Wealthy East Durham woman was ‘murdered by pro conmen with gambling habits’
Carole Waugh, 49, was stabbed in the neck in her flat in Marylebone, the Old Bailey was told.
Rakesh Bhayani, 41, and Nicholas Kutner, 48, deny murdering Miss Waugh, who disappeared from her home last year and whose remains were found three and a half months later.
Patrick Gibbs QC, prosecuting, told the jury: “The Crown cannot say whose hand was on the weapon.
“But whoever struck the fatal blow, we say that Mr Bhayani and Mr Kutner planned it, and were responsible for it, and having taken her life, they then systematically took all her worldly goods as well.”
Mr Gibbs said that Miss Waugh lived alone in a flat just off the Edgware Road.
“She wasn’t married, she didn’t have a steady boyfriend. She was, it seems, a lonely woman on the lookout for male company.
“She didn’t have a regular job, she had done a number of jobs in the past, including having worked as an accounts clerk in Libya, in the oil industry, some years before, which she plainly had enjoyed, and about which she spoke a lot - sometimes, you may think, in rather exaggerated terms.
“She spoke about going back to Libya, or wanting to, in the future.
“She was a woman who had plenty of money. That was to prove her undoing.
“She owned her flat, it was worth more than £600,000, she had savings, shares, jewellery, of which she was proud, and a cash income from working as an amateur escort.”
Bhayani and Kutner were professional conmen and lifelong gamblers, Mr Gibbs said.
“They have a long history of tricking people and defrauding people to get their hands on the large sums of money which they require in order to feed their gambling habits.”
They knew each other through prison, and had a lot in common.
“They had a taste for grand and expensive things. Both were gripped by the same compulsion, to gamble.”
As soon as Miss Waugh was dead, a number of women were used to impersonate her.
At Bhayani’s instigation, they pretended to be Miss Waugh, on the telephone to banks, in shops, buying things.
“They were rehearsed by Mr Bhayani, nursemaided by Mr Bhayani and usually accompanied by Mr Bhayani around London, and on the telephone, stripping Carole Waugh’s assets.”
Mr Gibbs told the jury that the women would not be before them in the trial, which would focus on the murder and concealment of the murder.
