A killer who murdered two men in London and dumped their dismembered remains in suitcases near the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 42 years.
Yostin Andres Mosquera, 35, killed civil partners Albert Alfonso, 62, and Paul Longworth, 71, on 8 July last year in their flat in Scotts Road, Shepherd’s Bush, in west London.
The Colombian national was found to have repeatedly stabbed Alfonso, who suffered injuries to his torso, face and neck, while Longworth’s skull was left shattered after he was attacked with a hammer.
Mosquera, who was staying with the couple, then “decapitated and dismembered” them, froze parts of their remains, and took the rest in suitcases to the bridge.
A jury at Woolwich Crown Court unanimously found Mosquera guilty of both murders. Sentencing him to two life sentences for the two murders, to run concurrently, Mr Justice Bennathan told the defendant: “Paul Longworth and Albert Alfonso were a settled, affectionate couple. It was their tragedy that you, Yostin Mosquera, came into their lives.”
On Friday, the judge jailed Mosquera for 16 months after he admitted possessing at least 1,500 category-A photographs or pseudo-photographs of children, including videos, along with 750 category-B images and 4,000 category-C images.
At his sentencing on Friday, Mosquera was also jailed for 16 months for possessing at least 1,500 “horrifying” indecent images and videos of children.
The court heard that Alfonso enjoyed extreme sex, and that he had met Mosquera, who was part of that world, online a few years earlier. Alfonso was stabbed during a filmed session, with footage played in court that showed Mosquera asking “Do you like it?” and also singing and dancing after the attack.
Seconds later, the killer went on a computer to try to steal from his victims’ bank accounts. Jurors heard that Mosquera had attempted to open a bank account using the Scotts Road address. Immediately after the murders, he accessed a spreadsheet of financial passwords and tried to log into the couple’s bank accounts. He tried unsuccessfully to send £4,000 to his account in Colombia.
Prosecutor Deanna Heer KC told the court that Mosquera’s plan had been to throw the suitcases off the bridge to dispose of the remains, after the “calculated” and “premeditated” killings.
Mosquera admitted killing Alfonso, but claimed it was manslaughter by reason of loss of control. He pleaded not guilty to murdering the two men, and claimed that Alfonso had killed Longworth.
Mosquera told the jury he had feared for his own life and believed he was about to be killed when he stabbed Alfonso. He said he had felt intimidated, and that threats had been made to his family in Colombia.
Computer searches using the phrase “where on the head is a knock fatal?” were made on the day that the couple were killed.
On 10 July, Mosquera was driven to Bristol, and told a cyclist who spotted him on the bridge with a large red suitcase and a silver trunk that they contained car parts. Bridge staff noticed that something appeared to be leaking from the red suitcase, which Mosquera told them was oil. When they shone their torches on the suitcases, he fled.
Mosquera, who does not speak English, made repeated computer searches to find a freezer in the run-up to the killings, the court heard. Many of the searches were in Spanish, some using Google translate, and they were made when Mosquera was the only person in the house.
He asked questions about delivery options, and searches were made for a deep freezer, a chest freezer, a large indoor freezer and an outdoor freezer.
In the days before the killings, the phrase “hammer killer” was tapped into the computer, the jury heard.
The murdered couple had lived together for 20 years and became civil partners in February 2023. According to the senior investigating officer in the case, they were each other’s “everything”.
“They were best friends,” said Detective Chief Inspector Ollie Stride of the Metropolitan Police. “They didn’t have huge amounts of family and friends around them, and they were each other’s rocks, each other’s everything.”
