‘I was just trying to please him’, says accused cop killer
A former bank worker accused of strangling a gay cop, chopping him up and trying to dissolve his body in an acid bath told jurors he was ‘just trying to please’ his victim.
Stefano Brizzi, 50, who worked as a web developer for Morgan Stanley, allegedly murdered PC Gordon Semple, 59, after organising a meeting on Grindr.
Brizzi then tried to dispose of part of the body in a bath of acid – in a scene allegedly inspired by a scene from his favourite TV show Breaking Bad.
He described to jurors how PC Semple asked him to choke him while he was performing oral sex.
‘He was leaning in front of me performing oral sex me and also started to almost lean himself down in an act of submission, kissing my boots and my leather chaps.
‘I interpreted it as a willingness to become more submissive.’
‘He was calling me “daddy”, “boss” and “sir”.’
‘He actually looked at me and asked me “can I please be collared sir?”‘
When asked if there was anything non-consensual about their sexual activity, he replied: ‘Not at all, he was keen, he was enthusiastic.’
Brizzi said he personally didn’t like ‘breath control’ – otherwise known as auto-erotic asphyxiation – but that he knew it was common in BDSM.
‘People like to gag when they perform oral sex – I wasn’t particularly into this thing.’
‘Gordon bowed in front of me, he was performing oral sex on me, he asked me to gag him, that’s when the whole breath control thing started.
‘I wasn’t into this kind of thing, but I know this kind of thing is done by other people and other people attempted to do that to me and I said “please don’t do that”.
‘Some people had tried to gag me but I wasn’t into it.
‘I was trying to please his desires and unfortunately that’s how the whole thing has gone wrong.’
Brizzi broke down in tears as he described tying PC Semple to the bed by his wrists and ankles using cuffs and black cords.
He said: ‘When you are involved in a BDSM sex game it’s absolutely clear to me that even in the most extreme situation in every situation it’s clear that you are both consenting adults.
‘There was no violence, there was no abuse as such, it was all acting.
‘We are creating a scene, creating a scenario when you are in your fantasies.
‘As the game progressed it became increasingly unfamiliar to me, he started to ask for things I have never done before – things I have always deemed as dangerous like leaving him without breath and trying to strangle him.’
He told the court PC Semple asked him to sit on his face and use his buttocks to suffocate him.
Brizzi said they had agreed on some safety phrases and a safety word to indicate when he should stop.
‘He would say “please sir” to say he was absolutely enjoying it and I could carry on.
‘He would say “thank you sir” when he was approaching his limits and I should start to pay a bit more attention to what I was doing.’
The word ‘red’ was their panic word, he said, to indicate he should stop immediately.
Brizzi sobbed as he told the court ‘he never said red’.
The Italian previously said he had been battling his addiction to crystal meth for about two years before the killing, and had been forced to quit his job.
It is accepted he was high on the drug on the afternoon of PC Semple’s death.
Some of the officer’s remains were found dissolving in a bath of acid, other body parts were found in Brizzi’s bin, and in the communal bins of the Peabody Estate, the court heard.
Traces of PC Semple’s DNA were found in the oven, on the chopping board and on a pair of chopsticks, indicating he may have eaten some of the victim as well.
One of PC Semple’s severed feet was found by a member of the public on the south side of the river.
Brizzi and PC Semple had been trying to persuade other gay men in the area to join them for a ‘Chemsex’ party, jurors heard.
Only one man agreed to join them, but was sent away by Brizzi via intercom who told him: ‘We’re having a situation here. Someone fell ill but we’re taking care of it. So our party is cancelled.’
In the days after the alleged murder, Brizzi bought a haul of hardware including a set of saws, metal sheeting and some large buckets to help him dispose of the body.
After a few days, his neighbours started to complain of the overwhelming stench coming from the flat.
Two black bin liners were found to contain mounds of flesh, a human pelvis, a hand and part of a spine.
Police found several notes around the flat referring to the devil with messages like ‘Satan I call you forth,’ as well as a copy of the Satanic bible.
PC Semple, from Greenhithe, Dartford, was reported missing on Friday 1 April after he failed to come home from work.
