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A criminology student “butchered” Amie Gray by stabbing her to death in a random attack on Bournemouth beach after researching methods of murder, his trial has heard.
Nasen Saadi, 20 – who, the court was told, has a “fascination” with knives and enjoyed horror movies – is accused of murdering 34-year-old Amie Gray and attempting to murder her friend Leanne Miles at Durley Chine Beach, West Undercliff Promenade, on 24 May.
Jurors heard that while the defendant, from Croydon, south London, was studying for a degree in criminology at Greenwich, he asked his lecturers a series of questions about defences for murder, which led one of them to ask him: “You’re not planning a murder are you?”
Sarah Jones KC, prosecuting, told Winchester Crown Court that Ms Gray, a physical trainer from Poole, and Ms Miles had been chatting next to a fire to keep warm on the Dorset beach under a full moon when they were targeted by Saadi.
She said: “Nasen Saadi, as he walked along that promenade and thought about the culmination of a plan he had worked on for who knows how long but which he had spent the last couple of nights walking through and researching.
“Nothing fine or glorious in his plans I’m afraid, nothing of self-improvement or to benefit anyone else.
“This defendant seems to have wanted to know what it would be like to take life, perhaps he wanted to know what it would be like to make women feel afraid, perhaps he thought it would make him feel powerful, make him interesting to others.
“Perhaps he just couldn’t bear to see people engaged in a happy normal social interaction and he decided to lash out, to hurt, to butcher.”
She added: “With purpose, slowly, stealthily and quietly, when he thought no-one would observe him, he hovered at the edges of the promenade, then stepped on to the sand, and walked directly towards the two women with a knife in his hand.
“In an act horrifying in its savagery and in its randomness he stabbed them both multiple times, chasing after them as they tried to escape or divert him from the other and he continued his attack.
“He left them on the sand to bleed to death whilst he moved away and tried to disappear back into the shadows, away from the glare of the streetlights or the moonlight and back into anonymity.
“He got rid of his weapon. He changed his clothes and shoes and got rid of them.”
Ms Jones said that during his university lectures, Saadi would ask questions not related to the subject of the talk including on self-defence justification for murder, DNA analysis and other forensic evidence.
She added the lecturer “explained his questions were not relevant to the lecture but there would be police input later in the course and he could save his interest for then and then she queried ‘You’re not planning a murder are you?’ but he didn’t reply”.
Ms Jones said that Saadi also did online research about knives, which he then bought, and also looked at the murder of Brianna Ghey and her killers.
She added: “In March he researched ‘why is it harder for a killer to be caught if he does it in another town’, the merits of one weapon over another – swords or daggers over knives or ‘which is the deadliest knife’.”
Ms Jones said that Saadi also researched Bournemouth beach and how many people visited, and whether it was open at night as well as about which hotels accepted cash payment and did not have CCTV cameras.
Ms Jones said that the defendant booked a stay at a Travelodge hotel from 21 May but also the nearby Silver How Guest house which he booked into on 23 May.
She added that the previous evening, 22 May, Saadi had gone to see the movie The Strangers – Chapter 1 and describing the plot, she said: “The male and female leads are both stabbed – the male dies and the female survives. It suggests doesn’t it, that the defendant gravitated to what he likes to watch or sought inspiration or encouragement from what he saw.”
Ms Jones said that on each of the evenings that he stayed in Bournemouth, Saadi walked at night along the promenade to Durley Chine for what she described as a “recce” of the area.
Ms Jones said that Ms Miles described the incident to police while in hospital and said that Ms Gray had attempted to escape their attacker who had then returned to stab her.
The court heard that Ms Miles said: “I ran to the top of the promenade, and I could hear Amie saying, ‘get off me’.
“I couldn’t see her because she was down by the beach where it was dark. I think the guy must have chased back up to the promenade. I couldn’t see anybody, there wasn’t, there was nobody around.
“And he came back on to me, and he was continuously stabbing me, and I told him to stop. I kept turning my back to him, so all my injuries are on one side of my back.”
She also said: “I didn’t want to look at him. I couldn’t look at him. And I told him, I said, ‘please stop’. I said, ‘please stop, I’ve got children’. And then I think that’s when he started to go, he walked away.”
Ms Jones said that analysis of CCTV footage, which had captured the attack, had led to the identification of the defendant and a positive identification was made by a photographer, Michael Priddle, who had been in the area at the time.
After he was arrested, Ms Jones said that Saadi initially declined to answer questions but went on to say that he had an interest in true crime and enjoyed horror movies.
She said that he went on to admit that he had visited Bournemouth but would not give details of his whereabouts at the time of the killing. He said he might have suffered a “blackout” or “been affected because he had been drinking”.
Ms Jones said: “The footage of the attack was played and he stated simply ‘that’s not me’. He said he had no reason to attack someone for no reason and he wouldn’t attack anyone for no reason.”
The prosecutor added that a search of the defendant’s home by police found a number of knives, which showed his “fascination” with them, as well as latex gloves, a torch and a black balaclava.
Saadi, who has pleaded guilty to failing to provide his mobile phone code to police, denies the charges and the trial continues.
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