Latest news with #MurderinConcrete
The Irish Sun
3 days ago
- The Irish Sun
I snared evil ‘Manson-like' landlord who sealed tenant in concrete tomb after warped ‘disciples' lured him to his death
WHEN trusting Christophe Borgye took delivery of a cement mixer, on behalf of his landlord, he was effectively signing his own death warrant. The cement would later be used to encase Christophe's body in a concrete tomb in the shed of his garden - after his evil landlord and two housemates lured him to a 'kill room' they'd secretly set up in his kitchen. 12 Flight attendant Christophe Borgye was bludgeoned to death by his housemates in 2009 Credit: Handout 12 Dominik Kocher was the ringleader of the trio of murderers Credit: Cheshire Police 12 Christophe was buried in a concrete 'tomb' in the garden shed Credit: Amazon Prime They then beat the flight attendant with hammers and stabbed him with knives at his rented terraced home in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, before hiding his bound-up body in the makeshift tomb. His body may have been left there to this day – unbeknown to the unsuspecting neighbours and the house's new occupants - if it weren't for an extraordinary confession and painstaking police work that helped convict the three twisted perpetrators Dominik Kocher, Sebastian Bendou and Manuel Wagner. The complex case, which spanned over nine years, is laid bare for the first time in new documentary Murder in Concrete. The case began to unravel in April 2013, four years after Christophe was reported missing, when one of the murderers, Bendou, travelled from Dumfries in Scotland back to Ellesmere Port and called police in a confused state confessing to the crime in broken English and French. Read more on murder cases 'MUST BE NAMED' Harvey Willgoose's mum says killer should be named when he's sentenced Anton Sullivan, now a retired inspector, was on duty that day at another station but was called in to help as he was known to be fluent in French. 'Bendou looked very dishevelled, very confused,' Anton told The Sun. 'I introduced myself and I said 'Right, tell me in French'. He was quite relieved that I spoke French and started telling me he'd been involved in killing someone and hiding the body. 'Initially he didn't give a lot of detail, he gave a name, a place and a time. 'Looking at the state of him, how he presented and the fact he was confused, of course I had my doubts. Later on it was established he had mental health problems, so it could have been quite easy to dismiss. 'But I did think, let's just check to see if there's any veracity to any of the comments he's making. Why I want to meet my monster dad Ian Huntley 'I just felt there was something in what he was telling me, call it a gut feeling or a sixth sense.' Colleagues ran checks and found Bendou's story correlated with the disappearance of Ryanair flight attendant Christophe, who had been reported missing by a colleague on May 2009. 'I wrote in my pocketbook, in French, a record of the conversation I'd had with him then, as is standard practice, I gave him the book and I said, 'Can you just sign here to confirm that this is what you said?' 'At that point he read it and he said, 'I'm not signing anything until my solicitor gets here'. He said that with a calm and detached air about him and I thought, 'There is something to this now'.' The case was passed over to Detective Steve Curry on the murder team, who told The Sun: 'I've got to be honest, when the logs hit our office the next morning and we spoke to Anton, we thought, 'Really?' 'When you're on a murder squad you rarely get someone banging on your door saying, 'Can I show you where I've buried a body?'' 12 Steve Curry, who was senior investigative officer, next to the shed where the tomb was built Credit: Supplied 12 The concrete block where victim Christophe was entombed Credit: Amazon Prime 12 Anton Sullivan, retired inspector at Cheshire Police, used his French skills to help crack the case Credit: Supplied Nevertheless Steve headed straight out to the two addresses on the same street in Ellesmere Port – and was horrified by what he found. 'The first address didn't look like the kind of place a body could be buried," said Steve. 'So I headed to the second and they had a brick built shed at the bottom of the garden, I went into the neighbour's gardens and looked at their sheds, then back to that one and it was clear there was a hand built brick-made 'structure' inside the shed. It didn't fit with the rest of the street. 'We brought Bendou down and, handcuffed to a cop, he went straight to the shed and pointed it out. 'Then we started the three and a half day excavation of Christophe's body from there. 'It was really eerie. Even before we started digging, we brought in experts, forensic archaeologists and entomologists, experts in cement, experts in brick. We don't really 100 per cent know if he was still alive when they dumped them in there. Retired detective Steve Curry 'It was a baking hot day in spring and when we first cracked open the concrete, the first thing that got you was the smell because he'd been airtight for all those years. 'The cement had set in around him, so it was a personal tomb around him. 'Clearly what they'd done is built a box with bricks then after attacking him, they'd wrapped him up in his quilt - he was still in his football shirt, jogging bottoms and flip flops. They put a pillow in there and threw their murder weapons in – knives and a hammer. 'Then they tied him into a big ball with bungee cords and dropped him into this tomb and just poured cement over the top, skimmed it off and left him in there. 'I mean, it must have been horrific. We don't really 100 per cent know if he was still alive when they dumped them in there. 'We wanted to X-ray the bundle as a whole unit. So Christophe was transported to the Royal Liverpool Hospital and, lo and behold, you could see the full form of a human, along with the knife and the hammer and everything they had thrown in there, on the X-ray.' Tracing family Anton was then asked to use his French skills to track down victim Christophe's family in France, who at the time – thanks to a forged email by Kocher – believed he had gone travelling to China with a girl he met. Using his knowledge of France he eventually managed to contact police in the village the family had moved to, and spoke to Christophe's dad Yves, a former police officer in Paris who incidentally had been one of the officers at the scene of Princess Diana's car crash. 