Original subtitles

(Richard Shepherd) When a murder is committed,

it's always a race against time to find the truth,

to separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer,

and to make sure that justice is served.

But what happens when the truth vanishes with the victim?

I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd, and I've spent

my entire career as a forensic pathologist,

performing nearly 23,000 autopsies.

I've learned that the dead don't hide the truth,

and they never lie.

Through me, you'll be hearing directly from the victim.

With the aid of a state-of-the-art laboratory,

using ground-breaking technology,

I'll be investigating a series of intriguing crimes

where, from the victims' bodies, I'll reveal to you

the truth behind these murders.

On the 6th of March 2019, police in West London

made an awful discovery

in the back garden of a flat in Richmond.

In a flowerbed, covered by loose soil,

they found the body of a woman buried in a shallow grave.

The discovery came about after London's Metropolitan Police

received a missing person report.

Beat officers were sent to an address

on Richmond's leafy Darell Road.

(David Collins) Local police have attended the address.

Having gone in, there was no signs of a big disturbance

or anything like that inside the flat at all.

But in the back garden, at the bottom,

they found a raised flower bed with some wildflowers

just placed on the top.

There was a spade with some fresh earth on it

and a bag of compost.

The soil was brand-new, that the garden looked like

it had a make over just in one side of it, fresh soil.

So they made a decision to do a gentle sift through this mound.

And about six inches down,

they came across a blue plastic bag.

Went on a little bit further and about another six inches,

another blue plastic bag, only this bag,

they felt like they could feel, like, a human toe.

And it was right at that point, that very, very shallow in there,

a couple of inches, they discovered what they thought

was potentially a human being wrapped in bags.

They must have wondered, what on Earth have we come to here?

It must have been a most traumatic shock.

(Simon Harding) What is clear is that

this is a suspicious crime scene.

And of course, the person in that grave didn't put themselves there.

So the officers' training and all that information

they've had as police officers kicks in, and they know, then,

to get out of that property as quickly as possible,

secure it at the front and the back, any possible routes

in and out because you are looking at what is,

quite obvious at that point, a murder scene.

(Richard) Detective Chief Inspector Simon Harding

was brought in to head up the case.

(Simon) At the time, I was the senior investigating officer,

the DCI in charge of one of the murder teams in London.

When I first got there, the cordon tape

was literally on the front gate.

So we expanded that very, very quickly to both ends of the road.

Because if someone has done something,

they've made their way off up a road

and thrown something in a hedge,

then, you know, you want to be as sure as you can

to try and identify if there is a weapon

or even dropped something personal,

like a credit card or a driving licence.

(Richard) Seasoned crime officers

were rushed straight to the property.

(David) And a forensic archaeologist attended the scene

to do a fingertip excavation,

to sift and find anything that may be relevant to the scene

and discard anything else that isn't.

Once we get down to the level of the body,

we can then have a better idea of what we're dealing with.

And this is when we were able to see

that we had a female in a bag in the grounds.

She was wrapped in a inflatable mattress,

which appeared to have been gaffer-taped

around the knee and the neck area.

So the body is now removed from this grave,

placed into a body bag, secured,

and taken to the mortuary for the postmortem.

(Richard) The woman found buried in her own back garden

was identified as 34-year-old Laureline Garcia-Bertaux.

Laureline was found naked, wrapped in plastic,

with her hands bound behind her back by duct tape.

There was also an electrical cable around her neck.

And so the first thing I would do is look for evidence

whether this was the cause of her death.

In cases of ligature strangulation,

there's tremendous pressure placed on the neck.

And it can cause damage to the larynx,

here in the front of the throat.

And here's the hyoid.

It's a horseshoe-shaped piece of cartilage

in the top of the larynx.

And it's important for swallowing and tongue movements.

You can see here, below the hyoid,

that there are portions of the thyroid cartilage

that stick up and stick down.

And when the neck is squeezed, these can be damaged

and can even snap off.

