Hitmen (10 page)

In August 1990, Aylor’s former husband Richard Finley filed a lawsuit against his missing wife. A newspaper article about the lawsuit was read by a woman who’d just arrived back in Dallas from Mexico. The photo looked just like the woman she’d roomed with who went under a different name. Both had attended a Spanish-language school in Cuernavaca, Mexico. However, when investigators contacted the school they discovered that Aylor hadn’t returned for the new term despite registering for it. The Rozanne murder squad from Richardson, Texas, and the FBI then issued an appeal to law enforcement agencies across the world, including Interpol in Europe.

It wasn’t until March 1991 that an anonymous tipster told detectives Aylor was using the name Elizabeth Sharp and renting a villa just outside the city of Nice, on the French Riviera. She gave English lessons to local people to earn a living – and she’d acquired for herself an American boyfriend called Albert Neilsen.

Neilsen is suspected of being that tipster because he fled the area minutes before Aylor’s arrest on Saturday, 16 March. Aylor insisted her name was Elizabeth Sharp but when authorities made it clear they were fully aware of her past she confessed to her true identity. Aylor was transferred to a local jail where she made a feeble attempt to kill herself by slashing both her wrists, but was immediately rushed to hospital where doctors said her wounds were not deep enough to be life-threatening.

Back in Dallas, investigators began the long and arduous process of extraditing Aylor from France. France’s extradition treaty with the US specifically contained a provision protecting capital murder suspects from being extradited because France did not carry out the death penalty. Dallas County prosecutors eventually requested that Aylor be extradited on charges that were not capital cases and assured French authorities she would not be put to death if found guilty. But they still refused to confirm when the extradition would take place which dashed any hopes of trying Aylor before her other co-defendants.

Back in Dallas, jury selection for the trial of so-called triggerman Andy Hopper went ahead. It took six months to seat the panel and another six weeks for the actual trial,
making it one of the longest criminal proceedings in Texan history. Hopper effectively convicted himself thanks to his candid, videotaped confession in which he coldly recited all the appalling details of how he murdered Rozanne Gailiunas.

The jury even heard Hopper admit standing over Rozanne’s nude and bound body as it lay on the bed and masturbating before strangling her with the belt and then firing two point-blank shots into her head. One of Hopper’s jail inmates told the court that he’d confessed to the slaying while they shared a cell. Another friend of the alleged hitman testified that Hopper wrote a letter to him admitting to the murder and showing little remorse for his crimes.

Hopper was found guilty of capital murder, which mandated that he be sentenced to death by lethal injection. The verdict was immediately appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Meanwhile Joy Aylor remained incarcerated on the French Riviera thanks to highly complex extradition proceedings. It wasn’t until November 1993 that the French officially accepted assurance that she would not be put to death if found guilty. US marshals escorted Aylor back to Dallas County to stand trial – 11 years after the original slaying. When she arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport the once attractive blonde housewife looked drawn and gaunt after so many years on the run.

Jury selection for Aylor’s trial finally got under way in May 1994. Assistant District Attorney Kevin Chapman predicted a complex legal battle. ‘She started it,’ he said. ‘She’s the one that gave it [the murder] all life. But she’s the farthest from the gun.’ 

Aylor’s trial began on 1 August 1994, before Dallas County state district judge Pat McDowell. It was screened live on Court TV. A dishevelled Aylor was shackled at the ankles when she shuffled into the court and immediately entered a ‘not guilty’ plea. Millions of Americans watched as prosecutors began their case by using two side-by-side projectors – featuring on the left an image of Aylor, the beautiful, blonde and suntanned wife, and on the right screen photos of people and places linked to the case flashed by in sequence. Prosecutor Chapman then outlined the deadly chain of events.

He told the jury that tape recordings of telephone conversations between Aylor and Marilyn Andrews would corroborate the prosecution case. Chapman also told the court that Aylor fled the country because of her fear of being convicted on the murder charge. A stream of witnesses for the prosecution then gave evidence, including officials who arrived at the murder scene, a doctor at the hospital where Rozanne was taken and the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on her body. Then came Albert Neilsen, who’d been living with Aylor in France at the time of her arrest. He’d only been apprehended on a federal fugitive warrant days before the trial began.

Neilsen said that Aylor admitted her role in the slaying. She even told him that she wanted her ex-husband’s girlfriend dead so she could reclaim him and the money she believed he’d taken from their joint bank accounts. Aylor also told her lover that she’d had to pay $15,000 blackmail money to Robert Cheshire, who’d originally arranged the hit on Rozanne Gailiunas. Neilsen also admitted taking $200,000
belonging to Joy Aylor from banks in Switzerland and Mexico, which he used to travel the world as a fugitive following Aylor’s 1991 arrest. He used most of the cash to buy and later sell a $185,000 sailing boat.