'Of course it was a difficult conversation to have, I didn't know Yves very well then, but he was very matter of fact. He was recently retired police officer, he'd done 30 years as a cop in Paris, so although the news was devastating, because of his professionalism, he kept calm. I explained what information we had. 12 The horrific crime was carried out on this street Credit: Supplied 12 Sebastian Bendou cracked and confessed the murder to police Credit: Cheshire Police 12 Manuel Wagner was freed then re-arrested in 2015 when new evidence came to light Credit: Cheshire Police 'At this point we haven't confirmed this was Christophe, so we had to start the process of getting a formal identification, which again proved a challenge because there were no dental records, there were no medical records, we had no DNA, there was no crime scene at that stage that had usable DNA. 'The offenders had systematically erased every aspect of his life, including his physical belongings, so we had nothing to go on.' Eventually Christophe's family members came over to the UK and used their DNA to confirm the body was his. As the police investigation unfolded, more sordid details of his murder emerged. Horror kill room The calculated killers had built a kill-room in the kitchen, covering all the sides with plastic and tarpaulin under the pretext they were deep cleaning, then lured Christophe downstairs to help. Once defenceless Christophe was down on his knees cleaning, they rained hammer blows down on him followed by knife wounds. 'The attack was absolutely brutal and then they've bagged him up and wrapped him up like a big ball of rubbish. And they clearly already had this tomb built,' Steve said. 'They've bought the knives with a load of shampoo and stuff to clean themselves up after the attack. This is all very, very calculated and pre-meditated.' Through house to house enquiries, police began to unravel the strange dynamic between Kocher - the ringleader, who lived on one side of the road with his family - and the other perpetrators Bendou and Wagner, and victim Christophe, who lived across the road. Christophe and the other two men had their wages directly paid into Kocher's bank account, and Kocher took charge of paying their bills and bringing them food. 'It was very weird how Kocher was controlling all the three of them,' Steve said. 'It was almost like they were his slaves. He took their wages, put them in the house, paid the bills and food was taken across to them. 12 Anton Sullivan's French skills helped to crack the case Credit: Supplied 12 Scenes from the case are reenacted in new documentary Murder in Concrete Credit: Supplied 12 Reconstruction of remorseless ringleader Kocher in the dock during his trial Credit: Supplied 'But essentially they were paying for Kocher's house and living expenses too. "He was a conman, he coerced money out of his football team, he spun this yarn about himself having cancer as a sympathy thing. 'We just didn't understand why people were falling for it. You knew he was lying because his lips were moving. That's the best way to spell it out. He had a knack of manipulating people to his will. 'After he killed Christophe he even used his card to buy his wife an anniversary card. That kind of sums up what kind of a person he was. What kind of sick b*****d does that?' But how did Kocher persuade Bendou and Wagner to go through with the horrific crime against defenceless Christophe, who by this time had been their housemate for 18 months? 'Like Charles Manson' 'I always used to think it's a bit like Charlie Manson. How did he persuade these educated young people to commit such horrible crimes?,' Anton said. 'It reminded me to a degree of that. You've got Kocher who's clearly very manipulative and if you look at all of the people that we interviewed, he comes across as plausible, he's got a bit of a charisma about him and people are drawn in.' Kocher and Wagner were cousins, but had lived together from a young age so were like brothers. Bendou knew the pair from school in France and after getting into trouble as a young adult, had been taken under Kocher's wing. Wagner and Bendou were described as 'doing anything Kocher told them'. Cristophe came into the group by "pure chance". After working in Ireland, he got a job with Ryanair in Liverpool and moved to the city, initially sofa surfing. But a colleague at the airport passed him Kocher's number. 'Kocher says to Christophe, 'Look, you get the best room in the house with an en-suite, you just pay your money into my bank, so you don't have to mess around with English bank accounts because you can't trust them," says Anton. 'I will cook for you, clean for you. I'll have meals ready for you when you come in, all you have to do is work, enjoy your life, travel, do whatever you want and I will provide anything that you need. 'And Christophe, being relative naive, probably thought, 'What nice people'. When you speak to his family, that was a trait of Christophe. He took people on face value, he took them at their word, he trusted people. 'For 18 months everything goes swimmingly but at some point Christophe decides he wants to move to Brussels and starts making arrangements to leave. Christophe took people on face value, he took them at their word, he trusted people. Retired inspector Anton Sullivan 'However for Kocher that means having to explain where all his money's gone because Christophe was actually paying for everything in that house. He was paying the rent, he was paying the council tax, the electricity bills, Kocher was using the victim's money to fund his own home and his life." Christophe was due to fly to Dublin to meet with his company's HR department on April 26, 2009. The brutal attack occurred three days before, on April 23 - but it had been a long time in the planning. 'If you look at the chronology, the plan to deal with Christophe in Kocher's mind had started some time before," says Anton. "He had been drip feeding Wagner and Bendou a story that 'This guy's evil, he's working for the authorities, he's working as a spy for the Americans and for the French, he's got an alter ego' – all false allegations of course. 'You can convince anybody to believe anything if you drip feed them enough information.' Steve recalls how some 'lucky' detective work uncovered more evidence against the three – including tracing the knives used in the attack to the local Asda who painstakingly went through files to find Kocher's card being used to buy three of the exact same knives. A neighbour recalled seeing the three men take a large package of some kind to the shed, from her window, around the time of Christophe's disappearance. Then in July 2013, after a painstaking first investigation, Kocher and Bendou were charged with murder and Wagner with assisting an offender and preventing a lawful burial. Anton spent every day in the trial, translating everything into French and relaying it to Christophe's family. 