And the postmortem showed that there was this damage

to Laureline's larynx that could only have been caused

by severe and consistent pressure to her neck.

And that confirmed that she died of asphyxiation.

Now police knew that Laureline had been strangled,

they had to work out why anyone would want her dead.

So detectives put Laureline's life under the microscope.

(Simon) So when you start looking back at someone's life,

friends and family and work,

we saw that Laureline was incredibly popular.

No-one had a bad word to say about her.

She was so well-liked.

She was incredibly hard-working.

Her neighbours described her as very quiet.

They knew her because she had two big dogs,

so they'd often see her walking her dogs around the area.

Originally from France, she moved to the UK in around 2009.

As well as working in PR, she also worked

in the film business as a producer,

where she worked with people including Dame Joan Collins.

And she worked on some very big productions

and with some incredibly famous people as well.

Her friends, who she had many of, described her as very confident,

outgoing, talkative, very creative,

and somebody who's full of promise.

(Richard) There were no clues in Laureline's character

to suggest the motive.

The body had been bound and from behind the feet and legs.

And it could have, to all intents and purposes,

suggested a sexual, sadistical murderer here,

but this is more of a coldly executed murder.

The body was actually lying in an extremely shallow grave,

so clearly this was somebody, yes, well, it was planned,

but they hadn't really taken a lot of time.

(Richard) To identify her killer, Simon and his team poured

over Laureline's case file,

starting from when she was first reported missing.

The police local to where Laureline Garcia-Bertaux lived

were called by some friends of her

because they hadn't seen her or heard from her in a few days.

So Laureline failed to turn up to work at a PR firm in London

on Monday morning,

and her friends and colleagues were extremely worried.

It's completely out of character for her.

They'd waited 24 hours.

And by the Tuesday, she still hadn't made contact with anybody

or been to work.

And so they called the police and reported her missing.

And the police obviously took this very seriously

because, unusually, they released an appeal for her.

So they obviously knew something was wrong.

And it got to the point where there's still nothing,

still no traffic on her phone, no sightings,

doesn't contact friends or family,

which she does on an absolute regular basis.

And so now, there's a real concern.

(Richard) The officer's notes

from the first check of Laureline's home

revealed some intriguing clues.

(David) There's no signs of any forced entry.

So it wasn't like somebody had broken in,

and this is a burglary gone wrong.

There was nothing untoward or out of place.

There was no visible blood, no weapons.

(Simon) From friends and from all sorts

of things that we hear about, Laureline is moving house.

Inside the house were boxes that were packed.

Her bed had been dismantled.

And with the information they had that she was supposed to be

moving house and she should have gone,

then, obviously, that was very odd to find that and not find her.

What they could see was the dogs.

The dogs were there. They were very subdued.

And there was enormous amount of food,

so almost too much food had been put out for them,

which, again, is slightly suspicious.

You know, why would you do that if you're looking after dogs?

(Richard) As forensic specialists scoured Laureline's home,

reporters arrived on the scene.

(Henry Vaughan) Already, there's a huge police cordon

up around the garden.

You could see forensics officers working at the scene,

a tent erected over the garden,

and there's still a missing poster for Laureline

on the railings of a nearby primary school.

There were still children playing.

So this is happening in a very affluent area of West London,

very quiet area, very leafy,

it's completely unexpected for the neighbours.

They're absolutely horrified that something like this

could happen on their streets.

And it's not just any kind of murder.

It's cold, calculated.

It's horrifying.

And, you know, police hadn't made an arrest.

So this person, whoever did it, is still out there.

(Richard) In March 2019, police found 34-year-old

Laureline Garcia-Bertaux strangled with a cable

and buried in a shallow grave in her garden

at her West London home.

Here, police hunted for forensic clues

that could lead to Laureline's killer.

There is so much to do in the first especially 24 hours,

48 hours of a murder inquiry.

Officers would do fingertip searching in gardens.

