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London’s police appeal for witnesses to murders

Detectives investigating the murder of two French research students in London have received about 25 calls from the public after appealing for witnesses, police said yesterday.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman urged more people to call with any information about the deaths of Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez. The 23-year-olds were bound, repeatedly stabbed and left in a blazing flat in New Cross, southeast London, last Sunday.

Bonomo had been stabbed nearly 200 times, while his friend received nearly 50 knife wounds. Detective Chief Inspector Mick Duthie said the injuries were the worst he had ever seen.

“The extent of the injuries are horrific,” he said, adding that all the officers working on the case had been shocked by the extent of the violence.

“I have never seen injuries like this throughout my career. We are here today because I don’t know why these boys were killed or who killed them.”

Duthie appealed for witnesses to come forward to help explain “a frenzied, brutal and horrific attack.”

Lines of inquiry include a burglary at Bonomo’s flat less than a week before the fire and a man seen running from the scene shortly after neighbors heard an explosion.

“The level of violence used on these two victims was excessive. It was horrendous,” Duthie said.

David Canter, professor of psychology at the University of Liverpool, said detectives were left with a confusing and difficult crime scene.

“The ferocity of the killings is not typical of experienced criminals who want to get away as soon as they can,” he wrote in the Times. “It points more to a confused mixture of habitual criminality and disinhibited anger.”

The bio-engineering students were taking part in a three-month DNA project at Imperial College London.

Its rector Sir Roy Anderson said the pair “had bright futures ahead of them”, adding: As a forensic search of the scene continued, Duthie said the two students — both biochemists from a university in Clermont-Ferrand, central France — were on a short exchange program at London’s prestigious Imperial College.

They were due to return home at the end of this month.

“A Spanish woman who lives in the block told me she had seen two men banging on their window” from the outside, said Christina Ramires, 32, a Brazilian journalist who lives on the same floor as the flat but had not been at home at the time of the attack. “The Spanish woman said they were wearing hats ... then she heard a very strong sound, a bomb.”

Police said they were searching for a white man seen running away from the scene at the time of the explosion.

They also revealed that the flat had been burgled in the days leading up to the men’s deaths, and a computer was stolen.
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