Lorry driver beat woman, 20, to death with power tool in converted shipping container

A lorry driver who beat a woman to death with an electric saw before using a wheelie bin to transport her body to a shallow grave has been jailed for life.

Necolai Paizan, 64, launched a brutal attack on 20-year-old Agnes Dora Akom in a converted shipping container in Brent, north west London.

He beat her over the head 20 times with the tool before putting her body into a bag and into the back of his car on 9 May last year.

Paizan, originally from Romania, then drove to Neasden Recreation Ground and put her into a wheelie bin to carry her body to a makeshift grave in woodland.

Ms Akom, who worked as a coffin maker, was reported as missing by her boyfriend.

On 18 May - 9 days after she was killed - the shipping container was visited by police and Paizan was taken to give a witness statement.

He admitted knowing Ms Akom and claimed to have taken her to his shipping container before dropping her at a nearby cashpoint, but when CCTV was examined it showed her entering the container - but she never left.

Paizan was arrested on suspicion of murder and false imprisonment.

CCTV footage showed him carrying a number of items from the container to his car before visiting a skip and Neasden Recreation Ground.

Over the coming days, Paizan visited the park where he had hidden the body five times while telling his son he wanted to go back to Romania.

Inside the skip, officers found Agnes’ coat and a forensic examination of the container found blood which matched Agnes’ DNA.

Other bloodstains were subsequently discovered in Paizan’s car.

He was charged with murder on 23 May, but Ms Akom's body was not discovered until 14 June 2021 - 36 days after she had last been seen.

Initially, Paizan told police he had killed Ms Akom in “self-defence” but went on to to give a different story in his evidence to jurors during his trial.

Duringthe trial, Paizan tried to claim Ms Akom had tried to poison him and he has woken up to find her dead.

Paizan, a concrete mixer driver, admitted moving the body but denied murdering the young woman he knew as Dora, falsely claiming she poisoned him with iced coffee.

He described how he came to love her “like a daughter” after finding her begging for small change in a supermarket car park.

However, the evidence suggested that he had preyed on her vulnerability and targeted her with the promise of money.

They met 54 times over the 12 months before the murder, and jurors were shown photographs Paizan took of Ms Akom semi-naked, the court heard.

In a victim impact statement, Ms Akom’s mother described how her daughter and her boyfriend Peter Lenart had moved to Britain from Hungary for a “new life”.

Reading her statement, prosecutor Jake Hallam QC said the young couple’s hopes had been “thoroughly extinguished through the actions of this defendant”.

Ms Akom’s mother said Paizan had dragged her daughter’s name “through the mud after her death” and “presented himself as a victim” to the jury.

On Monday, Judge Richard Marks QC jailed him for life with a minimum term of 22 years.

He told him: “It is clear on your lengthy evidence that you remain in a complete state of denial as to what you did in that frenzy of violence that took away that young girl’s life at the age of 20.

“These were shocking acts of wickedness on your part.”

More to follow...