We'd have the drains in that road as well,

what we call "gully sucks."

And that is where they put these big sucking mechanisms down there

and bring everything up in there, and then

officers would search through the muck

to see if there's anything there.

So all that was being done.

We couldn't find anything at that stage that seemed relevant.

(Richard) So detectives hoped

Laureline's body could reveal more truths about her murder.

Laureline's neck was crushed with such force

that the coroner said they had never seen

such a severe case of asphyxia.

The postmortem showed damage to Laureline's larynx

that could only have been caused by severe and consistent pressure

to her neck.

And that confirmed that she died of asphyxiation.

But the clues to her last moments are the bruises

and fractures of her ribs.

Whilst squeezing her neck with the cable,

the killer was also compressing her chest.

And this is known as "burking."

It's named after William Burke, who, in 1828,

together with his accomplice, William Hare,

murdered a number of people

and sold their bodies to medical schools.

He killed his victims by simply sitting on their chest.

When we breathe, our ribs and lungs work together

as a single, sealed unit.

As the ribs expand upwards, the chest cavity is enlarged,

and air is drawn into the lungs to let oxygen get into the body.

If there's pressure on the front of the chest, the ribs can't move,

the lungs can't expand, the air can't enter the lungs,

and the person will asphyxiate.

It's a particularly cruel way to kill someone,

slowly depriving their body and brain of oxygen.

But who would inflict this kind of death on her?

(Simon) The pathologist said there was extreme pressure

on the chest area.

You know, these are things that show

that that person is extremely violent

and very strong as well,

and also very determined.

(Richard) So who was this powerful and violent killer?

A clue perhaps lay in the last text messages

Laureline sent to her friends.

Laureline has started to go onto dating sites.

No success, but there were messages to friends saying,

I've met this fit vet.

And of course, we then thought, well, there's a potential

that she's with somebody she's met on a dating site,

and it could be this person that has done this.

And of course, so we go into that company and identify,

you know, anybody that she's been linked with,

and she might have met.

She wasn't linked with anyone.

So we thought, well, this doesn't make sense.

(Richard) Laureline's friends told police

about other text messages

they'd received from her that seemed out of character.

The messages kept coming that she was having a great time

spending all this money buying shoes, clothes,

and that she was going out shopping now,

which was unusual because Laureline used to shop online,

would never really go out shopping.

They also said she was going to spend money

on a boob job or a hot tub,

which was completely not Laureline.

And the friends were like, well,

this is not the way that Laureline talks.

And also, the manner in which these texts were being said,

the phraseologies used, they said this

is nothing like her whatsoever.

(Richard) One name kept coming up in the texts,

a man called Kirill.

Many of them thanked him or spoke highly of him.

(Richard) They said he'd recently paid Laureline

back money he owed her, totalling thousands of pounds.

A lot of saying how grateful she was for him giving her money

and helping her move to a new, beautiful house.

(Simon) This person was identified as Kirill Belorusov,

her boyfriend that was on and off for 10 years,

and more off than on.

She kind of split up with him a couple of years ago,

and she was trying to move on with her life.

Officers dive into his life to try and find out what he's about.

And what we identify is mainly what people

tell us about him, as opposed to what

we can actually find out about him.

(Henry) Belorusov was born in Russia,

but he was an Estonian national.

He came to the UK at around the same time as Laureline

in around 2009.

He claims to have been in the Navy before moving to the UK

to learn English.

He also said he worked

in the film industry as a stuntman.

Not just a stuntman locally, but a stuntman for Hollywood.

That he'd been in loads of films with people like Brad Pitt

and that this was his lifestyle,

you know, this glamorous lifestyle.

(Richard) But friends told police of a darker side

to Laureline's on, off boyfriend.

(Simon) He would bring her down

in what he said, whatever it might be,

just to consistently put her down.

He was very controlling.

He was controlling even how she thought about her own body image,

telling her that she needed to lose weight, picking at her,

picking at her, finding fault, but at the same time,

boosting his own ego.

