FYLE: PRE-OP TRANSSEXUAL KILLER JAILED FOR AT LEAST 21 YEARS

A killer who strangled a pre-op transsexual prostitute and stole £250 from her to pay for a threesome with two women has been jailed for at least 21 years.

Leon Fyle, 23, murdered 29 year-old Destiny Lauren after he arranged to visit her for a ‘massage’.

Ms Lauren, 29, who was born Justin Samuels, was found by her brother two hours later wearing nothing but a single stiletto and a broken pair of sunglasses.

Fyle had ransacked her flat in Kentish Town, northwest London and stolen her designer jewellery, mobile phone and cash.

He strangled Miss Lauren while her brother Lyndon downed cans of lager on the stairs before he fled to a brothel in Kings Cross.

During his trial he claimed she was still alive when he left her flat after paying her £150 for sex.

But a jury at Southwark Crown Court took just over 13 hours to convict Fyle of killing Miss Lauren.

He was found guilty after a four-week retrial at Southwark Crown Court.

He had previously been convicted on in August 2010.

Earlier this year the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction and a retrial was ordered.

Sentencing Fyle to life imprisonment, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said: ‘On the evidence this was the first time you, who was then 21, had visited a transsexual prostitute.

‘I reject the contention that this was a murder committed when you had been caught stealing.

‘I’ve no doubt that having strangled her you decided to steal the mobile phone through which you had contacted her and then, as she lay dead of dying, you searched her flat got anything worth stealing, taking a few hundred pounds and some jewellery.

‘Your calmness after the murder was there for all to see on the CCTV from the bus.

‘There has never been a hint of remorse for what you did.’

The court heard Fyle had been on licence at the time of the killing, having been sentenced to two years in a young offenders institute for burglary in June 2008.

It also emerged today Fyle had a previous conviction for slashing a man’s face after gay sex in 2005.

Jurors heard  Miss Lauren, born Justin Samuels, advertised her services in phone boxes and on the internet as a ‘very well endowed pre-op transsexual’.

Fyle travelled from St Mary Cray station into London Victoria before going on to Kentish Town tube station where he was caught on CCTV putting on black gloves.

The victim’s brother Lyndon Samuels, 35, was waiting outside the flat as Fyle arrived.

‘The procedure was that if Lyndon was at Destiny’s flat and a client called and was going to visit, she would ask him to leave the premises,’ said prosecutor Duncan Penny.

Lyndon described the killer as having a ‘bad looking face’ and became worried when almost two hours passed without seeing him leave.

When Mr Samuels returned indoors in the early hours of November 5, 2009, he discovered his sister lying dead.

She had been strangled with two hands around her throat until her eyes bled, the court heard.

Detectives found Fyle’s jacket hanging on the back of the bedroom door.

Forensic experts later found Fyle’s DNA from saliva on Miss Lauren’s right nipple.

After the murder, Fyle caught a 214 bus to Kings Cross where he paid £250 for sex with two prostitutes at a brothel in Gray’s Inn Road.

Footage from the bus captured Fyle admiring Miss Lauren’s designer jewellery on his arms while still wearing a glove on his right hand.

Miss Lauren’s mobile phone was discovered when Fyle was arrested at an address in Catford, southeast London.

Fyle, who claimed he was bisexual and was ‘intrigued’ by transsexuals, admitted seeing Miss Lauren that night.

He said Miss Lauren charged £150 for a ‘massage and oral’ or between £200 to £300 for longer sessions including full sex.

Giving evidence he claimed he left Miss Lauren’s flat in Leighton Crescent and went down the stairs by himself.

‘When I left she was alive, though she was probably a little tipsy,’ he said.

‘From the beginning I had the intention to visit another brothel.

‘I wanted to have a threesome.

‘I thought I would just make a night of it and get it out of the way, then at least I could say I had done it.’

The family of Destiny Lauren has been beset by tragedy since her uncle Paul Hill was wrongly jailed for two IRA pub bombings in 1975.

Paul Hill served 15 years in prison until the convictions were overturned.

In November 2005 her mother Belfast-born Elizabeth Hill killed herself outside the same flat in Leighton Crescent, Kentish Town.

Fyle, of (28) Rushey Mead, Lewisham, southeast London, denied murder.

ENDS