arrest. 'She was in pieces apparently. I just assumed he was a loner, because I couldn't bear to think otherwise. But she lived with him and had a relationship with him.' 'There was a life left for her to lead and someone took that away from her for £1,400' Her grief for her aunt remains raw. 'Sundays come when we would always speak, but the phone calls don't come and the emails don't come. Wherever she was in the world you'd get a birthday card and the oddest gift. She returned from Moscow one Christmas with a suitcase full of caviar and waistcoats,' laughs Sergison as she holds back tears. 'There was a life left for her to lead and someone took that away from her for £1,400. I'm sure she would have given that to him. She could be dippy but she knew the value of her own life.' She worries about what will happen in the future. 'At least for the next 22 years he will be in prison. But if he gets parole and is released, he'll only be my age today.' How has her experience changed her? 'I've become more vocal. I was very much a wallflower, not one for public speaking. But once you've learnt about what's happening to women and misogyny continues and femicide is accepted you feel obliged to do something.' 'My friends that have known me for a long time are shocked to know I had that fire in my belly.' The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching a Killer streams on Amazon Prime from July 27 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.

I tracked down my aunt's killer on Facebook
I tracked down my aunt's killer on Facebook

Telegraph

time6 days ago

  • Telegraph

I tracked down my aunt's killer on Facebook

On July 30 2014, Lehanne Sergison was in Pizza Express with a friend when a South African number flashed up on her phone. She assumed it must be her aunt Christine Robinson who had lived in the country for the past 12 years. Instead a female voice said, 'Lehanne, Christine has been murdered '. 'It was brutal,' recalls Sergison, the shock still raw 11 years later. 'The waiter was passing me a pizza and I was taking in what I'd been told.' Her 59-year-old aunt lived nearly 6,000 miles away in Thabazimbi, South Africa. The pair were close, however, speaking on the phone every Sunday and writing emails. And now Robinson had been found, raped and murdered, in the lodge that she owned. Initially it was thought to be a farm killing, but then it emerged the 26-year-old gardener, Andrea Imbayarwo (then known then as Andrew Ndlovu), had disappeared along with £1,400. With such an obvious suspect, Sergison and her family reasonably expected his arrest and trial to be swift, but as days became weeks, and then months turned into years, any chance of justice seemed to slip away. Catching Robinson's murderer became something the South African authorities, the UK government and, eventually, even her own family back in England gave up on. Everyone in fact, except Sergison, a retired chartered surveyor from Bromley, who never quite stopped believing that it might be possible to bring him to justice. The start of a six-year journey So began a quest that would eventually, six years to the day after her beloved aunt was murdered, result in the man responsible being arrested. That he was finally caught was all thanks to Sergison, who had single-handedly made contact with the main suspect, honey-trapping him into messaging with her on Facebook and ultimately leading the police to his whereabouts. What made her achievement even more incredible was that Sergison did all of this without ever visiting South Africa. How she managed to secure the conviction of Imbayarwo is the subject of a new documentary, The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching a Killer, available on Amazon Prime Video from July 27. Today the 54-year-old still feels astonished by her role in securing justice. As someone who has always led a quiet life, taking part in a documentary isn't something that came naturally to her. She was driven firstly by a desire for justice for the aunt who she had always shared a close bond with, but while she acknowledges that nothing she has done will bring her back, the past 11 years have proven to her how femicide is allowed to happen virtually unchallenged. In South Africa, 153 rapes are reported each day and eight women are murdered. 'I think life is cheap there. It's accepted. Even when they find the men responsible, cases fall apart because the systems aren't robust enough. And then you start to read UN reports about femicide, rape and gender-based violence and they show that right across the world women have no value.' That her plucky, vivacious aunt was all too easily reduced to yet another female murder victim photograph, a headline in a newspaper, is something she still rails against. 'She was a real person, with a real life and lots left to live, and that was taken away from her in the most violent way possible.' Christine Robinson's life and death All her life, Sergison had looked up to her aunt as someone who embraced life to the fullest. The teacher from Liverpool had lived everywhere from Moscow to Kuwait, and had travelled to the Galapagos, China and Australia. 