(Simon) He would always be the person

that's working in Hollywood, so you're nowhere near as good as me.

You don't deserve the things that I get and everything else.

So he's becoming this

big person in his own mind.

You know, Laureline was actually in the film industry.

She was doing that work.

He couldn't afford for her to be better than him.

He hated that kind of relationship

where he felt underneath somebody.

(Richard) Detectives trawled through movie databases

to find proof of Belorusov's glittering career.

No trace whatsoever.

You know, there is no existence for him having a job

or getting any form of funding in the UK at all.

He bragged and boasted that he was a somebody in the film business,

when clearly he wasn't.

(Henry) He also claimed to be a bouncer or a security guard,

providing close protection to important people.

In reality, he mainly worked in bars and clubs around London.

This man was a fantasist.

(Simon) We also find out that Belorusov has told everybody

for the last 10 years that he has cancer,

and that this cancer is advanced,

and that he is seeking treatment in the UK

and abroad for it.

(Henry) It seems they often argued about money.

He would ask Laureline for money, which he claimed he needed

to pay for cancer treatments.

And when she asked for it back, he refused to repay it,

came up with excuses.

(David) Laureline was living on her own.

She had a flat to run, dogs to look after,

the train fares to pay.

She was, more or less, down to her last penny,

giving this man everything that she could.

He names the hospitals he goes to

and that he's away for four or five days.

So we start to look at that,

and we can find no trace in the UK,

privately or within the public health system, of him ever,

ever seeking any treatment for any form of cancer whatsoever.

So this lovely young woman,

who would have had this amazing career,

is being chipped away bit by bit

by this man who will have control.

And even when he's not living with her,

he's still actually controlling her.

He's texting her

and getting her to send him images of herself naked,

while asking for money, telling her

they'll be together again.

He's very, very controlling.

(Richard) Investigators needed to find

a link with Belorusov in the days

leading up to Laureline's death.

The friends had said, well, she was with him.

She was with him days before.

And when we looked back at her finances,

you could see that there was transactions in local restaurants

only a matter of days before the body was found.

When you spend money in a shop or a restaurant,

then most of the time,

there is CCTV to go with it.

On Friday, the 1st of March, you can see that she is

at a restaurant with a man.

And this man is Belorusov.

And he is with her in the restaurant.

They're holding hands.

They're drinking Prosecco or Champagne.

Then you see them on a CCTV we managed to get from a bus

as they travelled home.

And you can see there that Belorusov is stroking her leg.

He was being very cosy to her on the bus going back to her house,

looking like he was very caring.

So when he gets to the flat,

he stays that night.

And then we see the Saturday, where the pair of them

go out shopping.

They go to Pets at Home and buy dog food.

They go to Sainsbury's.

They do normal sort of shopping that they would do.

(Jane Carter Woodrow) They had a nice day together,

so, yes, it was a good weekend.

But he's using Laureline for sex,

and he's using her for cash.

She's a cash cow.

And he'll keep coming back for cash,

even though he owes her this money.

(Richard) The pictures from that Saturday

were the last images of Laureline alive.

But on CCTV, the day Laureline was found,

detectives spotted Belorusov some 40 miles from Richmond.

(Simon) He's already got himself

to Luton Airport on the Wednesday.

He then flies out to Estonia.

So of course, he was still in the country

when the body was discovered, but had already booked

and was already on his way out.

So he ends up back in Estonia,

where he's celebrating his 32nd birthday with his friends.

He just acted normally, nothing out of place.

(Simon) We have a phone number for him.

Officers are calling him,

and they're getting in contact with him, and he's now abroad.

He's in Estonia.

And they're saying to him, what's happened? Can you help us?

We understand that you were with her only on Saturday,

and she was moving house.

And what they got response for him was,

oh, yes, I was, but I left her.

She was fine.

She was going off to this new house.

And what's clear to those officers is that he really has no intention

of coming back and helping.

