Shallow grave killer ‘gaslighted victim for years’

A stuntman is facing a life sentence for strangling his besotted girlfriend and burying her in a flowerbed after gaslighting her for 10 years.

Kirill Belorusov, 32, ‘calmly and methodically’ throttled French filmmaker Laureline Garcia-Bertaux, 34, with a ligature for four minutes before binding her hands and feet.

He wrapped her body in bin bags he had bought for the purpose and buried it in a shallow grave in the garden of her flat in Kew, southwest London before settling down to watch porn videos.

Belorusov was likened to a ‘Bond villain’ by his own barrister after he admitted he had ‘psychologically waterboarded’ Ms Garcia-Bertaux, who he described as his ‘product’.

He repeatedly mocked her about her weight and sagging breasts while winning her sympathy by pretending he was being treated for cancer.

In the days before her murder Belorusov promised Ms Garcia-Bertaux they could move into a new house together while he manipulated a string of other women.

His hold over her was so complete that he she excitedly texted her friends about her new home while sending him the nude pictures of herself he demanded.

Belorusov had swindled another lover called ‘Agnes’ out of £11,362 and used £400 of the money to wine and dine a third woman while claiming he was at a clinic getting emergency treatment.

The killer had a relationship with barmaid Sabrina Severino in the months leading up to the murder and treated her to dinner at luxury Russian restaurant Novikov and a night at a casino.

Belorusov had previously bragged of his knowledge of death holds to her and choked her until she almost passed out when they worked together at nightclub Egg London.

He had borrowed thousands of pounds from Ms Garcia-Bertaux and was desperate to move out of her flat into their new home.

Belorusov had been promising to send her the address for weeks and murdered her when he ran out of lies and the victim became ‘a problem that had to be removed.’

Ms Garcia-Bertaux had booked a removal van and packed her belongings to move out the day after he strangled her.

Belorusov prepared for the killing by purchasing duct tape plastic clogs, rubble sacks, an axe and compost from Homebase.

The stuntman, who claims to have appeared as Brad Pitt’s double in action movie World War Z, crept up on the naked victim from behind before strangling her with ‘brutal and clinical precision.’

Belorusov denied murder but was convicted by an Old Bailey jury of seven women and five men today (mon).

Ms Garcia-Bertaux’s mother Frédérique Bertaux sat stony-faced as the unanimous verdict was announced.

The Recorder of London, Judge Nicholas Hilliard is expected to sentence Belorusov at a later date.

Earlier prosecutor Oliver Glasgow said: ‘It is difficult to conceive of someone behaving in a more calculated or callous manner.

‘The last few moments of Laureline’s life must have been truly terrifying as he squeezed the life out of her.

‘She realised the man who cared for her was a cheat and a killer.

‘The killing itself was four slow minutes in which he calmly and methodically killed the woman he claimed to care for.

‘It was the kind of calculated and selfish callousness that only a man who would lie about his impending death could show.

‘Anyone who can lie to people who care about them just to punish them can only think about himself.

‘There was no way he could play out his lies to a successful conclusion as Laureline was a problem that had to be removed and the only way to do that was to silence her once and for all.

‘And as a bonus he walked away with the money he owed her.

‘A talented young woman who was loved by all who knew her was killed with brutal and clinical precision and then disposed of with utter disdain.’

Mr Glasgow said Belorusov ‘lied his way from woman to woman.’

‘He is someone who has tricked them into caring for him, someone who has deceived them into shedding tears for an illness he may never have had.

‘He pitied her, he rubbished and demeaned her whenever he could.

‘He called himself a monster and tried to make a joke out of how the messages made him look.

‘He said he poked her because he’s cruel and mean he took advantage of what she was most vulnerable about, her appearance, money, a roof over her head.

‘She was, as he told you, his product – he worked on her for ten years.

‘In his pity he crushed her neck with such force that the pathologist had never seen such severe signs of asphyxia is was he said as if something had fallen on her chest – until his arms ached.’

The killer correctly guessed his victim’s WiFi password to be his own name, kirillbelorusov1′ and used it to watch Pornhub in the hours after the murder.

The Russian used Ms Garcia-Bertaux’s phone to mimic her in texts sent to her best friend Beth Penman in a bid to cover his tracks.

He translated messages into French to send to her family as he made his plans to escape to Tallinn in Estonia from where he was extradited.

Ms Garcia-Bertaux, was reported missing on March 5 after failing to turn up for work.

Her body was found the following day in the back garden of her home in Darell Road, Kew.

The court heard he was born in northern Russia where his father Oleg was stationed in the military.

He served in the navy for four years before joining his best friend in London to practice his English in 2009.

Belorusov worked as a nightclubs bouncer and was cast as extra in films, progressing to fight choreography for two years.

Ms Garcia-Bertaux was originally from Aix-en-Provence and had worked in the film and producing industry.

At the time of her death she was employed as an executive assistant for PR firm Golin.

The couple met at a gig in London in 2009 and began dating shortly afterwards.

He told the court: ‘We spent the whole of the night walking and walking and walking, and in the morning I decided to get to her place and she invited me over. She said ‘yes’ and I never left,” he said.

Belorusov said they had separated in 2016 after ‘a slow build-up over years’ and at the time their dog Jazz was ‘the only thing connecting us.’

The victim’s mother sat in the well of the court helped by a French translator as Belorusov giggled while messages he sent to her daughter her were read to the court.

‘Will it be possible for some nudies to keep me motivated and happy until Friday?’ one read.

‘I wanna see all of you, please be kinky.

‘Me want booby and you naked and pretty. I miss your soft curvy self.’

Asked why he was laughing the killer said: ‘I guess we just find different things funny.’

He said he had sent messages to ‘poke and annoy’ her and had been emotionally ‘waterboarding’ the victim for more than a year while he spun a web of lies about the house he had found.

‘Waterboarding is a technique of torture is it? What does it mean to you?’ Mr Glasgow asked.

The Estonian replied: ‘Just mental nagging, I guess.

Belorusov said he gaslighted the victim in order to ‘force-feed her maturity’ and ‘teach her a lesson’ but insisted a mystery person was responsible for the killing.

Phone evidence placed him in the area but at the time but Belorusov claimed he sat on a park bench at the end of Ms Garcia-Bertaux’s road eating pork scratchings and drinking beer all night until 7.30am.

‘I got to the park and I saw a bench and I just couldn’t resist sitting on it,’ Belorusov told jurors.

‘Sitting there with his shaved head he looked like an archetypal Bond villain,’ his barrister Martin Rutherford told the court.

The barrister added Belorusov might have behaved like an ‘arsehole’ but that did not necessarily mean he was a killer too.

Belorusov, of no fixed address, denied but was convicted of murder.
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