'No justice' Bendou and Kocher were convicted of murder but disappointingly Wagner was cleared and set free. Anton and Steve said they were 'absolutely gutted' that only two of the three were convicted as 'everything pointed to three men being involved'. Anton recalls Christophe's sister Aurelie looking at him in court after the verdict and saying in French, 'Wagner got away with it. How's that justice?' Over the months that followed, Aurelie's comments began to 'gnaw' away at him. 'It was a conversation I had in a pub one night with one of my colleagues from the team saying 'This isn't right. I wonder if given the relationship I've developed with Bendou, he can give us something that might allow us to have another crack at Wagner''. 'So we then had to persuade the senior officers that this was of value because these inquiries take tremendous amounts of time, resources and money. 'And thankfully Cheshire Police gave us a second shot.' Prison confession Anton went to see Bendou in prison and tried to persuade him to tell the whole story in its entirety. 'At first he said he would talk if he could get something out of it – like a transfer to France so he could be closer to his family,' Anton said. 'But I said 'No you either tell us because it's the right thing to do or you don't'. 'And he agreed, he allowed us to access his records from the law firm that represented him. 'And we start to learn things about Christophe's murder that we did not know during the initial investigation. 'Bendou describes in graphic detail how he had hit the victim's head with a hammer but the hammer had slipped in his hand with the blood and it was the claw end that went into his skull. I remember the room closing in on me and I started feeling a bit queasy. Retired inspector Anton Sullivan 'You could see distinctive hammer claw injuries in Christophe's skull. 'The first one, they miss and it hits the Formica top that later panicked Kocher painted over. Then we go back and find the exact divot in the Formica that forensically matches the hammer. 'Then he tells us when he pulled the the hammer out of Christophe's skull, because it was stuck there was a jet of blood that went all over the walls and the ceiling. That's why Kocher decided to paint the kitchen red because he thought it would help mask the colour. 'Also as he's pulling the claw out of Christophe's skull, Wagner is looking over his shoulder because they're in this killing frenzy, and he cracks Wagner on the side of the face by accident with the blunt end of the hammer, giving him a big bruise.' Investigators started going through Facebook pictures and found a selfie Wagner took while he was working in a bar at Cheshire Oaks, sporting a big bruise on the side of his face, which was verified and used as evidence in the second trial. Anton, who had by this point become close with Christophe's father Yves, and his brother and sister Noel and Aurelie, said hearing Bendou talking so nonchalantly about the savage murder made him feel sick to his stomach. 'From a personal note, it's really difficult as police officer deal with an offender and not be disgusted, we're humans first and police officers second,' he said. Timeline of the Christophe Borgye case The case was one of the most chilling and unusual Cheshire police had ever dealt with, here is a timeline of key events: April 2009: Christophe Borgye is killed by three men and his body is sealed in a concrete tomb under a shed. May 2009: A colleague reports his disappearance. A housemate, Dominik Kocher, sends a fake email to Borgye's family to make them believe he is safe. November 2012: The three men involved in the murder, Dominik Kocher, Sebastian Bendou, and Manuel Wagner, move from Ellesmere Port to Dumfries, Scotland. April 13, 2013: Sebastian Bendou confesses to the crime to the police, initially claiming he acted alone in self-defence. April 17, 2013: Wagner and Kocher are questioned as witnesses. May 2013: Bendou changes his statement, revealing Kocher's and Wagner's involvement. Both are re-arrested on suspicion of murder. July 2013: Kocher and Bendou are charged with murder, and Wagner is charged with two lesser offenses. March 2014: Kocher is convicted of murder. May 2014: Bendou is convicted of murder and sentenced to life with a minimum of 14 years. June 2014: An appeal to increase Kocher's sentence is rejected; he is to serve life with a minimum of 23 years. September 2016: Wagner is charged again with murder. June 12, 2017: Wagner's trial begins. June 28, 2017: Wagner is convicted of murder and given a life sentence with a minimum of 16 years. 'I remember sitting in the room as Bendou described murdering Christophe in graphic detail and by this point I know his family and it's heartbreaking to listen to. 'You've got to have this professional attitude, but I remember the room closing in on me and I started feeling a bit queasy. 'I said to my colleague who's a highly experienced murder investigator ''How do you sit there and listen to that?' 'He said 'I've dealt with death all my life in the job but I've never had anybody sit there and tell me, as if I'm telling you how to make a cake, how they killed somebody with a hammer and a knife and how they coerced him into being in that position. 'It's actually quite unusual to get somebody to openly admit how they killed somebody.' Eventually, the exhaustive second investigation concluded and Wagner was convicted of murder and jailed for 16 years on June 28, 2017. The jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict. Christophe's three murderers were all finally in prison. Steve, who has a career spanning 30 years of murders across London and the North West, says it's one of the most unusual cases he's worked on. 'As a standalone single victim, what Christophe went through is absolutely horrendous. Plus the dynamic between the three of them is just definitely the weirdest thing I've ever been involved in," he said. For Anton, he was just glad the family finally had closure. 'I always felt that this was a story that needed to be told so that there was some legacy for the family, for the victim, and that they were remembered," he said. 'It's a case that will stay with me for a long time. I've left the police this year and I retired in order to help tell this story. 'If it hadn't have been for Bendou coming forward, I think Christophe would still be there to this day, I'm convinced of it. 'And if somebody had written this story as a drama purely fictitious, you'd say 'No it's too far-fetched, I don't get the plot line'. 'Truth is always stranger than fiction and in 32 years of policing I've seen the worst of people and I've seen the best of people and this case went from one polar opposite to the other. 'But the stoicism and the strength of Christophe's family and the lengths which police officers dedicated their time and effort to seeking justice really stay with me from this case." Murder in Concrete will be streaming on Prime Video from August 31