The officer, originally from Inverness, Scotland, had worked in banking before joining the Metropolitan Police.
Brizzi, of the Peabody Estate Trust, Southwark, southeast London, denies murder.
He admits obstructing the coroner in his duty by dismembering PC Semple’s body in order to dispose of it.
Brizzi claimed ‘I was following his instructions’ during their sex game and was reassured by his alleged victim’s ‘strong erection’.
He said PC Semple asked for ‘greater and greater intensity’ and asked him to keep tightening the collar.
‘There was at some point I was not only sitting on his face but he asked me also to pull on the lead of the collar.’
‘The whole situation became a strangulation game because he was asking me to pull on the lead.’
‘I changed position because he insisted that I pull for more and for longer and I knew it was dangerous.’
‘He was begging me to increase the dangerousness of the position and I wanted to make sure that nothing dangerous would happen.’
‘I kept asking if he was sure, he kept saying “it’s only a few seconds, it’s okay.”
Brizzi said he had been counting to 30 each time in his head before releasing the pressure on the lead.
‘I was still encouraged by the fact he had a very strong erection – a very large hard on – while we were playing this game.
‘I was watching porn and pulling the lead and counting mentally – I was following his instructions.
‘He was dripping pre-cum, he was very excited.’
When asked when he noticed he was unconscious, he said: ‘I didn’t notice much because I couldn’t see him, but when I stood up I did notice something had gone wrong because he wasn’t breathing anymore.’
‘I realised we had been playing a very dangerous game and I wasn’t clear at all on the limits, I had a rush of thoughts in my head and I said “why did we play this game?”.
He said he had tried to perform emergency first aid, and had searched through PC Semple’s pockets to look for an inhaler in case he had asthma.
He said he had been on the point of calling an ambulance but panicked when he found PC Semple’s police badge.
‘I wasn’t able to asses how severe the situation was, I thought he might need a spray for people with asthma and I found the police badge.
‘I was absolutely petrified.’
He admitted that he had never called an ambulance.
When asked about the comments he made about satanism in his first police interview, he said: ‘I was high on drugs. I didn’t know what I was saying.’
Dr Ashley Fegan-Earl, a pathologist for the defence, told the court that PC Semple may have had a sudden heart attack.
He said PC Semple suffered from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, kidney disease and was overweight.
Dr Fegan-Earl said the strangulation game that Brizzi and PC Semple were playing could have caused hypoxia – a lack of oxygen to the brain – and could have caused unconsciousness within 20 seconds.
But he said that once the pressure was released, PC Semple should have revived very quickly.
Sallie Bennett-Jenkins, for Brizzi, said: ‘Compression on the neck can cause disruption of the rhythm of the heart, in the case of this consensual sexual game, can hypoxia cause the heartbeat to become more irregular?’
‘Yes,’ Dr Fegan-Earl replied.
Ms Bennett-Jenkins said: ‘Mr Semple was 59 years of age, he was a man recorded as being clinically obese, he had the presence of two risk factors for heart disease – high blood pressure and high cholesterol – and a soft factor for heart disease in the form of his obesity.
‘He was continuing to receive treatment for both conditions, he had taken drugs which themselves may have had an effect on the rhythms of the heart, and he was engaging in an activity that may cause some disruption of the rhythms of the heart.
‘Given his clinical history and the drugs, is it possible that even without compression of the neck Gordon Semple might have had a heart attack?’
Dr Fegan-Earl replied: ‘If he had suffered a sudden cardiac death, that’s a possibility given his clinical history.’
Brizzi claimed PC Semple ‘died in a state of erotic bliss’.
He said he was sitting on the officer’s face ‘because that’s what he he wanted’.
Brizzi added: ‘At the time I felt extremely responsible, I honestly didn’t known he had died.’
When asked if he had seen anything that was indicating PC Semple was having a heart attack, he said: ‘Most of the time I was sitting on his face, but I would have thought he would at least have touched me if there was a problem.
‘There was this extreme breath control when he was encouraging me to pull the cord.’
