Delivery driver’s defence is ‘palpable nonsense’

A delivery driver who claims he was brainwashed into cleaning up a murder scene is talking ‘nonsense’, a court heard.

Romanian Mohammed El-Abboud, 24, and Syrian chef Kusai Al-Jundi, 28, are accused of strangling millionairess Louise Kam, 71, with the flex of El-Abboud’s hairdryer.

Her body was bundled into a rubbish bin at her home in Gallants Farm Road, Barnet, where she had gone to finalise a £6m property deal with the pair.

El-Abboud supervised two delivery men to drive the bin away with other rubbish to Al-Jundi’s home in Wood End Road, Harrow, the Old Bailey has heard.

He was living at the house in Barnet and claims he was asleep there when Mrs Kam was murdered.

El-Abboud claims he was ‘obliged to help’ Al-Jundi after he woke up, went downstairs and found Mrs Kam dead in the living room.

In his closing speech prosecutor Oliver Glasgow said El-Abboud’s evidence was ‘palpable nonsense.’

He said: ‘The story of the penniless delivery driver who found a dead body who was tricked into covering up another man’s murder who helped moved the body and was left covered in forensic evidence. It sounds like the story of a cheap holiday read.

‘It leaves you scratching your head thinking how rubbish like this gets published.

‘There must have been a terrible moment as the electrical cord was drawn tight around her neck when Louise Kam realised all the warnings her family gave her was correct, Kusai Al-Jundi was not to be trusted.

‘All he wanted was everything she had, her house, her flat, her rental income and the contents of her bank account.

‘She certainly made things much easier for her killers than they deserved.

‘What makes this case particularly tragic is that it was all for nothing.

‘[Al-Jundi] might have thought he had outsmarted them but his fundamental lack of understanding when it came to ownership meant he got nothing.

‘These two men believed they were entitled to do and say anything to whoever they wanted to get anything they believed could be theirs.

‘Two men who are liars, cheats and murderers.

‘The faith of Louise Kam is utterly shocking… deceived by a man who professed to being her friend and betrayed by the man she was kind to, [who was] murdered by the two of them and left behind in a bin…. as they profited from her theft.

‘As a result of his silence you now know Al-Jundi accepts he is a liar, a cheat, and a thief.

‘His shocking mistreatment of Louise Kam’s kindness has not been challenged either by him or on behalf of his legal team.

‘What matters is that these two defendants did this together. Each supporting the other and each knowing [they were] to kill Louise Kam and make money out of her death.

‘As each of them drove away from number 16 that afternoon knowing Louise Kam’s lifeless body lay on the floor each of them must have believed they had won.

[‘But] Al-Jundi and El-Abboud rushed about trying to cover up what they had done. They made mistake after mistake, as they left a trail of evidence that only points in one direction; their undeniable guilt.

‘Is there no wonder that the Crown’s case has been met with a deafening silence?

‘The all-important question why did they do it? The answer is simple, greed. Louise Kam died because there was no way of getting access to her money whilst she was alive.’

Al-Jundi had befriended El-Abboud when he came to London from Coventry and gave him a job as a delivery driver, use of the Audi TT he had swindled from another woman and accommodation at Mrs Kam’s home.

The chef, of Wood End Road, Harrow, and El-Abboud, whose last address was Gallants Farm Road, Barnet, both deny Ms Kam’s murder.

Al-Jundi has chosen not to give evidence.

The trial continues.

ENDS