Boyzone founder ‘haunted’ by his obsessed ex-lover’s torture and murder of French nanny

A founding member of Boyzone has told of how he is “haunted” by the torture and murder of a French nanny because of a couple’s bizarre obsession with him.

Sabrina Kouider and Ouissem Medouni kept 21-year-old Sophie Lionnet imprisoned before burning her body on a bonfire over their warped fantasy that she was in league with music mogul Mark Walton.

Kouider, 35, and Medouni, 40, were convicted at the Old Bailey of murdering the woman, whose charred remains were found at their home near Wimbledon, south-west London.

In the weeks leading up to her death, the couple beat, starved and tortured her by dunking her head into water until she “confessed”.

After they were found guilty, police released a chilling image showing gaunt-looking Miss Lionnet two days before her murder.

Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, Mr Walton described his anguish at the fate of the victim he never met.

The Mail reported that his eyes were red from crying when he spoke to them from his Hollywood home.

"When I saw that picture of Sophie and how scared and vulnerable and haunted she looks, and to think she was tortured because of me, that haunts me,” he said.

“The poor girl was telling the truth. She never met me. And yet she paid with her life because of those psychopaths.”

Mr Walton, who gave evidence at the trial, said that he previously never drank but now needs two glasses of wine to get to sleep at night.

He added: "I think of her every day.”

He said he wanted her parents, who this week said their daughter's killers should be "burned at the stake", to "know I carry their daughter's picture with me everywhere."

"I will never forget her. We never met but I will always pray for her and her parents," he said.

Mother-of-two Kouider and her banker husband Medouni denied murder but were found guilty on Thursday of what was described as a "folie a deux", a shared psychosis.

Kouider, a fashion designer who once dated Mr Walton and claimed to have partied with US president Donald Trump, was dubbed “wicked” during the trial.

She reported Mr Walton to police more than 30 times over five years and insisted that he had used black magic against Miss Lionnet and falsely accused him of domestic abuse and of being a paedophile.

However, Mr Walton, now a millionaire LA music producer, denied all the claims in court, explaining that he had not even been in the UK on days when Kouider accused him of carrying out the abuse.

Kouider teamed up with her on-off husband Medouni to interrogate Miss Lionnet, who she incorrectly claimed had been seduced by Walton's promises of fame.

Medouni told firefighters responding to reports of pungent smoke in September last year that he was burning a sheep.

Police discovered the remains were of Miss Lionnet.