Two Frenchmen Slain In London

Two young Frenchmen were victims of a ghastly crime in London. This account from the July 3 edition of Le Parisien is posted at Gaelle Mann, among other sites.

Scotland yard has launched an appeal for witnesses after the "horrible" murder of two French students on Sunday (June 29) in an apartment in the southeast district of London, where they were bound and stabbed repeatedly before their studio was wet on fire.

Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23, died of "very extensive multiple wounds" after being stabbed in the head, neck, back and torso, during a "brutal, wild and horrible" attack said inspector Mick Duthie (photo), visibly shaken, at a Scotland Yard press conference.

"Everyone who worked on this case, including myself, has been profoundly shocked by what we saw," he added.

"I have never seen such wounds in all my career. Both of them seemed to have been attached during the attack," he added but could not say if they had been tortured and did not want to indicate if they had been gagged.

"The neighbors heard nothing," he said simply. According to sources close to the inquiry quoted by AP, Laurent Bonomo was stabbed 200 times, including 100 times after he was dead. His friend Gabriel Ferez was struck about fifty times.

The two "talented" and "hard-working" biochemistry students had been in London since May 1 for a compulsory two-month apprenticeship as part of a partnership between their University of Clermont-Ferrand and the prestigious Imperial College of London.

The motives of the murders remain a mystery (...) A white man was spotted fleeing the scene on Sunday night (...) No weapon was found at the scene of the crime: a studio located on the ground floor of a building in Sterling Gardens, in a "cul-de-sac of the calm residential neighborhood of New Cross." It was rented by Laurent Bonomo.

Police were called on Sunday around 21:10 GMT after an explosion followed by a fire. The two young men were already dead when the fire started, explained Inspector Duthie, adding that the apartment had been "sprinkled with flammable substances."

The leader of the inquiry indicated that the apartment had been burglarized six days earlier and that a laptop had been stolen. The administrators of the school in Clermont-Ferrand declared that they were "brilliant students" (...)

The article goes on to describe the shocked reactions of their friends in London. Laurent Bonomo was singled out for his intelligence:

A lover of chess and tennis, he had quickly fit in. "Laurent was particularly mature and open. People liked him a lot. He was intelligent and obviously had a brilliant future."

Gaelle Mann's readers immediately thought it might be a crime committed by Muslims, but some postulated it was more likely of a homosexual nature. However, it appears that Laurent Bonomo had a girlfriend. According to Le Figaro:

On Thursday Laurent's girlfriend wrote on his Facebook web page:

"I lived ten months of happiness that I had never known until then. Today you have gone and I will try to be perfect as you always wanted me to be."

Note: Facebook is an Internet social network for making contacts and leaving messages, etc...

However, there are many unusual aspects to the crime. First, the fact that a "white man" was seen leaving the scene. Note how the media do not hesitate to specify the race when it is white. The two victims were also white. The extraordinary brutality and the use of flammable substances recall the murder of Ilan Halimi. The blog called Villepin has this recent entry:

There are many very strange things in this horrible double murder. We have a friend named Bonomo who is of Jewish origin. We point this out because it was on Laurent Bonomo that they unleashed their greatest fury - 200 stab wounds. (Note: Gabriel Ferez was just visiting when the killings took place.) His apartment had already been broken into six days earlier and his laptop stolen. This is curious. At any rate, it is impossible for only one assailant to subdue two young men. There must have been several of them. And perhaps they even knew them. The fire was started only to erase traces of fingerprints. This proves that the killers were barehanded. It is also why they took the weapon or weapons with them. Bladed weapons of some sort. This is not a case of robbery, as the perpetrator of this butchery would like us to believe. Something else is behind it...

There is a bit more information, especially on what the neighbors saw, at the Times On Line, and a slide show.

A reminder that as I post nothing definitive is known.