22 years for ‘body in the loft’ killer

An amateur magician who murdered his drug dealer and showed his body off to friends after leaving it in his attic for eight months was jailed for at least 22 years.

Gary Hopkins, 37, killed 17-year-old Abdi Ali as the teenager slept on the sofa at the flat he shared with 28-year-old Stacy Docherty in Enfield, north London.

Ali was a ‘cuckoo’ – a dealer who had taken up residence in their home to sell heroin.

Hopkins battered and stabbed Ali to death then wrapped the body in a duvet, put plastic bags over his bloodied head and fashioned a noose out of cables to hoist his body up into the loft.

Days after the murder in December 2017 the pair fled to Leominster, Herefordshire, where Hopkins was spotted waving ‘a big wad of cash’ after rifling Abdi’s pockets and stealing up to £400.

Despite his family desperately searching for him, the teenager’s decomposing corpse lay undiscovered until the following summer when a friend of the couple tipped off detectives.

Stacie Collard had been invited to have a look at the body but lost her nerve as she climbed the loft ladder and went to the police.

Hopkins denied murder but he was convicted by a jury following a four-week trial.

Docherty, who appeared in court sporting cornrows and wearing a large pink crucifix, had wept as she was cleared of murder and manslaughter.

But she later admitted perverting the course of justice after she helped hide the body for eight months and clean up bloodstains.

She was sentenced to 27 months imprisonment and ordered to complete a rehabilitation programme when released on licence.

Ali’s mother, Mrs Iisha Abdullahi, said in a witness impact statement read to the court:

‘Ali was a good and funny son, all of his other siblings, nieces and nephews liked him.’

Mrs Abdullahi revealed she had come to the UK in 2004, seeking asylum from Somalia for Ali and his eight siblings.

‘I and my family fled from Somalia and we came to this country for safety but what these people did to my family and to Ali we can never forget.’

‘I cannot understand why somebody would do such a thing to another human being. I will always love my son and I cannot believe I will never see him again.’

The Recorder of London, Judge Nicholas Hillard QC, said: ‘All human life is precious and not only have his family tried to cope with his murder but they also had to endure eight months without knowing what happened to him.

‘No sentence I impose can bring him back or make up for what you, Mr Hopkins, did.

‘You launched a ferocious attack on Abdi Ali. Afterwards you stole money and drugs from him.’

Appearing via video link from Wormwood Scrubs prison, Hopkins showed no emotion as he was jailed for life and ordered to serve at least 18 years before he can be considered for parole.

Earlier prosecutor Gareth Patterson QC told jurors: ‘Having killed Mr Ali, they then wrapped up his body inside a duvet cover.

‘They hid it in their attic along with the murder weapons; a claw hammer and a knife.

‘The family of the teenager reported him missing. The police tried in vain to find him.

‘Meanwhile, as the months passed by, these defendants kept the body of Abdi Ali hidden away up in their attic above where they lived.

‘It began to decompose through the spring and summer months and about eight months went by before it was finally discovered; by that stage having suffered serious decomposition and become infested with insects and the like.’

Ms Collard was a friend of Doherty’s and she went to the flat with Liana Keenan and Ms Keenan’s boyfriend Kamil Mikolajczyk.

Hopkins, who worked as a window cleaner, boasted about killing Ali but Ms Collard thought he was joking.

She told jurors: ‘I didn’t believe him at this point. His way of trying to reassure me was him saying that he will ask Stacy about the attic in front of me and then just watch her face.’

When they got back, Hopkins pointed up to the loft and told Docherty: ‘I’ve told them about the guy in the attic.’

‘That was it,’ Ms Collard said: ‘She completely broke down.’

She said Hopkins seemed ‘excited’, ‘especially in the way that he told Stacy and pointing to the loft’.

‘I said “Okay then, if it’s true then I want to see”.

Hopkins went and got a ladder from outside and propped it up to the attic.

Ms Collard said: ‘Gary was like “Go on then, go”.

‘I went maybe two or three steps up the ladder and thought to myself if this is true then I’m not going to un-see what I see, so I came back down.

‘I had a complete freak out and couldn’t go up, so I encouraged Kamil to go up instead.’

She added: ‘When he came down, I asked him if there was anything up there.

‘He was very pale and just shook his head yes.’

Ms Collard added that Docherty later said Ali was killed because ‘she had a debt of £60 to a guy and hadn’t bought Christmas presents for the children’.