Everyone thought, well, if your...

and especially the family and friends...

you know, if your girlfriend of 10 years

had gone missing in these circumstances,

which are highly suspicious,

then you would be here.

(Richard) Investigators hoped Laureline's body

could give up more evidence linking her to Belorusov.

Meanwhile, detectives had a manhunt on their hands.

(Simon) So we know we're dealing with

a really callous, coercive, controlling type of human being.

And so we know we had somebody really dangerous,

and we needed to get him as quickly as possible.

(Richard) In March 2019, as police in West London

were on the hunt for the killer of 34-year-old film producer

Laureline Garcia-Bertaux,

her body gave up more grim secrets

for the investigators.

Laureline's body tells us that she was asphyxiated,

but there were no other signs of a struggle.

Her fingernails were intact, and there was no obvious bruising,

scratches, or other cuts around the arms

to suggest Laureline had tried to fend off her killer.

It would appear the attack was completely unexpected.

Internal swabs were taken to look for signs of a sexual assault,

and toxicology samples were tested

to see if her attacker had drugged his victim.

Toxicology showed no evidence of date rape

or, indeed, any other drugs.

And it was concluded that she hadn't been sexually assaulted.

This evidence from Laureline's body

suggested she knew her attacker.

And there was more proof pointing to her ex-boyfriend,

Estonian Kirill Belorusov.

(Simon) We can obviously see him on CCTV with Laureline

in the restaurant and on the bus on that Saturday,

but then we start to see other things on the Sunday.

Now, of course, we believe that Laureline had been killed

late, very late Saturday night

or in the early hours of Sunday morning.

So what was he doing now in the following days?

On the Sunday, we can see him with the financial transactions

and CCTV going into a Homebase,

which is literally five minutes' walk from the address itself.

(David) Belorusov is on CCTV on his own.

Now, this is one of the few times CCTV

actually shows them being apart.

(Simon) And he's buying things like rubble sacks,

an axe, garden shoes,

and also buying soil.

(Richard) When I'm working on a murder inquiry,

it's not just the body that I look at,

it's everything associated with it.

And in Laureline's case, we know that her hands

were bound together by duct tape.

Now, duct tape has two surfaces that are superb

in retaining both fingerprints and DNA.

The tape would be sent off to the laboratory

to try and lift fingerprints

or swab for traces of the suspect's DNA,

so these could be matched on police databases.

But neither showed a link to Belorusov, or anyone else.

There was, however, damning evidence found on CCTV.

(Henry) Footage caught him buying the duct tape,

all the tools he needed to dispose of her body.

And he even bought some beer for himself on the way home.

(Simon) What we could see in the address was a bag of soil.

What we could see on the body was bags which were identical.

And of course, we can see him, as clear as anything on CCTV,

buying these items the day after we believe

that Laureline had been murdered.

Then we see him, in the days afterwards,

starting to make his way out of the country.

(David) He's decided that he will make his way to Estonia.

He was searching flights,

so, and then on to the train station,

up to Luton Airport, and he was gone.

(Richard) As police work to get a precise location

for their suspect,

they had a major breakthrough in the investigation.

(David) The body had been wrapped in an inflatable mattress.

At each end of this mattress,

there was a silver-coloured gaffer tape wrapped around the knee area

and the neck area.

And she also had a cord around her neck.

They would be submitted for fingerprints and DNA.

The results that we had back, the cord around Laureline's neck

had both a match of her DNA

and Belorusov's DNA.

He has an awful lot of explaining to do,

how his DNA managed to get on that cord.

(Richard) But actually pinning Belorusov down

was another matter.

So officers are speaking to Belorusov whilst he's in Estonia,

you know, apparently celebrating his birthday and with friends,

and he has family over there.

And it was clear there was no way he's coming back.

So that's when we start to...

we instigate different proceedings to basically go and get him.

And at the time, we could do a European arrest warrant.