'You'd sit next to Chris on a bus and you'd know her life story; she was chatty and funny. She had many friends all over the world. She grew up very poor but she had ambition and she wanted to travel.' 'She would come home with a suitcase full of photographs of the kids in her class and she'd talk about them as if they were her own children. She was nurturing as a teacher I suppose. She wanted children but it just didn't happen. And in 2002, after meeting and marrying Robbie, the love of her life, in her forties, the couple bought a game park near the Botswana border. While she and Robbie had been concerned about violence, the life they opted for was a long way from any of South Africa's violent townships. They had CCTV and two Alsatian dogs that were trained to protect. 'She did everything you were supposed to do,' says Sergison. And life was good. That was until Robbie was diagnosed with cancer. In 2012 he died with Robinson by his side in his native Ireland. Afterwards, still deep in grief, Robinson made the decision to return to South Africa to continue running the 30-guest lodge. 'I was driving her to the airport and I said: 'You don't need to do this, Chris. We can get a lawyer to sort it out'. But she hadn't been back for 18 months. There were all these legalities to go through, plus she had memories there to revisit and enjoy. By the time Sergison took the call in Pizza Express two years later, Robinson was in the process of selling the lodge with the intention of returning to the UK. The day of her murder she missed an appointment about the sale. The same day that Robinson was found wrapped in a duvet, her throat slashed, Imbayarwo fled to his native Zimbabwe. That someone close to her aunt, who had worked there for six years, could do such a thing shocked Sergison. 'I think there had been some petty theft, but nothing like this. Afterwards I scoured all the emails Chris had sent me, looking for mention of him, and there was never a story about him. She wrote about the chefs, and the maids, but never him.' A 'frustrating' investigation What followed was a painfully inadequate attempt to extradite him from Zimbabwe. 'There were three or four attempts at extradition but the paper work was always wrong in some way. They'd tell me it was getting done but it wasn't. The authorities were so incompetent.' Sergison found her dealings with the Foreign Office to be equally frustrating. 'Our government wouldn't put enough pressure on them to get it sorted. I went to one meeting that had been in the diary for two weeks and the case officer knew nothing about the case. He hadn't even had the decency to open the file and look at the details. All he said was: 'I'll do better next time.'' It wasn't until she made contact with the charity, Murdered Abroad, that she realised her experience was all too common. 'Everyone thinks of the Madeleine McCann case where the police swoop in. But that doesn't happen,' says Sergison plainly. And even the South African non-profit organisation Action Society, that focuses on working for reform in the justice system, especially regarding gender-based violence, went quiet. 'They'd moved on to the next case. While that's frustrating, you understand they've got to put the resource where they can.' Going to South Africa herself was out of the question due to her own health problems – Sergison suffers from severe asthma that has seen her hospitalised in intensive care. Via text and email she maintained contact with the likes of Noelle Denis, the lodge manager as well as Robinson's friend. It was through her that, in 2015, she was told about a sighting of Imbayarwo; he was back in South Africa, living in Johannesburg. Sergison told the South African authorities. Nothing happened. Taking matters into her own hands His Facebook page had been inactive since he fled in 2014, but in 2016, turning sleuth, Sergison discovered he had three other profiles, under which he had posted more recent photos. Frustrated by the lack of any other investigations taking place, she decided to take matters into her own hands, creating a fake profile of her own; a flirty twenty-something air hostess called Missy Falcao – an amalgam of her two retired racing greyhounds' names – to reel him in. Having befriended some of his Facebook friends, she messaged him flirtatiously telling him he was 'so hot' and had 'sexy eyes'. Imbayarwo took the bait and over the next six months Sergison gleaned new information that she passed on to the South African authorities. 'I told him I was a stewardess as it meant I wasn't always contactable. I had to keep it light; I didn't want to tie myself up in lies that I couldn't remember. I thought if I kept him flattered, it would keep his interest,' she says of her messages. Sergison didn't tell her family what she was doing. She had learnt not to raise their hopes. The loss of her sister had hit Sergison's mother horribly and she was conscious of protecting her from more distress. Throughout, Sergison's husband Simone was apprehensive but supportive, she says. 