Brizzi said that in the wake of PC Semple’s death he downed two sleeping pills to try and calm himself, but continued taking crystal meth.
He said he became paranoid PC Semple had been sent to spy on him, and that the police had infiltrated Grindr.
The day before someone had posted on a thread about chemsex on the Grindr ‘you realise how illegal this all is?’ and became convinced he had been referred to the police.
‘I was absolutely shocked, I was starting to think so many things. One of the side effects of chems is paranoia and I started to have a lot of paranoid thoughts.
‘By that point I couldn’t breathe, I really had a panic attack. I needed to calm myself down.
‘I was too agitated to be able to sleep, but they did calm me down at least, but in the evening I dosed with sleeping pills trying to die.
‘From that point onwards I started to use both sleeping pills to calm myself down and crystal meth with the purpose of spurring myself into action.
‘I was having a lot of paranoid thoughts, I thought the police would be banging on my door and any moment.
‘The I read the message saying “Are you aware of how illegal this all is?” and I thought “the police must have tracked me, they are controlling Grindr”.
‘I thought the police might have sent Gordon to check on me.
‘I was trying to check on Gordon, unfortunately I’m here and my entire life is judged by a few moments, but I’m a spiritual person and I thought I could talk to his soul.’
He described reading texts from PC Semple’s partner Gary Meeks and said he thought the policeman’s phone was recording him.
‘I was convinced they would have the GPS, they already knew the address, I was seriously considering killing myself.
‘I’d never had any problem with the law or the police, I couldn’t believe it.’
He continued: ‘I was in a bad dream, I was in a horror movie, some times I have dreams that are so vivid they seem almost real.
‘So I was confronted with a reality in front of my eyes that was so horrific I thought I was in a nightmare.’
‘I was high on drugs and it plunged me into an alternative state of mind and I kept thinking that Gordon was with me and I was begging him to let go of his body.’
Brizzi said he stuffed banknotes into PS Semple’s mouth and placed his severed head in the acid bath while in a drug-induced delirium.
He admitted of disposing of PC Semple’s personal effects, including his mobile phone – which he had smashed – his bank cards and his police badge, in a drain in Bermondsey.
But forensic teams found two washed out bank notes – £5 and £50 – drying on the radiator.
Mr Aylett asked: ‘Did you keep these notes because they might be useful to you?’
Brizzi replied: ‘I didn’t care about £55.’
‘As far as I can remember from this point on everything was a blur, even when the police arrested me.’
‘In my delirium I remember these bank notes were inside his mouth and I didn’t know why – the money was completely consumed and washed out because they had been in the acid so they were almost completely washed out.
‘It was just like a dream when you don’t remember the dream, I really didn’t know what I had done.
‘I had this recollection that at some point I saw his head in my bath tub and I noticed inside his mouth there were these bank notes and I didn’t know why I had put them there.’
Brizzi became so distressed during evidence that he was asked to step away from the microphone because his voice was too loud.
He said in the moments after PC Semple lost consciousness he didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but didn’t call 999.
Mr Aylett asked: ‘Did you think “You know what? I’ll let him die, I’ll chop him up and I’ll get him out of my flat?” Is that what you thought when you decided not to ring for medical help for someone whom you didn’t know if they were dead or alive?’
Brizzi said: ‘As soon as I saw the police badge I started to panic – you must understand in this country people trust the police, people trust institutions.
‘I’m sorry to say in Italy we have different relationships with the authorities and police go around heavily armed and people are not going around relying on the police – people are afraid of them.’
‘Why were you trying to get the body out of your flat?’ asked Mr Aylett.
‘I was hoping to get away with his death.
‘That had happened and I didn’t know what to do anymore.’
‘I had done something horrific but at that moment when that thing happened I wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘I was thinking that if I call them now (the emergency services) they will definitely think that I am guilty because why didn’t I call them before?’
At the police station, Brizzi asked for his phone because he said some people were coming round to his house the following day for sex.
Today he said: ‘All the stuff that came up in evidence – I don’t remember it.
‘My house was smelling, I had shat on my own floor, how could I possibly think that someone was coming to my place for sex?’