(Richard) With the CCTV and forensic evidence stacked

against their suspect, they convinced a UK court

to issue the paperwork.

(Simon) Myself and a colleague flew to the Hague

to the Europol building,

and we hand-delivered this European arrest warrant

to get Kirill Belorusov.

And we sat in a room with the Estonian Prosecution Service

and a senior police officer from Europol from Estonia,

and we handed the paperwork over.

They were ready, and they believed they had enough and we had enough.

And it was in that room that that officer called

his officers once it had been agreed,

and they arrested Belorusov immediately.

(sirens wailing)

So it was almost instant, you know, incredible cooperation

that we had from those authorities to secure his arrest.

Part of the process, then, is to get our extradition unit team

to go to Estonia and bring him back.

They brought him back to Heathrow.

He's then taken into custody at Heathrow Police Station,

where the first thing that happens to Belorusov

is that he is charged formally with the murder

of Laureline Garcia-Bertaux.

(Richard) Now they had their suspect in custody,

police seized Belorusov's phone.

His deleted messages revealed what happened

in Laureline's final hours.

Laureline is moving house.

This is a fundamental, important part of this case

because she's going.

She should have gone on Saturday morning, but she hadn't gone.

(David) She's been spending days boxing everything up ready,

so you can imagine her excitement at this point,

thinking where she was off to.

So why didn't she move on the days that she was supposed to?

And what we start to see through telephone calls

is that she had a removal company booked,

but she cancelled that removal company on the Friday.

Friends started to call and say to her, what's happening?

And she comes up with this story to her friends to say,

well, actually, what's happened is, I'm moving to a place

that Belorusov has found me free of charge.

And it's somebody that he knows within the film industry.

And they've got this amazing house.

I don't know where it is cos he hasn't told me,

but we're going to go there anyway.

But I've also had to cancel my removal company

because he's sorted one out for me as well.

She was waiting for the removal van.

She had everything there.

And yet, no removal van came.

(Simon) She starts to panic.

Where are they?

And she's speaking to her friend, saying, they've not arrived.

What's going on? People are saying, well, where are you going?

I still don't know yet. He hasn't told me yet.

(Jane) There was nowhere she was going.

It was all one big lie.

So she was left high and dry.

We believe it gets to that point now where she said,

what's going on?

This is all a complete lie.

This could well have led to an argument that put her at risk

because this man was ruthless.

And we think that's when Belorusov decided to...

he can go no further.

He has to murder her.

(Jane) This man was so cold and calculated

and so lacking in empathy

for this poor girl that he'd murdered,

he just looked onto her internet,

working out what her password would be,

which, sadly, happened to be his name,

and has started to watch porn.

It's hatred.

It's somebody who hates women, probably frightened of women.

He's got no empathy, no respect.

(Richard) To add to that,

a forensic scan of Laureline's phone

revealed more about those suspicious text messages.

(Simon) These were actually being sent within the cell

of her home address.

And of course, this was on a day when she was dead.

So we knew whoever was doing that was pretty much sitting

within her Wi-Fi of her address.

What we could also see is that Belorusov's phone

was hitting the same cell as well.

He was using Laureline's phone to actually message her friends

and telling them that he'd paid 7,000 pounds,

another lump sum of 10,000 pounds back to Laureline.

(Richard) This 17,000 pounds was only part of the debt

Belorusov owed Laureline.

(Henry) He also used the phone

to send messages to himself thanking him for the money

that he'd given her.

One of the messages was obviously trying to throw investigators

off the scent, him saying she was due to meet

her vet for a date for coffee.

He hijacks Laureline's phone,

and he's texting friends to cover for himself.

He is so self-possessed.

He's not upset.

He's not nervous, not sorry.

(David) He was using Google Translate in French

to message her brother.

(Simon) Google Translate to translate French into

a language he would understand.

And of course, this was being done on Laureline's phone.

Well, she wouldn't need that, would she?

