A convicted killer was jailed for life at the Old

A convicted killer was jailed for life at the Old Bailey today (thurs) for a brutal trail of crime including the armed robbery of a frail widow in her home.

Violet Cooper, 78, told how cowardly Junior Samuel, 27, held a gun to her head in a terrifying night time raid and threatened to ‘splash her brains all over the carpet.

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And in a reference to the case of farmer Tony Martin, jailed for life for shooting a teenager burglar dead in his home, Mrs Cooper said she would have shot Samuel if she had been armed.

It then emerged Samuel, 27, was locked up for seven years in 1994, for his part in the fatal mugging of a 64-year-old man in New Cross, southeast London.

The victim was surrounded in a lift and beaten so severely that his spleen was ruptured.

A trial heard how last August Mrs Cooper had been watching TV when Samuel climbed in through her bedroom window and robbed her of her wedding and engagement rings and her watch.

But while Samuel was looting her bedroom, plucky Mrs Cooper seized her chance and fled to a neighbour’s house two doors away.

Samuel, of (9) Byron Court, Lordship Lane Estate, East Dulwich, south London, had admitted one count of robbery of money and jewellery.

But earlier this year a jury convicted Samuel of possessing a firearm or imitation firearm at the time of the robbery, on August 28 last year.

Today (thurs) another jury found him guilty of three further robberies, including two against heavily pregnant women who were pinned to the floors of lifts and partially strangled.

The Judge, Mr Recorder Walter Aylen, QC, sentenced Samuel to life imprisonment under the so-called ‘two strikes and you’re out’ law and branded him a ‘sadist, a coward and a bully.

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And the judge commended the two women, who later gave birth to healthy babies, for giving evidence against an ‘extremely dangerous member of the public.

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One of them Sarah MacDonald, who now lives in Wick, Scotland, was awarded pnds stlg 650, while the other, Louise Barker, will receive pnds stlg 250.

Samuel had targeted Mrs Cooper after clambering up scaffolding outside her block of flats at (202) Ladlands on the Dawson Heights estate, Dulwich, on 28 August last year.

‘I was in the living room sitting on the settee watching television.

I saw him outside the bedroom door,’ said Mrs Cooper, who lives alone in the one-bedroom flat.

‘I said: ‘How the hell did you get here.

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‘I couldn’t believe it.

I just watched him.

‘Samuel said: ‘You better behave because I have got a gun.

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‘Then he showed it to me.

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Callous Samuel, who is of muscular build, then shoved Mrs Cooper face down on her living room floor and jumped on top of her, the court heard.

He then held the gun against her head and said: ‘If you say anything I’ll splash your brains all over the carpet.

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He pulled her back off the floor and put her on the settee.

The jury heard he climbed up the stairs to her bedroom and then waved the gun around at her while he proceeded to ransack her bedroom, tipping out drawers from her tallboy in a frantic search for cash.

‘He kept waving the gun at me.

He was teasing me.

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‘He kept saying: ‘I’ve got this.

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Mrs Cooper then demonstrated how Samuel waved the gun from side to side to the court.

When Samuel’s barrister suggested to the woman that there was no gun Mrs Cooper told the jury:

‘I know a gun when I see one – and he made sure that I saw it.

‘He was frightening the life out of me.

Anyone else in my position would have done the same thing,’ Mrs Cooper said.

‘I didn’t want my brains blown out.

I wasn’t going to ask him to show me how it works, was I?’

Mrs Cooper was later taken to Kings College Hospital, Camberwell where she was treated for bruises to her face and body.

Samuel was caught after his fingerprints were found on the window ledge outside Mrs Cooper’s flat.

He was arrested on November 3 last year.

Mrs Cooper later picked out Samuel at an identity parade in Kilburn and Samuel was charged with the break-in.

Mrs Barker and Mrs MacDonald were robbed by Samuel on October 22 and November 3 respectively.

He mugged another victim, Mrs Ono Makapone, on 13 October at Ladlands house on the Dawson Heights Estate.

ends

addwidow.