‘That’s why I believe it was done,’ she added.

‘She said she felt as if she pushed Gary into it all; she felt like it was all her idea and she pushed him into it.’

Ms Collard told jurors she shared the grisly secret with her partner later that day and the two went to Hatfield Police Station to report it the following Monday.

Police later found Mr Ali’s body wrapped in a black and red coloured duvet cover with black plastic bags pulled over his head.

He had suffered three hammer blows to the top of his head, at least 11 stab wounds to the upper-left side of his chest and at least seven knife wounds to the back of his left neck among other possible injuries.

At least four knife wounds passed straight through the five-foot-two teenager’s torso, the court heard, with the huge knife repeatedly plunged in up to the hilt.

‘This must have been a savage attack,’ Mr Patterson said.

Hopkins told police and jurors that the killer was ‘experienced gangster’ Gaille Bola, 22, who stabbed a rival dealer to death just days later in order to snatch back his lucrative county lines operation.

But Mr Patterson said Bola was ‘the perfect fall guy’ for Hopkins to try and shift the blame on.

Docherty later changed her story and told officers Hopkins came into the bedroom of their home in Enfield, holding a blood-stained knife on 21 December 2017.

Giving evidence Docherty sobbed as she described how she ‘near enough hated’ her ‘aggressive’ partner who was ‘abusing her on a regular basis’ by the time of the killing.

She said she first met Hopkins on a bus back in September 2008 where ‘he was doing magic’.

Docherty said ‘he seemed perfect’ to begin with but eventually became more and more ‘controlling’, locking her in when he went out and sleeping with the ‘keys under the bed next to his knife’ so she could not leave.

Asked by her barrister, Bernard Richmond QC, why she helped him push the body up into the loft, she replied: ‘I was scared.

‘I thought I was going to be in the attic with him.’

Docherty described how Hopkins agreed to let drug dealers sell out of their house to make it easier for themselves to get hold of some rather than ‘be ill’ trying to get them elsewhere.

She said Abdi, who she only knew as ‘Skeng’ until after his death, came to stay by the end of 2017.

‘He was nice,’ Docherty told jurors.

‘I thought he was lovely.’

But Mr Patterson said: ‘The two of them were in all of it together.

‘In this case, even though the defendants’ roles are different and even though evidence shows it was Hopkins who actually carried out the physical attack and used the weapons to kill Abdi Ali, we say that Docherty also played her part.

‘The evidence suggests that she knew in advance that Abdi Ali was to be attacked; she was involved in discussing it with Hopkins, and the evidence shows that she helped or assisted in the plans and encouraged him to do it.’

The court heard Hopkins had eight previous convictions for 19 offences committed between 1999 and 2012, mostly driving related and low level dishonesty.

Defending Hopkins, Mr Rajiv Menon QC sought to explain the modern nature of ‘cuckooing’, where drug gangs take up residence in clients’ homes, claiming that Hopkins ‘had no real choice in the matter’.

‘Nobody ever suggested that Hopkins was a member of this gang. He was a victim of this gang.’

Mr Menon described the murder as a ‘fit of spontaneous, unplanned rage’.

The court also heard that Docherty had four convictions for five offences, all committed when she was a juvenile.

Defending Docherty, Bernard Richmond QC told the court she ‘was not in any way the prime mover in any of these activities.’

Mr Richmond said she will be released already served the equivalent of 20 months in prison.

‘This is a young woman who has experienced the punishment element.’

Showing the judge various certificates Docherty had achieved in prison, he revealed she had plans to work in a call centre on her release.

‘She has managed to wean herself off drugs successfully. She has taken courses which have helped her understand why she behaved the way that she did.

‘This is somebody who has plans for her future.

‘She has now, very much of her own doing, found some backbone.

‘You did take part in helping hide the body and clean up the flat after Abdi Ali had been murdered.’

Hopkins, of Hartmoor Mews, Enfield, north London, denied murder but was was convicted.

He had admitted perverting the course of justice and preventing the lawful burial of a body before the trial started.

Docherty, also of Hartmoor Mews, was cleared of murder and manslaughter but admitted perverting the course of justice.

Hopkins was sentenced to life imprisonment and to serve a minimum of 22 years before he can be considered for release. Docherty received a 27-month custodial sentence and the judge ordered she complete a rehabilitation programme when released on licence.