Scottish Sun
3 days ago
- Scottish Sun
I snared evil ‘Manson-like' landlord who sealed tenant in concrete tomb after warped ‘disciples' lured him to his death
WHEN trusting Christophe Borgye took delivery of a cement mixer, on behalf of his landlord, he was effectively signing his own death warrant. The cement would later be used to encase Christophe's body in a concrete tomb in the shed of his garden - after his evil landlord and two housemates lured him to a 'kill room' they'd secretly set up in his kitchen. 12 Flight attendant Christophe Borgye was bludgeoned to death by his housemates in 2009 Credit: Handout 12 Dominik Kocher was the ringleader of the trio of murderers Credit: Cheshire Police 12 Christophe was buried in a concrete 'tomb' in the garden shed Credit: Amazon Prime They then beat the flight attendant with hammers and stabbed him with knives at his rented terraced home in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, before hiding his bound-up body in the makeshift tomb. His body may have been left there to this day – unbeknown to the unsuspecting neighbours and the house's new occupants - if it weren't for an extraordinary confession and painstaking police work that helped convict the three twisted perpetrators Dominik Kocher, Sebastian Bendou and Manuel Wagner. The complex case, which spanned over nine years, is laid bare for the first time in new documentary Murder in Concrete. The case began to unravel in April 2013, four years after Christophe was reported missing, when one of the murderers, Bendou, travelled from Dumfries in Scotland back to Ellesmere Port and called police in a confused state confessing to the crime in broken English and French. Read more on murder cases 'MUST BE NAMED' Harvey Willgoose's mum says killer should be named when he's sentenced Anton Sullivan, now a retired inspector, was on duty that day at another station but was called in to help as he was known to be fluent in French. 'Bendou looked very dishevelled, very confused,' Anton told The Sun. 'I introduced myself and I said 'Right, tell me in French'. He was quite relieved that I spoke French and started telling me he'd been involved in killing someone and hiding the body. 'Initially he didn't give a lot of detail, he gave a name, a place and a time. 'Looking at the state of him, how he presented and the fact he was confused, of course I had my doubts. Later on it was established he had mental health problems, so it could have been quite easy to dismiss. 'But I did think, let's just check to see if there's any veracity to any of the comments he's making. Why I want to meet my monster dad Ian Huntley 'I just felt there was something in what he was telling me, call it a gut feeling or a sixth sense.' Colleagues ran checks and found Bendou's story correlated with the disappearance of Ryanair flight attendant Christophe, who had been reported missing by a colleague on May 2009. 'I wrote in my pocketbook, in French, a record of the conversation I'd had with him then, as is standard practice, I gave him the book and I said, 'Can you just sign here to confirm that this is what you said?' 'At that point he read it and he said, 'I'm not signing anything until my solicitor gets here'. He said that with a calm and detached air about him and I thought, 'There is something to this now'.' The case was passed over to Detective Steve Curry on the murder team, who told The Sun: 'I've got to be honest, when the logs hit our office the next morning and we spoke to Anton, we thought, 'Really?' 'When you're on a murder squad you rarely get someone banging on your door saying, 'Can I show you where I've buried a body?'' 12 Steve Curry, who was senior investigative officer, next to the shed where the tomb was built Credit: Supplied 12 The concrete block where victim Christophe was entombed Credit: Amazon Prime 12 Anton Sullivan, retired inspector at Cheshire Police, used his French skills to help crack the case Credit: Supplied Nevertheless Steve headed straight out to the two addresses on the same street in Ellesmere Port – and was horrified by what he found. 'The first address didn't look like the kind of place a body could be buried," said Steve. 'So I headed to the second and they had a brick built shed at the bottom of the garden, I went into the neighbour's gardens and looked at their sheds, then back to that one and it was clear there was a hand built brick-made 'structure' inside the shed. It didn't fit with the rest of the street. 'We brought Bendou down and, handcuffed to a cop, he went straight to the shed and pointed it out. 'Then we started the three and a half day excavation of Christophe's body from there. 'It was really eerie. Even before we started digging, we brought in experts, forensic archaeologists and entomologists, experts in cement, experts in brick. We don't really 100 per cent know if he was still alive when they dumped them in there. Retired detective Steve Curry 'It was a baking hot day in spring and when we first cracked open the concrete, the first thing that got you was the smell because he'd been airtight for all those years. 'The cement had set in around him, so it was a personal tomb around him. 'Clearly what they'd done is built a box with bricks then after attacking him, they'd wrapped him up in his quilt - he was still in his football shirt, jogging bottoms and flip flops. They put a pillow in there and threw their murder weapons in – knives and a hammer. 'Then they tied him into a big ball with bungee cords and dropped him into this tomb and just poured cement over the top, skimmed it off and left him in there. 'I mean, it must have been horrific. We don't really 100 per cent know if he was still alive when they dumped them in there. 'We wanted to X-ray the bundle as a whole unit. So Christophe was transported to the Royal Liverpool Hospital and, lo and behold, you could see the full form of a human, along with the knife and the hammer and everything they had thrown in there, on the X-ray.' Tracing family Anton was then asked to use his French skills to track down victim Christophe's family in France, who at the time – thanks to a forged email by Kocher – believed he had gone travelling to China with a girl he met. Using his knowledge of France he eventually managed to contact police in the village the family had moved to, and spoke to Christophe's dad Yves, a former police officer in Paris who incidentally had been one of the officers at the scene of Princess Diana's car crash. 