Police searched in vain for a teenage boy who had been killed, his body wrapped in a duvet cover and left in an attic for eight months, a court has heard.
The family of Abdi Ali reported him missing in December 2017. The police searched for him for months but were unaware that he had been killed “in a savage attack” days before his 18th birthday.
Gary Hopkins, 36, and Stacey Docharty, 28, are both charged with murder, perverting the course of justice and preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body. Both defendants appeared in court on Thursday for the start of what is expected to be a month-long trial at the Old Bailey.
“Having killed him, they then wrapped up his body inside a duvet cover. They hid it in their attic along with the murder weapons,” Gareth Patterson QC, the lead prosecutor, told the jury. “They did this to try to get away with what they had done. They were trying to obstruct, or as lawyers say, pervert the course of justice.”
The body was only discovered eight months later in the defendants’ second-floor flat in Enfield, north London, by which time it had suffered serious decomposition, Patterson said. A postmortem examination gave the cause of death as a blunt force trauma to the head and stab wounds to the chest.
The defendants were described as heavy drug users. The court heard that they also hid the murder weapons – a sharp knife with a 15.8cm blade, and a hammer broken in two parts – in their attic.
The jury was shown images of the defendants’ flat, the murder weapons and the victim’s clothes. Ali’s family were visibly distressed and tearful throughout the prosecution’s opening.
The jury were told that the defendants first revealed what they had done to their friend Stacie Collard when a group of them were using drugs in the flat. Some of the group, including Collard and Hopkins, left the flat and got into a car to withdraw cash and buy more drugs. Hopkins is alleged to have admitted the murder during the car journey, saying that when they got back to the flat he was going to go up to his partner Docharty and mention the attic and that they should watch her reaction.
When they got back to the flat Hopkins allegedly told Docharty: “I’ve told them about the attic.” Docharty began to cry uncontrollably. Hopkins got a ladder and went to the attic and showed a member of the group inside. The prosecution told the jury that Docharty had admitted the murder to other friends.
Patterson said there was plenty of evidence linking both defendants to the murder and concealment of the body. Hopkins’ DNA was found on the strap and Scart lead wrapped around its head over a bin bag. His fingerprints were also found on the bin bag and the outside of a Lidl bag that contained the murder weapons and the bloodstained clothing.
Patterson told the jury that the evidence showed it must have been a savage attack.
Collard said she had met Docharty at a children’s home when she was 14. “We were like sisters,” she told the jury, saying they would see each other regularly over the years. She told the court Docharty had admitted that Hopkins had killed Ali and she helped with the clean-up.
“He [Ali] was sleeping on the settee. Gary had gone in with a hammer,” Collard said, adding the attack occurred in the living room, but Docharty was listening in the bedroom. “He was hit over the head with the hammer to the point, this is what she [Docharty] said, that the hammer had broken. And it was at this point that she heard the man shout Gary’s name. She then said Gary went into the kitchen to get a knife and stabbed him in the chest.”
Collard went on to tell the jury that Docharty had confessed to wrapping Ali in bed sheets and bin bags. “Prior to that they went through his pockets and took what he had, which was money and drugs ... They then put him in the loft.”
Soon after being told about the murder, Collard said she decided to tell the police. “It wasn’t something I was going to keep to myself,” she told the court. “I was driving myself insane thinking about what I’d been told.”
Hopkins has admitted perverting the course of justice and preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body, but both defendants deny the murder. Docharty also denies being involved in hiding the body and evidence of the killing.