'He's not one to put his head above the parapet and I wasn't before all this. I'm quite shy but when something drives you, you have to do something.' Still, there were moments when she backed off: 'Because I thought, 'This isn't healthy'. I needed to manage my health and wellbeing. The messaging was often late at night. It was difficult. And I had no support over what I should be saying or doing. 'I remember one time I was out for dinner with a friend and Andrew texted and I texted back. And I thought: 'What are you doing? Stop this!' I couldn't let it consume me.' Her information led to a failed triangulation of his location by the authorities in 2017. And then when a sting operation failed after Imbayarwo didn't show at a meet-up, the trail went cold in 2018. Sergison was left feeling like it had been all for nothing. Throughout, she had been told by the Foreign Office not to do anything with the information she had, that the South African authorities were dealing with it. That was no longer enough to keep Sergison quiet. 'He was still out and enjoying his life. And the South African police were too overwhelmed to be doing anything beyond ticking boxes,' she says. 'The British government had never posted his image online and foolishly I had listened to them. But I had all these new photos. I wondered if I posted them, would someone recognise him now?' On July 30 2020, the sixth anniversary of Robinson's murder, Sergison decided to go for it. Writing: 'Six years ago today this man raped and murdered my aunt Christine Robinson. Andrew Ndlovu is still a free man enjoying his life after taking hers.' Ian Cameron, of Action Society, shared the post, causing it to go viral, with more than 70,000 people sharing it. The same day a woman named Melissa got in touch; Imbayarwo had been working for her family for the past five years and living in her yard for the last year. Justice – at last That evening he was arrested. 'He'd worked for them for years and was trusted,' says Sergison. It was an incredibly swift result, after so much time. However in South Africa, conviction rates for femicide are shockingly low due to the lack of thorough evidence and prosecution. Statistics from the Medical Research Council reveals that less than one in five sexual offence cases end up in court and only 8.6 per cent of all sexual offence cases are finalised with a guilty verdict. Here, luck was finally on the family's side. Six months before Imbayarwo's arrest, the prosecutor had looked through the case and asked for holes to be filled. As a result, police got a statement from Imbayarwo's girlfriend at the time of the murder, recounting his confession to her. While the DNA evidence against Imbayarwo was strong, he pleaded not guilty, claiming the sex was consensual. At the court case in April 2022, Sergison employed a watching brief to report on the trial. Not only was she too ill to travel to South Africa but she was in intensive care in hospital with suspected tuberculosis. Against the odds, Sergison managed to write a Victim Impact statement to be read in court. 'It was important the judge heard that she wasn't a nobody. She had family, she had friends. She was real. She wasn't just a photograph in the evidence docket,' she says. Imbayarwo was found guilty of murder and rape eight years after killing and raping Christine Robinson. Sergison has subsequently been told he had a girlfriend whom he was living with at the time of his arrest. 'She was in pieces apparently. I just assumed he was a loner, because I couldn't bear to think otherwise. But she lived with him and had a relationship with him.' 'There was a life left for her to lead and someone took that away from her for £1,400' Her grief for her aunt remains raw. 'Sundays come when we would always speak, but the phone calls don't come and the emails don't come. Wherever she was in the world you'd get a birthday card and the oddest gift. She returned from Moscow one Christmas with a suitcase full of caviar and waistcoats,' laughs Sergison as she holds back tears. 'There was a life left for her to lead and someone took that away from her for £1,400. I'm sure she would have given that to him. She could be dippy but she knew the value of her own life.' She worries about what will happen in the future. 'At least for the next 22 years he will be in prison. But if he gets parole and is released, he'll only be my age today.' How has her experience changed her? 'I've become more vocal. I was very much a wallflower, not one for public speaking. But once you've learnt about what's happening to women and misogyny continues and femicide is accepted you feel obliged to do something.' 'My friends that have known me for a long time are shocked to know I had that fire in my belly.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store