(Richard) Meanwhile, the deep forensic search

of Belorusov's phone

revealed something yet more sinister.

We identify there's another phone number,

which is a regular contact.

And what we find there is another woman, another girlfriend,

who lives in another part of London.

When we speak to her, he's doing the same thing.

He's taking money from her.

He's living with her.

She thinks he's got cancer.

She thinks he's a stuntman.

And when he said he's going away for five days

to seek treatment in a hospital in London for cancer,

what he's actually doing is going to stay with Laureline.

And when Laureline believes he's going to five days in the hospital

to seek treatment for cancer or go on a stunt film,

he goes to live with the other female.

Belorusov was a game player.

He was playing games the whole time.

He was boosting his ego,

boosting his pocket,

using these women in a very cruel way.

(Richard) In a text to one woman,

Belorusov said chillingly,

"I'd kill for you."

He practised death holds on another girlfriend.

We found one particular person who talked about how violent

he was during their sexual intimacy.

And he would often use quite severe force and strangulation

and believe it was something that they would enjoy.

(Jane) Clearly, when somebody is doing that,

they're practicing.

He's moving on up this chain

towards actually committing murder.

But clearly, if he's prepared to do that,

he's a very, very dangerous,

amoral man.

(Richard) The case was building against Kirill Belorusov.

(Simon) The evidence was very, very strong against him.

We were very confident that we had enough

that a jury would find him guilty.

(Richard) In 2019, the ex-boyfriend of 34-year-old Laureline

Garcia-Bertaux became the main suspect

for her murder after the postmortem revealed

she had been asphyxiated.

Laureline was buried in the garden of her West London home.

She was wrapped in rubble sacks and covered in soil

bought by Estonian Kirill Belorusov.

And Laureline's broken ribs suggested

he'd fatally compressed her chest and neck.

She'd been found strangled by a cable

that had Belorusov's DNA on it.

The evidence against him was compelling.

Six months after Laureline's murder,

Belorusov was brought before the Old Bailey.

Laureline's family came over from France,

and they listened to the evidence at trial every day.

It's an incredibly emotional and difficult place to be

when you're hearing everything

that's happened to your loved one.

And then you come face to face with the person

that is being prosecuted for doing it,

Belorusov.

And he stays with you forever because, one,

he's got those eyes that just look so evil.

And he was so smug and so confident about everything.

(Richard) The prosecution outlined

the case against Belorusov.

In court, we heard that in the lead-up to her murder,

Laureline had been begging him for the thousands

and thousands of pounds that he owed her,

and he kept promising to pay it back.

(Jane) She's in debt with the rent,

and she's got no food.

She sends him a text. There's nothing for the dogs.

There's nothing for me.

And so when he sells her this line

that he's actually got her this lovely house

to move into and it'll all be wonderful,

well, of course, this is offering her a way out of this situation.

(Henry) He told lies and lies and lies.

So he essentially tricked her to coming to her home.

And really, his plan was to kill her

so she wouldn't expose him as the fraud he was.

(Richard) The court also heard

how the possessive ex-boyfriend stopped Laureline

from starting new relationships.

(Simon) That was a big thing for Belorusov

because she was a source of money for him.

And it sounds... it's really callous, isn't it,

when you think that.

But you know, he wanted her because she had given him

thousands of pounds over the years.

And if he lost that funding stream,

then he would struggle to find money from anywhere else.

He didn't want her to go.

He didn't want her to be with anyone else.

And he didn't want her to move forward without him.

And the minute she's ready to start again

is the worst point in time.

If you're going to leave a narcissist, a psychopath,

where domestic violence is a feature,

that is when they will pull you back,

and that's when you are at your most vulnerable.

She would not come out of that alive.

(Richard) Next, the defence was heard.

Belorusov himself decided to take the stand.

(Simon) Everyone wants to know what he's going to say.

And he speaks in basic form

that, well, I left her.

She was fine, and somebody else must have done it.

It wasn't me.

