A 24-year-old man has been found guilty of murdering a sex worker in Leeds before spending the money he stole from her on takeaways, drugs and cigarettes.
Leeds crown court heard how Lewis Pierre wore steel-capped boots when he carried out a “sustained and forceful” attack on 21-year-old Daria Pionko three days before Christmas last year in the UK’s first managed red-light district in the Holbeck area of Leeds.
The scheme introduced by Leeds city council in 2014 allows sex workers to operate in a designated area on the edge of the city centre between 7pm and 7am without fear of being arrested. Following the verdict, a community safety partnership spokesman said the project was under review.
Pierre was captured on CCTV walking towards an area of wasteland with Pionko at around 10.40pm, before being spotted leaving the scene alone less than five minutes later. Blood matching Pionko’s was later discovered on a pair of steel toecap boots and a cardigan found at Pierre’s home.
Pionko, who had moved to the UK from Łódź in Poland 10 months previously, was found lying face down and lifeless by her housemate Karolina Znajda, who was also working as a sex worker.
Pionko had suffered serious injuries to her face, head, neck and body. Znajda described her friend’s face as having been “massacred” and the postmortem concluded that Pionko had died within 30 minutes of the attack.
Pierre, who was working as an assistant to a heavy goods driver, bought a meal of kebab meat and chips, four cans of drink, and cigarettes with money he stole from Pionko. Colleagues say he turned up to work the next day in possession of cannabis.
Pierre admitted robbery and manslaughter, but denied murder. He told the jury he had stolen £80 from Pionko and punched her multiple times in the face, but said he did not know he had injured her so badly that she would need to go to hospital.
He told the court he was not proud of the way he spent the money and that he felt ashamed when he found out Pionko had died.
Earlier in the trial, the court heard that Pionko’s family had not known she was a sex worker and thought she was working at a bar in Leeds.
The jury of 10 women and two men took less than two hours to find Pierre guilty of murder on Monday. Pionko’s family wept in the public gallery as the foreman read out the verdict. Pierre left the dock as the judge discussed sentencing, loudly slamming the door as he walked out. The dock officer told the judge: “He didn’t want to be here any more.”
The judge said Pierre had received previous convictions for offences of battery and robbery and would be sentenced to life in prison. Sentencing will take place on Tuesday.
The UK Network of Sex Work Projects (UKNSWP), which works to improve the safety of sex workers, condemned Pionko’s murder and said it reflected a “dramatic but unsurprising” rise in murders of migrant sex workers.
It released statistics showing that 35 sex workers have been murdered since 2007. None of the 21 murdered between January 2007 and December 2012 were migrants, but between October 2013 and December last year they made up 78% of the women murdered. Of the 11 migrants sex workers killed, five were Romanian, three were Polish, one was Colombian, one was Israeli and one was of US/Mexican origin.
Georgina Perry, chair of the UKNSWP scheme National Ugly Mugs, said: “The rise in the murders of migrant sex workers has been very dramatic but unsurprising. Migrant sex workers are very fearful of authorities. Very often they have come from countries where police are overtly abusive to them and they expect the same treatment here.
“We hope that the government will pay attention to the findings of last week’s report on prostitution to the home affairs select committee which is calling for better support for sex workers and for measures to improve their safety.”
The Holbeck managed red-light district, set up by the Leeds Strategic Prostitution Working Group as a pilot in October 2014 and made permanent a year later, means offences such as loitering, soliciting or kerb crawling are not enforced.
After the verdict, a Safer Leeds spokesman said: “A further public consultation is currently being undertaken with local residents, businesses and stakeholders as part of a review regarding the managed approach. This will inform a report with recommendations regarding the managed approach, which will be brought to a meeting of the Safer Leeds Executive later this summer.”
