‘He’s a greedy murderer’
A jobless supermarket worker accused of murdering a millionaire and burying her in a cemetery after seducing her and emptying her bank account was motivated only by greed, a court has heard.
Serkan Kaygusuz, 42, admits plundering Norma Girolami’s bank accounts and hiding her body in a graveyard, but claims he did not murder her.
Turk Kaygusuz befriended the 70-year-old at a north London swimming pool and she gave him a fortune over the next three years in a ‘parasitic’ relationship.
After fleecing her out of £284,000 he buried the body in a churchyard around 19 August 2021, where it remained hidden for 15 months, the Old Bailey has heard.
Prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward told jurors that any explanation other than Kaygusuz causing Ms Girolami’s death was ‘absurd’.
She said: ‘The possibility suggested is that Norma fell against one object then fell to the ground, but what are the chances of breaking three ribs in the same way from objects that are not symmetrical?
‘This possibility is a series of highly unlikely instances bordering on the absurd.
‘The other possibility was that having fallen in such a way, that her head was squished against her shoulder.
‘The defendant was present – although did not render basic assistance for a sufficient amount of time to allow Norma to die.
‘We may never know exactly how Norma Girolami died, but we do not seek to prove how he killed her, only that he did so.
‘To summarise, for Norma’s death to have been the result of anything other than at the hands of the defendant, for her to have died of a natural or accidental cause, of which there is no sign, is simply not possible.
‘This is not a disaster movie where someone has to be subjected to an ever-increasing implausible scenario for dramatic effect.
‘In 2017 the defendant seduced Norma and had a brief sexual relationship with her. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the principal attraction for him was money.
‘We have not heard from the defendant as to how he managed to get Norma to depart with £300,000 in the three years he knew her. This wasn’t loose change for Norma, this was big chunks out of her uninvested capital.
‘She’s not a multi millionaire living in Mayfair for which £300,000 wouldn’t make a dot of difference.
‘As to the defendant’s relationship with Norma, you may be asked to be non-judgmental.
‘A few little harmless lies for the defendant’s companionship – that is what she thought at first before she knew quite how much money she was handing over to the defendant.
‘You can be sure based on the evidence that the relationship suggests something far more troubling than that.
‘The defendant had some kind of hold over Norma and had the ability to ask repeatedly, over and over again, for money from Norma.
‘He told her “Please remember you said Friday”, “You said last week”, “please transfer” and “stop saying waiting for solicitor”.
‘By July 2021 it was more sinister still. She felt unable to tell him she was going to stop giving him money. She had a strong desire to leave her house.
‘When you see that hint of bullying, the controlling tone in the messages, the behaviour as if Norma somehow owed him something, you may think this is all of a piece of the puzzle.
‘Norma was stalling. It is easy to see why she couldn’t say “I’m sorry I just can’t afford to support you anymore”.
‘He didn’t need the money as he claimed. Based on his bank balance it didn’t seem like he was in debt in any way.
‘Whatever his purpose was when he was pressing Norma for money, his situation was not pressing.
‘He was plainly only motivated by greed.
‘He was pressing Norma for every penny he could get, wasn’t he?
‘Norma died in circumstances which provided the defendant with the perfect opportunity to resume his old lifestyle of taking as much money as he could.
‘The defendant must have realised that Norma had reached the point where the defendant wasn’t going to give him any money.
‘Is it a coincidence that once again Norma’s death gave rise for the defendant to re-establish a pattern of behaviour that had ended before she died?
‘An opportunity that he was able to grab with both hands, in a pretty brazen and bold way in a remarkable, calculated, sanguine response.
‘He didn’t just leave and pretend he had never been there either. A body means somebody has died.
‘One purpose of hiding a body is hiding the fact that someone has died and another reason is to hide the forensic pathology that determines how she died.
‘Surely the body would give him the best chance of showing, however suspicious it looked, that he hadn’t actually done anything to cause Norma’s death?
‘What does it achieve? It hides at least briefly that there has been a death at all. The defendant could not seriously have thought that Norma’s death would go unnoticed forever. It would just delay the realisation that she had died.
‘The defendant actually did mean to hide how Norma had died and you would only want to do that if you wanted to conceal how somebody had died because that would cause you a problem having caused it.
‘Is it even realistically something that could be accounted for as somebody in shock who wasn’t thinking straight? You have the defendant’s actions that demonstrate quite the opposite.
‘The fact that he did what he did to some extent he succeeded in concealing, it is an odd thing to have done if the cause of death was an accident or natural causes.
‘It also cannot be true that the defendant had just opportunistically decided after her death to take over her identity for financial gain.
‘He decides “great, this is the perfect opportunity to take over her identity”. That’s a pretty extraordinary plan to have come up with and put into action by sunrise the next day.’
Ms Girolami, of Italian heritage, lived alone in a £900,000 flat in Elm Court, Highgate, and had returned from a day at the seaside when she vanished.
Her body was found 15 months later in November 2022 in St James’s Churchyard in Friern Barnet.
Kaygusuz, of Crouch Hall Court, Sparsholt Road, Islington, denies murder.
Jurors were told he admits perverting the course of justice by hiding the body, theft, three counts of fraud and one of transferring criminal property.
Ms Ledward said the evidence suggests Kaygusuz dug Ms Girolami’s grave before he killed her, as disturbed ground had been seen by a member of the church congregation before her death.
She said: ‘It is simply ridiculous to suggest he could have happened upon the perfect spot having never contemplated doing such a thing.
‘At the very least the defendant must have found and scoped out St James’s Churchyard in advance.
‘Even if you entertain the possibility he dug up the grave on the night she died he must have known what he was going to do, what he would need and where he was going.
‘After 48 hours he started getting money from cashpoints, after 36 he tried to get into her bank accounts and within three days he was extracting high figure sums.
‘At the same time, we are to believe, that he was hiding her body so he was not falsely accused of her death.
‘How would taking money out of her bank account, transferring money to his own bank account and taking out fraudulent, huge loans in her name not lead anyone to suspect that he had been involved in her death?
‘The only time he did show any sign of any panic was when he realised the police were investigating.
‘He then sped up with taking her money, made checks on whether the police had found Norma’s body, changed his name and started researching a new life in Canada.’
She said the last thing he had managed to do before the police caught him was archive his amazon purchases where he had bought black rope, a ball gag and harness, plastic overall and gardening tools.
‘He was trying to hide his Amazon orders and what he did was archive those very purchases that you’re going to be asked to consider where entirely unrelated to Norma’s death.
‘This was a cold blooded murder. He treated Norma in death as he had come to in life, as a source of funds, an object, who, like every other object in this case, was to be disposed of once she had served her one purpose.’
The trial continues.