'Of course it was a difficult conversation to have, I didn't know Yves very well then, but he was very matter of fact. He was recently retired police officer, he'd done 30 years as a cop in Paris, so although the news was devastating, because of his professionalism, he kept calm. I explained what information we had. 12 The horrific crime was carried out on this street Credit: Supplied 12 Sebastian Bendou cracked and confessed the murder to police Credit: Cheshire Police 12 Manuel Wagner was freed then re-arrested in 2015 when new evidence came to light Credit: Cheshire Police 'At this point we haven't confirmed this was Christophe, so we had to start the process of getting a formal identification, which again proved a challenge because there were no dental records, there were no medical records, we had no DNA, there was no crime scene at that stage that had usable DNA. 'The offenders had systematically erased every aspect of his life, including his physical belongings, so we had nothing to go on.' Eventually Christophe's family members came over to the UK and used their DNA to confirm the body was his. As the police investigation unfolded, more sordid details of his murder emerged. Horror kill room The calculated killers had built a kill-room in the kitchen, covering all the sides with plastic and tarpaulin under the pretext they were deep cleaning, then lured Christophe downstairs to help. Once defenceless Christophe was down on his knees cleaning, they rained hammer blows down on him followed by knife wounds. 'The attack was absolutely brutal and then they've bagged him up and wrapped him up like a big ball of rubbish. And they clearly already had this tomb built,' Steve said. 'They've bought the knives with a load of shampoo and stuff to clean themselves up after the attack. This is all very, very calculated and pre-meditated.' Through house to house enquiries, police began to unravel the strange dynamic between Kocher - the ringleader, who lived on one side of the road with his family - and the other perpetrators Bendou and Wagner, and victim Christophe, who lived across the road. Christophe and the other two men had their wages directly paid into Kocher's bank account, and Kocher took charge of paying their bills and bringing them food. 'It was very weird how Kocher was controlling all the three of them,' Steve said. 'It was almost like they were his slaves. He took their wages, put them in the house, paid the bills and food was taken across to them. 12 Anton Sullivan's French skills helped to crack the case Credit: Supplied 12 Scenes from the case are reenacted in new documentary Murder in Concrete Credit: Supplied 12 Reconstruction of remorseless ringleader Kocher in the dock during his trial Credit: Supplied 'But essentially they were paying for Kocher's house and living expenses too. "He was a conman, he coerced money out of his football team, he spun this yarn about himself having cancer as a sympathy thing. 'We just didn't understand why people were falling for it. You knew he was lying because his lips were moving. That's the best way to spell it out. He had a knack of manipulating people to his will. 'After he killed Christophe he even used his card to buy his wife an anniversary card. That kind of sums up what kind of a person he was. What kind of sick b*****d does that?' But how did Kocher persuade Bendou and Wagner to go through with the horrific crime against defenceless Christophe, who by this time had been their housemate for 18 months? 'Like Charles Manson' 'I always used to think it's a bit like Charlie Manson. How did he persuade these educated young people to commit such horrible crimes?,' Anton said. 'It reminded me to a degree of that. You've got Kocher who's clearly very manipulative and if you look at all of the people that we interviewed, he comes across as plausible, he's got a bit of a charisma about him and people are drawn in.' Kocher and Wagner were cousins, but had lived together from a young age so were like brothers. Bendou knew the pair from school in France and after getting into trouble as a young adult, had been taken under Kocher's wing. Wagner and Bendou were described as 'doing anything Kocher told them'. Cristophe came into the group by "pure chance". After working in Ireland, he got a job with Ryanair in Liverpool and moved to the city, initially sofa surfing. But a colleague at the airport passed him Kocher's number. 'Kocher says to Christophe, 'Look, you get the best room in the house with an en-suite, you just pay your money into my bank, so you don't have to mess around with English bank accounts because you can't trust them," says Anton. 'I will cook for you, clean for you. I'll have meals ready for you when you come in, all you have to do is work, enjoy your life, travel, do whatever you want and I will provide anything that you need. 'And Christophe, being relative naive, probably thought, 'What nice people'. When you speak to his family, that was a trait of Christophe. He took people on face value, he took them at their word, he trusted people. 'For 18 months everything goes swimmingly but at some point Christophe decides he wants to move to Brussels and starts making arrangements to leave. Christophe took people on face value, he took them at their word, he trusted people. Retired inspector Anton Sullivan 'However for Kocher that means having to explain where all his money's gone because Christophe was actually paying for everything in that house. He was paying the rent, he was paying the council tax, the electricity bills, Kocher was using the victim's money to fund his own home and his life." Christophe was due to fly to Dublin to meet with his company's HR department on April 26, 2009. The brutal attack occurred three days before, on April 23 - but it had been a long time in the planning. 'If you look at the chronology, the plan to deal with Christophe in Kocher's mind had started some time before," says Anton. "He had been drip feeding Wagner and Bendou a story that 'This guy's evil, he's working for the authorities, he's working as a spy for the Americans and for the French, he's got an alter ego' – all false allegations of course. 