‘I kept his body in the bath for three days’
A woman accused of murdering her abusive stepfather confessed to an undercover police officer that she kept his body in a bath for three days, a court heard.
Surie Suksiri, 31, killed Frank McKeever, 63, after forcing him to film a video confessing to abusing her as child.
Mr McKeever ‘vanished off the face of the earth’ after visiting Suksiri at her home in north London on 28 August 2021 and his body has never been found.
She had forced him to film a 47 second video confessing to abusing her when she was six, saying: ‘I deserve to be punished’, the Old Bailey has heard.
The court had heard that Suksiri and Sheikh bought a £350 car and drove 80 miles to dump the body in a location they have never revealed, the court heard.
Suksiri and her partner Juned Sheikh, 48, both deny murdering Mr McKeever.
They also deny preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body on or around 3 September 2021.
Mr McKeever had been due to swap his four bedroom Islington council house with Sheikh’s sister but change his mind and decided to give it to another couple, the court heard.
Sheikh claims that Mr McKeever left the house alive and well and that while he has not seen him since he may well be still alive.
Suksiri claims that Mr McKeever claims she found him dead and Sheikh made her dispose of the body with him.
The undercover detective, known as Natalie, or Nat, explained that she and her colleagues had befriended Suksiri and hinted to her that they wanted to recruit her to a criminal gang.
She told the court: ‘I never said exactly what I was involved in.
‘I said I had a cleaning company and I hinted at involvement in possible criminality.
‘From hints [Suksiri] filled in the blanks herself that I was involved in drug-dealing.’
She introduced Suksiri to another undercover cop she called “Lee,” saying he was her brother-in-law and the boss of a crime gang, who was looking to recruit Suksiri but wanted to test her with low-level work first.
‘I told her he wanted to meet her properly in person so he could check her out.
‘He liked to meet people who were to work for him and he wouldn’t give her big work at the start, as he wanted to see if he could trust her to work for him.’
On 7 October the undercover cops arranged to meet Suksiri at the Rabbit Hole Cafe on Holloway Road, where they gave her money to go to Argos to buy some phones for them.
‘I offered her some cash to buy me some mobile phones from Argos.
‘They were cheap burner phones, around £20-30 each.
‘When she came back she got £50 for doing that.’
The court heard a recording of a phone call between Nat and Suksiri in which Suksiri can be heard telling Nat that ‘I need to work really badly.’
Nat then told her that a “big drop” that was happening next week, and they might need her help.
She said in the call ‘We have definitely got something going down next week. We have got a bit of a drop next week.
‘There might be something that needs looking after next week. It wouldn’t cause you any trouble if you were caught.’
She added that it would need to be held for a ‘couple of days’ and that ‘it’s not D or anything like that. If you were found with it it wouldn’t be a problem.’
She told the court that ‘D’ was an abbreviation for ‘drugs’ that she and Suksiri used.
A woman accused of murdering her stepfather explained to an undercover police officer how she had destroyed the evidence, a court heart today.
Natalie used the personal rapport she developed with Suksiri to get her to open up about the alleged murder.
The court heard a recording of a call between the two women on 18 October 2022 in which Natalie asked her about what had brought her to the police station in the first place, where they first met.
Natalie said: ‘I know you said it was something to do with a murder and everything. And then, you said some guy was missing. I mean, what the hell was that all about?’
Suksiri replied: ‘Yeah. Yeah. M did happen’
Natalie later told the court she understood ‘M’ to be code for ‘murder’.
Suksiri then asked Natalie: ‘Ten out of ten, can I trust you?’
The undercover officer replied: ‘Mate. F***king yes. I’m trusting you with our business.’
Suksiri said: ‘Alright. I was part of it.
‘He was a paedo, who got what he deserved.’
She then described how she and Sheikh had tortured and killed the 63 year-old.
‘I’m not gonna lie. We did torture him.
‘We took him in for four days. And we said he ain’t leaving the house.
‘He kept getting beaten. He admitted on camera the way he had abused me when I was six-years-old.
‘So we got him to strip. And Juned almost put an umbrella up his a**e, right.’
She said on the call that after killing Mr McKeever by hitting him on the spine, they put his body in a bath of bleach for three days.
She then claimed they wrapped his body in a sheet and drove it to an undisclosed location 80 miles from their home.
She explained to the undercover officer that they had been careful to destroy the evidence of the killing.
She said that as well as covering the body with bleach, they had disposed of it whole.
‘There’s no evidence. He was in the bath for three days.
‘His body, right. And when no-one’s about, because I know where the cameras was, basically a rent car. Put it in the boot.
‘And then we dashed the car.
‘But he was not chopped up. He’s in somewhere I know, right. It’s been a year now. They still ain’t found him.
‘Now the way to do it is, you know where you go on f***king murder scenes and you f**king chop them up. There’s blood right.
‘They can do forensic s**t like that.’
Natalie offered to ask Lee to clean up the body to ensure it doesn’t get traced back to her, but she declined, saying ‘There’s no DNA.’
Suksiri also explained how they’d killed Mr McKeevor: ‘There’s part of the back of the spine that will pop the lung.
‘The only evidence you got to do is drag out that f**king body. And dash it somewhere.
And then dash the sheets somewhere else.’
Natalie explained to the court that the word “dash” is street slang for disposing of something.
On a call later the same day Suksiri asked Natalie for help dealing with a ‘f**king rank smell’ in her home, claiming it was the result of a cat that had urinated inside a walk-in cupboard.
Natalie could be heard on the call recommending sprinkling bicarbonate of soda on the carpet, and said she would bring some round along with a bottle of Febreeze.
She also suggested cutting out the affected piece of carpet if it was too far gone.
Mr McKeever had been due to swap his four bedroom Islington council house with Sheikh’s sister but change his mind and decided to give it to another couple, the court heard.
Sheikh claims that Mr McKeever left the house alive and well and that while he has not seen him since he may well be still alive.
Suksiri claims that Mr McKeever claims she found him dead and Sheikh made her dispose of the body with him.
Sheikh, of Camberwell, southeast London, and Suksiri, of Islington, north London, deny murder and preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body.
The trial continues.
ENDS
