The fantasy world of the ‘Freezer Killer’

A sex obsessed builder who slashed his niece’s throat and dumped her body in a freezer after raping her and a friend has been jailed for 40 years.

Mujahid Arshid, 33, kidnapped the two women from his own home and took them to a house he was renovating in Kingston.

He raped them in turn and slit 20-year-old Celine Dookhran’s throat before bundling her into a chest freezer he had bought for the purpose.

Arshid cut the throat of the second victim too – but she stopped him killing her by pretending she was in love with him.

The builder sexually abused her when she was 13, but her family chose to believe him when he claimed the victim was a ‘whore’ who made up the claims.

He remained sexually fixated by her and also became besotted with Barclays bank worker Celine when she moved into his terraced home in Mitcham, south London as her parents tried to separate her from her boyfriend.

He knew he would have to kill them both and idolised notorious serial acid bath killer John Haigh after reading how he destroyed the bodies of his six victims in acid.

Detectives believe Arshid may have been planning to disolve the bodies of both women at his leisure after storing them both in the freezer.

But after murdering Celine he could not bring himself to kill the 21-year-old and called his brother who took her to hospital.

Described by the prosecution as ‘utterly wicked’ Arshid continued to play out his sex fantasies in court.

He claimed both women were desperate to have sex with him and when he indulged them both at the house the surviving victim had murdered her friend because she was so maddened with jealousy.

The jury rejected his claims and convicted Arshid of murder, attempted murder, two counts of kidnap and two counts of rape, sexual assault and assault by penetration.

Vincent Tappu, 28, had been accused of helping kidnap the girls but he was cleared by the jury.

Arshid stood silently with his hand on the chin as the verdicts were announced but relatives of the victim screamed ‘yes’ as he was convicted of murdering Ms Dookhran.

He turned to the judge, Mr Justice Anthony Edis and said ‘Your honour, what is this’?

The judge replied: ‘Just be quiet please, I understand emotions are running high.’

Tappu was in tears and thanked the jury after they acquitted him of kidnap, false imprisonment and possession of a firearm with intent, namely a Taser.

As he was led from the dock he protested his innocence and shouted that it was the other woman was did it, adding: ‘I will prove that lying bitch wrong.’

The judge will sentence Arshid later today but thanked jurors: ‘No one will forget the name of Celine Dookhran.’

Arshid was orginally from Blackburn and is from a Pakistani family.

He had sexually abused the first victim every time she was at his house telling her: ‘It’s normal.’

Arshid threatened a relative with a knife during a family meeting about the allegations in 2011.

But when the police were called none of the relatives would tell them what the dispute was about.

In 2014 an undercover police officer made contact with him through a chat room and Arshid sent him a picture he had taken of the victim.

Arshid asked the policeman: ‘How would you like to f*** a 17 year-old virgin?’

Asked who the girl was, he replied: ‘My girlfriend… wanna force f*** the bitch? Drug and f*** her.’

In a later Skype chat, Arshid said: ‘I’m keeping her for the right moment, I’m thinking in late November when the sun comes up very late because she will be home alone from about 7.45… we will have her until about 3.30 to 4ish.’

He also sent the officer a link to a website for ratchet tie down straps and told how he wanted to use cloroform on the victim, explaining ‘I’m keeping her for the right moment.’

Arshid told him ‘These kind of girls deserve rape.’

When he was questioned Arshid insisted a man he worked with had sent the messages and no further action was taken.

Celine moved in with Arshid a few weeks before she was murdered and he became as obessesed by her has he had been with the first victim.

He came into her room wearing just a towel and insisted on getting dressed in front of her.

Both victims had boyfriends and when he realised they were slipping away from him he decided to put his ‘bizarre and terrible’ plans into action.

‘If he could not have them he would make sure that nobody else could either,’ said prosecutor Crispin Aylett.

On his laptop computers he had searched for ‘sulphuric acid’ and ‘at what temperature would humans freeze to death within in less than five minutes.’

He was so inspired by John Haigh that within minutes of searching his name he set up a new email account and with a recovery email address of indeedanacidbath@space.com.’

A week before the killing Arshid had Googled ‘how to cut up a human body,’ butchering the human carcass’ and ‘what’s the best way to dispose of a human body.’

He bought the chest freezer from Gumtree for £30 installed it at the £1.5m property on Coombe Lane West, Kingston-on-Thames and and elisted the help of Tappu, one of the labourers he employed.

After Arshid’s wife had gone to work at a primary school in Battersea on July 19 last year, Tappu arrived at his Mitcham home to grab both women.

Wearing balaclavas they burst into the house threatened the women with a lock knife, and stuffed socks into their mouths which were secured with tape.

Their hands and feet were tied together with rope and they were both wrapped in builder’s dust sheet.

Arshid tried to make it look like the women had left home but was so sexually fixated he could not resist grabbing handfuls of their underwear.

Both women were loaded into the back Ashid’s blue Nissan Navara pick-up truck and driven the eight miles from Mitcham to the house in Kingston.

He tied them to the pipes in the utility room then raped both women in the bedroom before taking Celine back upstairs.

Arshid slashed her throat in the bathroom with the sock still stuffed in her mouth before he put her body in the freezer.

The builder wrapped tape around the surviving victim’s body so that her arms were pinned to her sides.

She was then also taken upstairs into the bathroom where she saw Celine’s body lying under plastic sheeting on the floor.

The victim told the court: ‘He just started slicing – literally. He just did it with that knife. Then I fell on the floor,’ she said.