'You can convince anybody to believe anything if you drip feed them enough information.' Steve recalls how some 'lucky' detective work uncovered more evidence against the three – including tracing the knives used in the attack to the local Asda who painstakingly went through files to find Kocher's card being used to buy three of the exact same knives. A neighbour recalled seeing the three men take a large package of some kind to the shed, from her window, around the time of Christophe's disappearance. Then in July 2013, after a painstaking first investigation, Kocher and Bendou were charged with murder and Wagner with assisting an offender and preventing a lawful burial. Anton spent every day in the trial, translating everything into French and relaying it to Christophe's family. 'No justice' Bendou and Kocher were convicted of murder but disappointingly Wagner was cleared and set free. Anton and Steve said they were 'absolutely gutted' that only two of the three were convicted as 'everything pointed to three men being involved'. Anton recalls Christophe's sister Aurelie looking at him in court after the verdict and saying in French, 'Wagner got away with it. How's that justice?' Over the months that followed, Aurelie's comments began to 'gnaw' away at him. 'It was a conversation I had in a pub one night with one of my colleagues from the team saying 'This isn't right. I wonder if given the relationship I've developed with Bendou, he can give us something that might allow us to have another crack at Wagner''. 'So we then had to persuade the senior officers that this was of value because these inquiries take tremendous amounts of time, resources and money. 'And thankfully Cheshire Police gave us a second shot.' Prison confession Anton went to see Bendou in prison and tried to persuade him to tell the whole story in its entirety. 'At first he said he would talk if he could get something out of it – like a transfer to France so he could be closer to his family,' Anton said. 'But I said 'No you either tell us because it's the right thing to do or you don't'. 'And he agreed, he allowed us to access his records from the law firm that represented him. 'And we start to learn things about Christophe's murder that we did not know during the initial investigation. 'Bendou describes in graphic detail how he had hit the victim's head with a hammer but the hammer had slipped in his hand with the blood and it was the claw end that went into his skull. I remember the room closing in on me and I started feeling a bit queasy. Retired inspector Anton Sullivan 'You could see distinctive hammer claw injuries in Christophe's skull. 'The first one, they miss and it hits the Formica top that later panicked Kocher painted over. Then we go back and find the exact divot in the Formica that forensically matches the hammer. 'Then he tells us when he pulled the the hammer out of Christophe's skull, because it was stuck there was a jet of blood that went all over the walls and the ceiling. That's why Kocher decided to paint the kitchen red because he thought it would help mask the colour. 'Also as he's pulling the claw out of Christophe's skull, Wagner is looking over his shoulder because they're in this killing frenzy, and he cracks Wagner on the side of the face by accident with the blunt end of the hammer, giving him a big bruise.' Investigators started going through Facebook pictures and found a selfie Wagner took while he was working in a bar at Cheshire Oaks, sporting a big bruise on the side of his face, which was verified and used as evidence in the second trial. Anton, who had by this point become close with Christophe's father Yves, and his brother and sister Noel and Aurelie, said hearing Bendou talking so nonchalantly about the savage murder made him feel sick to his stomach. 'From a personal note, it's really difficult as police officer deal with an offender and not be disgusted, we're humans first and police officers second,' he said. Timeline of the Christophe Borgye case The case was one of the most chilling and unusual Cheshire police had ever dealt with, here is a timeline of key events: April 2009: Christophe Borgye is killed by three men and his body is sealed in a concrete tomb under a shed. May 2009: A colleague reports his disappearance. A housemate, Dominik Kocher, sends a fake email to Borgye's family to make them believe he is safe. November 2012: The three men involved in the murder, Dominik Kocher, Sebastian Bendou, and Manuel Wagner, move from Ellesmere Port to Dumfries, Scotland. April 13, 2013: Sebastian Bendou confesses to the crime to the police, initially claiming he acted alone in self-defence. April 17, 2013: Wagner and Kocher are questioned as witnesses. May 2013: Bendou changes his statement, revealing Kocher's and Wagner's involvement. Both are re-arrested on suspicion of murder. July 2013: Kocher and Bendou are charged with murder, and Wagner is charged with two lesser offenses. March 2014: Kocher is convicted of murder. May 2014: Bendou is convicted of murder and sentenced to life with a minimum of 14 years. June 2014: An appeal to increase Kocher's sentence is rejected; he is to serve life with a minimum of 23 years. September 2016: Wagner is charged again with murder. June 12, 2017: Wagner's trial begins. June 28, 2017: Wagner is convicted of murder and given a life sentence with a minimum of 16 years. 'I remember sitting in the room as Bendou described murdering Christophe in graphic detail and by this point I know his family and it's heartbreaking to listen to. 'You've got to have this professional attitude, but I remember the room closing in on me and I started feeling a bit queasy. 'I said to my colleague who's a highly experienced murder investigator ''How do you sit there and listen to that?' 'He said 'I've dealt with death all my life in the job but I've never had anybody sit there and tell me, as if I'm telling you how to make a cake, how they killed somebody with a hammer and a knife and how they coerced him into being in that position. 'It's actually quite unusual to get somebody to openly admit how they killed somebody.' Eventually, the exhaustive second investigation concluded and Wagner was convicted of murder and jailed for 16 years on June 28, 2017. The jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict. Christophe's three murderers were all finally in prison. Steve, who has a career spanning 30 years of murders across London and the North West, says it's one of the most unusual cases he's worked on. 'As a standalone single victim, what Christophe went through is absolutely horrendous. Plus the dynamic between the three of them is just definitely the weirdest thing I've ever been involved in," he said. For Anton, he was just glad the family finally had closure. 'I always felt that this was a story that needed to be told so that there was some legacy for the family, for the victim, and that they were remembered," he said. 'It's a case that will stay with me for a long time. I've left the police this year and I retired in order to help tell this story. 'If it hadn't have been for Bendou coming forward, I think Christophe would still be there to this day, I'm convinced of it. 'And if somebody had written this story as a drama purely fictitious, you'd say 'No it's too far-fetched, I don't get the plot line'. 'Truth is always stranger than fiction and in 32 years of policing I've seen the worst of people and I've seen the best of people and this case went from one polar opposite to the other. 'But the stoicism and the strength of Christophe's family and the lengths which police officers dedicated their time and effort to seeking justice really stay with me from this case." Murder in Concrete will be streaming on Prime Video from August 31
Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Daily Mirror
Murder victim had skull smashed by hammer and body buried in concrete - and killers nearly got away
Christophe Borgye's murder in 2009 was brutal - and his twisted killers could have got away with it for years had one of them not let slip When a caller with a heavy French accent confessed to murdering his flight attendant flatmate four years earlier and entombing his body in concrete in his garden, police inspector Anton Sullivan listened in horror. It sounded like the plot of a Mafia movie but, as his three year investigation proved, every word of the bizarre late night phone call made by Sebastian Bendou in 2013 - four years after his victim was reported missing by Ryanair colleagues - was true. The murder victim - buried at the bottom of the garden in Ellesmere Port, Merseyside - was fellow Frenchman Christophe Borgye, 36. Meanwhile, a man has been crushed to death by his wife after she 'stumbled and fell on top of him'. Now the gruesome story is being told in a new Prime Video documentary, Murder in Concrete, screening from August 31. 'The ripple effects from this crime are still going on a decade later,' Anton, who retired in January after a career spanning more than 30 years and appears in the documentary, tells The Mirror. Christophe's love of travelling brought him to the UK, where he landed his airline job, but fell in with three men who went on to kill him. Unemployed Dominik Kocher, a German national who was married with a family, had welcomed Christophe when he moved into the rented home opposite him, where his cousin Manuel Wagner lived with Frenchman Bendou, a paranoid schizophrenic. Anton says Kocher left 'a trail of fraud behind him,' in Europe, before settling in Merseyside. Somehow, the experienced conman - who also lied about having cancer - persuaded all three men to let him run their finances. 'Kocher controlled everything to do with Bendou and Wagner,' explains Anton. 'He took their money and in exchange he did their cleaning and cooking. It was like they were his children.' Christophe soon accepted the same deal - handing over his wages. 'Kocher is a very convincing, very manipulative individual,' says Anton. 'The deal he presented was, 'I know you want to travel, I know that you work long hours and irregular shifts. I will look after everything for you, you pay the rent, and because I have cancer and don't work, I look after everybody in the house.'' Kocher was known in the area for ripping people off, according to Anton, who describes Christophe as 'a very caring person.' Anton adds: 'He took people on face value, and if they were nice, kind, and sympathetic, he just presumed that's how they were.' For a few years, the four men lived comfortably with the arrangement. But in the spring of 2009, Christophe said he was moving to Belgium to advance his career. 'Kocher realises this means the tens of thousands of pounds he'd been taking off Christophe for the last two years was disappearing,' says Anton. 'He has to persuade Wagner and Bendou, who is particularly vulnerable, to get involved in getting rid of Christophe. 'Kocher starts feeding them a narrative that Christophe is a clear and present danger to the family; that he's a spy who wants to get them out of the way so he would have access to Kocher's eldest daughter.' In April that year, Kocher bought three supermarket paring knives, together with bricks, cement and limestone chipping from a nearby builders' merchants. On the morning of Christophe's death, the three conspirators lured him downstairs to their specially prepared 'kill room' in the kitchen, which had tarpaulin laid down for the job. Wearing plastic overshoes to minimise blood spatter, they stabbed him as he desperately tried to fight them off. Anton explains: 'The knives were cheap and not up to the job, so Wagner produced a claw hammer he'd brought along. Those blows to Christophe's head were what killed him, there was catastrophic damage to the skull. The victim never stood a chance.' The killers then wrapped Christophe's broken body in the tarpaulin, carrying him to an outhouse, where they built a shallow wall around his body, then filled it with concrete. 'The three of them, having cleared up the blood and mess, then decide they're a bit peckish and go to Chiquitos for lunch,' marvels Anton. 'We later find the credit card receipt from Kocher's bank. Then they continue to live their lives in that house, with what they've done, for some time after the murder.' Kocher even sold Christophe's possessions and pocketed the money. After Christophe's concerned colleagues reported him missing, someone - believed to be Kocher, who has always maintained his innocence - emailed the Borgye family, masquerading as Christophe, saying he'd met a Chinese girl and was moving. Anton says: 'It's made to look as though Christophe has written it, with little elements of things he liked, like a new Wolverine film and so on. 'But then it talked about him having a midlife crisis, his phone's about to die, he's gone off-grid and when he's settled in China he'll contact them. That was out of character.' Christophe's worried brother and sister, Noel and Aurélie, contacted Cheshire Police, but his killers again covered up his disappearance. For four years, Christophe's body lay undiscovered in its concrete tomb. Kocher and the other men eventually moved to Warrington, then to Dumfries in Scotland, telling the new Merseyside tenants not to use the outhouse as it was the landlord's store. But Bendou's 2013 call to police triggered the investigation that exposed the truth. Bendou had become increasingly paranoid, thinking Kocher and Wagner were planning to kill him and dispose of his body in a similar way. Arriving at the police station 'dishevelled,' Anton says: 'He hadn't washed in a couple of days and it was difficult to understand him.' He claimed he had killed Christophe alone during a fight, in self defence. Bendou led cops to the outhouse where he was entombed. Retired Detective Sergeant Steve Currie, who was there, says: 'There was a brick-built structure at the back of it at the bottom which just didn't feel right. 