Belorusov came across as a very arrogant,

cocky individual.

His interactions with the jurors gave the impression

he really thought that they'd believe his lies,

and he'd get away with this.

(Simon) When Belorusov gave evidence,

all these things were put to him, like, you don't have cancer.

We can't find it.

"Yeah, I do." Prove it.

"I can't."

You know, you're not a stuntman.

"I am." You're not. Prove it.

It was really unnerving to see how he behaved

because he just gave lie after lie after lie

about all the evidence that we presented.

And of course, when it was so factually correct,

he just says, "Well, he's trying to fit me up.

It's an easy get-up."

(Richard) The text Belorusov sent Laureline

asking for nude pictures

were also read out in court.

(Jane) Even in court,

he was actually laughing at some of the messages

that he'd sent her, which was just horrible.

He was fooling himself, you know.

All this laughter was so nasty and inappropriate.

And you have the victim's family there,

which it must have been terrible for them to hear this.

You know, but he didn't care.

You know, it was all about him and making himself look good.

And I think he really enjoyed the attention that he got.

And when he was talking about things

or when he would leave the box after giving evidence,

he would walk past the family or just nod and smile

and, you know, all those sort of things

as though he was their best friend.

(Richard) But the real Belorusov revealed himself

to the judge and jury.

He blames the victim, of course.

He blames Laureline.

That coercive, controlling,

bullying, manipulative personality

came out in that trial when he talked about her.

You know, she needed to sort herself out.

She needed to lose weight.

But he continued with all of his lies, even to the point

where I think at the end, the judge said,

you even believe your own lies.

(Richard) But the prosecution had to show

Laureline's killing was a deliberate act.

Her body would reveal the proof.

The coroner concluded that it took four minutes for Laureline to die.

It was a very long four minutes of deliberate compression

of her neck and chest,

compression that caused collapse and convulsions

and finally starved her brain of oxygen.

So this was not an accident.

It simply took far too long for her to die

for that ever to be the case.

(Henry) This wouldn't have been

a panicked moment for Belorusov.

It wasn't a spur of the moment attack.

(David) It's not an argument that's gone wrong,

and he's just snapped and strangled her.

That this is methodical.

(Jane) Four minutes, that's 240 seconds.

Imagine that that somebody twisting

a ligature around her neck.

This person that he's lived with and been in a relationship with

for 10 years,

and he's coldly strangling her.

And she must have been looking at him.

It must have been terrifying for her,

and he didn't have a scrap of mercy,

not a scrap.

But the fact that he could keep doing it

tells you everything you need to know about him.

This is an extremely dangerous man.

(Henry) Belorusov showed absolutely no remorse

throughout the trial.

And when he was finally found guilty after the jury deliberated

for less than two hours,

he even looked at Laureline's family,

smiled and nodded at them

as her mother was sobbing.

(Richard) Kirill Belorusov was sentenced to life

for a minimum of 24 years.

(Henry) This case is one that sticks

in the memory for many reasons,

not least the tragedy of the victim.

Laureline had so much promise,

so much life ahead of her.

It's an absolute tragedy that this man took it all from her.

(Simon) There are so many red flags

around the kind of person that he was within that relationship.

Belorusov suffocated her with his coercive and controlling behaviour

and how abusive he was to her.

There's a legacy behind this that everybody can learn from.

You know, to see somebody like that

and identify somebody who displays this kind of personality,

you know, you need to stop and you need to intervene.

(Jane) Clearly, this man, in my opinion,

is a psychopath.

He's a danger, particularly to women.

And I have no doubt if he'd have gone free,

he would have murdered again.

Laureline believed that her ex-partner, Kirill Belorusov,

had come to help her move house.

She couldn't have known that he had, in fact,

come to kill her.

But bodies never lie,

and the truth was

that Laureline had been brutally strangled by the man

she had loved and trusted.

But the evidence was enough to convict him

and to bring justice for Laureline and for her family.

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