‘I was literally struggling to breathe. Then he got my head, he got his right hand locked his hand into my hair and slit my neck again then bashed my head against the floor.’

She said Arshid molested her as well as Celine’s body as she bled out on the bathroom floor.

‘I think he thought I was just dead,’ she told the court.

He even stopped to sexually abuse her as she lay bleeding and asked her to kiss him.

It was then she managed to talk him round by telling Arshid she loved him and they could live together.

She told the court: ‘I was talking so much rubbish to him, just going over and over and over and over.

‘He said: “Oh I’m not good for you, I’m a nasty, evil, horrible person” and I was like “no you’re not”.

‘I just spoke so much crap.’

The builder got her clean clothes and called his brother who arranged to meet him with the surviving victim at his home in Mitcham.

Later that afternoon the first victim managed to find her phone in the house and call her mother.

Arshid was planning to escape to Pakistan and went to Folkestone, Kent to try and get a cross channel ferry, but was arrested at the Holiday Inn.

His biggest concern was to get his wife to return the pick-up truck he had dumped in New Malden because it was on finance.

Arshid, of Homefield Gardens, Mitcham, denied but was convicted of murder, attempted murder, two counts of rape, two of kidnap, sexual assault and assault by penetration.

Tappu, of Spencer Road, Acton, denied and was cleared of kidnap, false imprisonment, and possession of a firearm with intent.

Mr Justice Edis handed Arshid four life sentences and ordered he serve at least 40 years in jail.

‘He believes that he is the centre of the world and that other people only matter if they are of use to him,’ the judge said.

Of Celine the judge said: ‘In his mind she was useful to him.

‘To be unable to understand other people and determined to use them as he pleases is so also what makes him an extremely dangerous man.’

Mr Justice Edis said of Celine: ‘She was heard to be crying bitterly by [the surviving victim].

‘The fear in the mind of that young woman can only be imagined.

‘He cut her throat and wrists, she died slowly and of suffocation.

‘She couldn’t breathe because of the blood in her airways.’

Of Arshid’s attack on the surviving victim he said: ‘He sliced through her throat and wrists and caused similar defensive injuries to her hands.

‘She didn’t die. She is an intelligent and resourceful young woman.

‘She knew that if she pretended to be willing to run away with him and pretended to live with him he would be so foolish as to believe this.

‘She was right.

‘He knew that both victims knew quite well who he was.

‘That didn’t matter as they were about to die.’

The judge blasted Arshid for running the ‘absurd defence’ that Celine had tried to kill him out of jealousy for his relationship with his surviving victim, saying: ‘That nonsense was rightly rejected by the jury.’

Arshid was given four life sentences and ordered to serve at least 40 years in jail before he can be released on licence.

Earlier the surviving victim was brave enough to read out a statement about her ordeal to the court.

The jury of six men and six women remained seated as she explained the torment that she suffered at the hands of wicked Arshid.

She described him as ‘depraved’ and said her faith in herself and the world has been ‘decimated.’

Without hesitation she said: ”Hearing Celine being killed stops me from closing my eyes and going to sleep like a normal person,’ she said.

‘The constant flashbacks and nightmares prevent me from moving on.

‘Even trying to have a normal routine is not possible with my constant hospital appointments, counselling and professional meetings in trying to make my life normal again.

‘But it will never be.

‘I try to keep myself busy as much as I can because if I have more than a few minutes alone, the flashbacks and screams come back to haunt me.

‘I don’t even like to look at myself in the mirror anymore as the scarring is a constant reminder of what Celine and I went through.’

She continued: ‘How do I even being to explain to a new acquaintance how I received the the wounds and scarring?

‘My dignity, autonomy, self respect and self respect have all been compromised as a result of the heinous crimes against myself and Celine.

‘My faith in myself and my faith in the world has been decimated.’

She said she has been left feeling isolated and struggles to to even ‘begin to come to terms with everything that has happened.’

Describing Arshid, she said he was a liar who put forward ‘pathetic’ excuses.

She said listening to his lies in court left her feeling angry and frustrated with continual migraines.

‘There has also been a feeling of emptiness in the pit of my stomach, just in case people don’t believe me once more.

‘I hate the fact that I feel like that.’

Bill Emlyn-Jones, prosecuting, read out an emotional impact statement on behalf of Celine’s mother Iman Naeem as family members wept.

She said Celine was her beautiful, caring, funny and intelligent daughter who was not in the wrong place at the wrong time but it was her killers.

‘She fell victim to pure evil, the disgusting and senseless actions of Mujahid Arshid deprived her of a future,’ she said.

‘Coming to terms with her death is likely to be a lifelong assignment.

‘She was so full of life and surprises – she was my only daughter.’

But she added: ‘I refuse to let her murderer destroy me.

‘My heart is heavy but I will not let it be broken by the cowardly actions of an evil monster.

‘She will always be in the darkness that surrounds us.’

Speaking outside court Detective Chief Inspector Sam Price said: ‘First of all this wasn’t an honour killing as was widely speculated in the media and which was then widely assumed and repeated.

‘Mujahid Arshid by pleading not guilty ensured that the surviving victim would have to relive everything.

‘He showed not an ounce of remorse throughout the trial.

‘He should hang his head in shame.

‘I hope Mujahid Arshid in the years to come, when he is in his prison cell will reflect on what he’s done.

‘But the arrogance he has displayed to date means that I do not hold out much hope of that happening.’

As he was led away Arshid asked: ‘Can I just say something.’

‘No,’ the judge replied

A member of the victim’s family yelled: ‘Paedophile as he was ushered to the cells.