'That's the moment for me when I thought, 'This thing's got legs'. 'It took four days to get the body out. We found Christophe wrapped in a coat, other bindings, butcher's coats and the tarpaulin sheet.' Three knives and three pairs of shoes were found with the preserved body, indicating Bendou hadn't acted alone. Soon after Kocher and Wagner were fingered. Both stood trial in 2014, and Kocher was convicted of Christophe's murder. Wagner was cleared of assisting an offender and preventing a lawful burial, but later convicted of murder in a separate trial, after Bendou told how he had made the first hammer blow that killed Christophe. Bendou admitted to killing Christophe, claiming diminished responsibility, but was handed a life sentence with a minimum of 14 years. Wagner and Kocher have never admitted guilt. Meanwhile, Christophe's family - who have been involved with the documentary - say every life event he misses triggers their grief. 'Christophe never got to meet his nephews. He missed Aurélie's wedding,' says Anton. 'These are all important milestones for the family that Christophe has not been there to share.' Timeline April 2009: Christophe is killed by three 'friends' and entombed in concrete in the garden May 2009: Ryanair colleague reports Christophe missing. Someone impersonates him in an email to his family, saying he's safe. November 2012: Kocher and his family, Bendou and Wagner move to Warrington and afterwards to Dumfries, Scotland. April 13, 2013: Bendou travels to Ellesmere Port and confesses to the crime, at first saying it was just him. April 17, 2013: Wagner and Kocher questioned as witnesses. Wagner alleges Christophe is living in China. May 2013: Bendou tells police about Wagner and Kocher's involvement. They are arrested on suspicion of murder, which they deny. July 2013: Kocher and Bendou charged with murder. March 2014: Kocher convicted of murder, Wagner cleared of assisting an offender and preventing a lawful burial. May 2014: Bendou convicted of murder. Later sentenced later to life with a minimum of 14 years. June 2014: Appeal to increase Kocher's sentence rejected. His sentence is life with a minimum of 23 years. September 2016: Wagner, now living in Liverpool, charged with murder. June 28, 2017: Wagner convicted of murder and sentenced to life with a minimum of 16 years. *Murder in Concrete launches on Prime Video on August 31
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Prime Video Buys Docs On The Kray Twins & The Murder Of Joanna Yeates As Part Of Ten-Title Deal With Sphere Abacus
The life of the notorious Kray twins and the murder of British architect Joanna Yeates are among the latest true crime stories headed to Prime Video. The Amazon streamer has struck a ten-title deal with London-based distributor Sphere Abacus for rights in the UK and Ireland. All the shows hail from British independent producers. More from Deadline Jacob Elordi Series 'The Narrow Road To The Deep North' Finds A U.S. Buyer 'Carrie' TV Series From Mike Flanagan Officially Greenlighted By Prime Video David Spade Sets New Comedy Special 'Dandelion' At Prime Video The package comprises Woodcut Media productions Krays: London's Gangsters, The Murder of Joanna Yeates, The Crossbow Cannibal, Murder in Concrete, Confessions of a Female Serial Killer and Murdered or Missing?; Yeti Television's Surviving the Tunisia Beach Attack; Wag Entertainment's Murderer Behind the Mask, Middlechild Productions' The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching a Killer and recently announced pick up The Wimbledon Killer, which is from Blink Films. Single doc The Murder of Joanna Yeates launches first, a week today on April 22. It looks into the case of Yeates, who was found murdered on Christmas Day in 2010 after going missing from her home in Bristol. The case became a grim lesson how media frenzies can go wrong, with Yeates' innocent landlord, Christopher Jefferies, accused of murder and put on trial by the press. A Dutch national living in the building was later jailed for the killing. Krays: London's Gangsters is a two-parter looking how twin brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray built a criminal empire and turned themslves into underworld legends in London's East End in the 1950s and 1960s. The doc includes never-heard-before audio of the brothers during their later imprisonments and explores the deep and complex relationship between them. The Crossbow Killer profiles murderer Stephen Griffiths, Murder in Concrete looks into the case of a body discovered in a concrete tomb, Confessions of the Female Serial Killer explores the 10-day murder spree committed by Joanne Dennehy in March 2013 and Murder or Missing? looks at three generations of a family – including an eight-week-old baby – were killed as part of a money laundering scheme. Surviving the Tunisia Beach Attack is billed as 'the definitive account' of the 2015 massacre of tourists that claimed 38 lives in the less than 40 minutes, Murder Behind the Mask looks into how successful architect and seemingly happy family Graham Dwyer secretly committed a murder, and The Facebook Honeytrap explores how the doting niece of murdered British expat Christine Robinson ensnared her aunt's killer. As we revealed last month, The Wimbledon Killer looks into the murder of Rachel Nickell, who was stabbed to death in broad daylight on Wimbledon Common. It is one of two docs on the killing, along with Netflix's Wimbledon Common (working title). 'We are extremely proud of the relationships we have built with a wide group of indies throughout the world,' said Will Stapley, Sphere Abacus Head of Acquisitions. 'The producers included in this significant deal are best in class and we are sure that these diverse, high quality true crime titles will strongly appeal to Prime Video subscribers.' Prime Video has shopped at Sphere Abacus several times in the past for true crime docs, taking a similarly large slate back in January 2024 in one instance. Canada's Bell Media recently completed a deal to buy Sphere Abacus, as Deadline revealed a few weeks back. Sphere Abacus had previously been sold to Sphere Media, in which Bell holds a minority stake. Best of Deadline Everything We Know About Celine Song's 'Materialists' So Far Everything We Know About Netflix's 'Ransom Canyon' So Far 'The Last of Us' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out?
