Murder victim's ring held vital clue that led cops to suspect 30 years later

30 January 2024 , 17:33

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Marina Koppell was killed in a 'frenzied attack' at her ground floor flat in London on 1994

A hair trapped in a murder victim's ring led police to her alleged killer nearly 30 years after she was killed, a court heard.

Marina Koppel, 39, was found dead by her husband in her flat in Chiltern Street, Marylebone, on 8 August 1994. The mother of two, who worked as a masseuse, was still in her underwear and had been stabbed 140 times.

The crime went unsolved until a cold case review in 2022 when the hair was matched to Sandip Patel, who was 21 years old at the time of the murder. Patel, now 51, was then matched to a bloody bare footprint on the skirting board in the room where Ms Koppel was murdered.

He worked at his father's convenience store near to the murder scene at York Mansions near Baker Street, west London. Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones told the jury: "On Monday 8th August 1994, 30 years ago this year, a Mr David Koppel who lived in Northampton was trying to get hold of his wife Marina Koppel.

"She was in London, where she rented a flat. She rented that flat because she worked as a masseuse and a sex worker - in essence, she was a prostitute. She used a flat in London to meet her clients during the week, and then she would normally spend the weekends with her husband at their home in the Midlands."

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Murder victim's ring held vital clue that led cops to suspect 30 years later

Ms Koppel's body was found at York Mansions on Chiltern Street in Marylebone

He said this was a happy relationship, and that Mr Koppel accepted his wife's line of work. "On Monday 8th August 1994, Mr Koppel couldn't get hold of his wife, and at about 9.00 that night he set off from Northampton to drive down to London.

"He was anxious, because she wasn't answering her telephone; but what he found when he got to London was surely far beyond his worst nightmares. He got to the flat, in York Mansions near Baker Street tube station, shortly before 11.30 that night. He found an horrific scene.

"In the second bedroom, the one to which Marina would take her clients, David Koppel found his wife on the floor, dead. There was blood everywhere, on the floor, on the bedclothes, on the furniture, on the walls because she had been stabbed to death - she had been stabbed no less than 140 times.

"The fatal injuries had been to the front of her neck, which had caused extensive blood loss from the subclavian artery and the left jugular vein - the jugular vein had been almost completely severed."

There were also defensive injuries on her arms and hands consistent with her making a determined attempt to defend herself against an attack with a knife, the court heard.

"This dreadful murder went unsolved for half a lifetime. David Koppel died in 2005 and so he never saw his wife's murderer brought to justice," Mr Emlyn Jones added.

Police had matched the fingerprint on a carrier bag to Patel, but it could have simply been handled by him in the shop and it was not enough evidence to charge him. The hair was found in 2008, stuck to Ms Koppel's ring. "But it was not until 2022 that a DNA sample could be taken from it," said Mr Emlyn Jones.

"The hair still had its root intact - so it wasn't just a piece, or shaft, of hair - it is the presence of a root which makes the difference. It turned out that there was a root on a piece of hair from that ring; and DNA was obtained from it. The DNA recovered from that piece of hair turns out to be Sandip Patel's."

Police were also able to use photographs of the crime scene to match a bloody footprint from the skirting board to Patel. Mr Emlyn Jones explained that at the time of the original investigation in 1994 Patel had not been a suspect, so his footprints had not been not taken, but that they were taken following the discovery of his DNA on the hair found at the scene.

He said: "At its heart, we suggest the case is a simple one, which rests on what I have already told you. Marina Koppel was brutally murdered. It has taken a terribly long time to solve it, but we now have evidence that she had this defendant's hair stuck to the ring she was wearing when she was attacked and killed; and his bare foot was pressed against the skirting board next to her. And that, the prosecution say, can only be because it was him who killed her all those years ago."