Killer who raped dog walker before brutally murdering girlfriend is jailed for 33 years

 
Jailed for life: Marvin Samuels stabbed girlfriend Sharlana Diedrick to death
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A killer rapist was jailed for at least 33 years at the Old Bailey today for killing his girlfriend just hours after a violent sex attack on a woman walking her dog by a reservoir.

The 42-year-old rape victim had never met her attacker and her only mistake was to resemble the mother of Marvin Samuels’ son.

Samuels, 31 of Stonebridge, admitted both attacks to the police but claimed he was suffering from a mental condition at the time which reduced his responsibility.

But a jury unanimously rejected his defence and found him guilty of the murder of his girlfriend Sharlana Diedrick.

Sentencing Samuels to life imprisonment, Judge Timothy Pontius QC told him: “Each crime was individually horrifying in terms of its merciless brutality but taken together they represent a level of violent behaviour in just a few hours that I have only rarely encountered.

“You raped your victim brutally and beat her savagely with a tree branch and a bottle and used a scarf to strangle her.

“Such was the appalling violent attack that she was and remains so traumatised by the experience she suffered she has been wholly unable to describe any of it.

“Six hours later you killed the mother of your son – a victim totally defenceless and unable in any way to protect herself.

“It was a deliberate act of murder carried out in anger by a man of volatile temperament.”

The jury cleared Samuels of attempting to murder his rape victim. He had already admitted raping and causing her grievous bodily harm.

During the trial Duncan Atkinson, prosecuting, had told the court that the first victim had been walking her Chihuahua beside the Welsh Harp reservoir in Neasden.

Her husband reported her missing to police that night but it was he and friends who were to find her naked next morning when they mounted a search.

Astonishingly she was still alive and she was taken to hospital but has not been able to tell police what had happened.

“She and Samuels were complete strangers. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Mr Atkinson.

“But she did have a resemblance to Ms Diedrick. She and Samuels were in an on-off relationship , which was volatile and included incidents of domestic violence.”

At 11.16pm on the night of the rape Ms Diedrick’s body was found covered in blood slumped half way out of a black Hyundai car in Wembley.

She had suffered 16 wounds to the chest and abdomen and a blood stained knife was found close by.

Samuels handed himself into police the following day and his DNA was found to match samples taken from the rape victim.

He told detectives he had gone to the reservoir to “clear his head” and felt he was “lost in space”. Encountering the victim he had started to talk to her then pulled her into the undergrowth and raped her.

He said he felt “abnormal” when he attacked her.

He went onto say to police that he had been arguing with Ms Diedrick in the car about child care for their son.

He said he had “lost it completely” and stabbed her, adding that he would have stabbed her more often but he had hurt his hand in the attack

“Samuels described being ‘not in my right mind’ that night but emphasised she had not been violent towards him and that it was ‘all me,’” said Mr Atkinson.

Samuels confessed to killing the mother-of-four, but claimed he had diminished responsibility at the time.

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