Student accused of murder was 'fascinated' by killing

A criminology student butchered” a woman by stabbing her to death in a random attack on Bournemouth beach after researching methods of murder, his trial has heard.

- TARA COBHAM

Winchester Crown Court was told yesterday that Nasen Saadi, 20, has a "fascination" with knives and enjoyed horror movies.

He is accused of murdering Amie Gray, 34, and attempting to murder her friend Leanne Miles at Durley Chine Beach, West Undercliff Promenade, on 24 May this year.

Jurors heard that while the defendant, from Croydon, south London, was studying for a degree in criminology at Greenwich University, he asked his lecturers a series of questions about defences for murder, which led one of them to ask him: "You're not planning a murder are you?"

Sarah Jones KC, prosecuting, told Winchester Crown Court that Ms Gray, a physical trainer from Poole, and Ms Miles had been chatting next to a fire to keep warm on the Dorset beach under a full moon when they were targeted by Saadi.

She said: "Nasen Saadi, as he walked along that promenade and thought about the culmination of a plan he had worked on for who knows how long but which he had spent the last couple of nights walking through and researching.

"Nothing fine or glorious in his plans I'm afraid, nothing of selfimprovement or to benefit anyone else. This defendant seems to have wanted to know what it would be like to take life, perhaps he wanted to know what it would be like to make women feel afraid, perhaps he thought it would make him feel powerful, make him interesting to others.

"Perhaps he just couldn't bear to see people engaged in a happy normal social interaction and he decided to lash out, to hurt, to butcher." She added: "With purpose, slowly, stealthily and quietly, when he thought no one would observe him, he hovered at the edges of the promenade, then stepped on to the sand, and walked directly towards the two women with a knife in his hand.