Aylor’s defence team branded Neilsen completely unreliable and claimed that his testimony was part of a
plea-bargaining
deal on federal charges of passport fraud and concealing a fugitive. ‘He’s a desperate man,’ Aylor’s attorney told the court. ‘I’d expect him to say anything.’

Then came the transcripts of phone conversations between Aylor and Marilyn Andrews in which Aylor said she was stupid not to have her former husband killed as well. Prosecutors also played the tape of a later meeting in a noisy restaurant between Aylor and Andrews. At one stage, Aylor talked about the man she hired for the killing. ‘He didn’t know who I was at the time,’ she said. ‘He did not even know who paid to kill her.’

Then one of the middlemen involved in commissioning the hit told the court how he gave triggerman Hopper the money, directions and a photo of the victim. This was followed by testimony from police officers involved in the investigation and subsequent worldwide hunt for Aylor. One veteran Dallas detective described the case as ‘Dallas’s most complicated murder case’.

The defence team then surprised the court by deciding not to call any witnesses. Closing arguments from attorneys were expected to begin on 15 August, but prosecutors then asked the judge to allow them to reopen testimony in the trial. They wanted Aylor’s former lover Ted Bakersfield to take the stand. Three years earlier, he’d pleaded guilty to cocaine charges and
been given a 15-year sentence. But he’d been suddenly released in December 1993 after his sentence was reduced to four years, thanks to his co-operation with the Richardson investigators probing Rozanne’s murder.

Bakersfield had not been called earlier in case he was needed to rebut any of the defence witnesses but, once it was clear they were not calling anyone, Bakersfield was introduced to the court. He described his love affair with Aylor and how they had several conversations about her involvement in the murder and plans to flee the United States. Bakersfield found it hard to reconcile the woman he’d loved with the cold-hearted killer behind that hit on Rozanne Gailiunas.

But he did recall going to a shooting range where he allowed Aylor to test-fire a new 9mm handgun. She aimed the weapon at a mesquite tree and emptied the clip. Then Aylor handed him back the gun, smiled and said, ‘I should’ve used this on Rozanne.’

Bakersfield also testified that Aylor showed no remorse over the killing she’d commissioned. ‘She said if she had to do it all over again, she’d do it differently,’ he said. ‘She’d do it herself.’ He recalled that Aylor once told him that guilt ‘was a wasted emotion that could be dealt with under any circumstances and should not be carried around’.

Bakersfield even told the court that Aylor had asked him about finding someone to kill Marilyn Andrews after she tipped off the police. Aylor thought that if Andrews ‘was removed’ any tape-recorded testimony might not be admissible in court. ‘The best defence is a good offence,’ Bakersfield quoted his former lover as saying.

Summing up, prosecutors stressed Aylor’s behaviour as she fled police and pointed out the damaging content of various tape-recorded conversations. Defence attorneys claimed that Aylor didn’t hire anyone to carry out the hit but did employ Robert Cheshire to rough up her ex-husband. They insisted the death of Rozanne Gailiunas was the result of an overzealous hitman.

Prosecutors dismissed the claims by recalling the
tape-recorded
comment Aylor made to Marilyn Andrews that, ‘He [Robert Cheshire] did not know who paid to kill her.’ Assistant District Attorney Chapman pointed out to the jury: ‘Does that sound like a woman who ordered eggs and bacon?’

On 18 August 1994, the jury deliberated for just two-
and-a
-half hours before finding Joy Aylor guilty of capital murder. She was given life imprisonment because the French authorities had only extradited her on condition the death penalty was not instated. Aylor showed no emotion as she was led away to a Texas Department of Corrections jail.

Her last lover, Albert Neilsen, later pleaded guilty to nine charges, including helping hide Aylor while she was on the run and passport fraud. The judge announced an adjournment on sentencing. Middlemen Buster Matthews and Gary Matthews were given life sentences for their attempted shooting of Richard Finley.

T
welve-year-old Michelle Samarasinha kissed her mother goodbye at the breakfast table and headed out into the bitterly cold January morning. She was to meet her father at the garage behind their home, where he was warming up the car to take her to school. All along Demesne Road, in the Surrey commuter belt town of Wallington, just south of London, businessmen and women were coming out of their neat, suburban houses and heading briskly towards the nearby railway station.

As the schoolgirl walked around the side of the row of houses to meet her father, she wondered why his car wasn’t out of the garage yet. Michelle headed towards the alleyway which provided a speedy cut-through to the lock-up garage. Then she spotted a group of people gathered around something on the pavement. One woman with a dog on the end of a lead was speaking to the others. She was saying, ‘I
thought he was drunk or something, and then he collapsed.’

Just then little Michelle peered through a gap in the crowd and noticed a man’s shiny shoes and grey trouser legs. The pair of Aviator sunglasses, with one lens broken, lying on the pavement sent a shiver down the spine of Michelle. She started shaking. In the distance, the loud wail of police sirens got closer and closer.

Michelle finally plucked up the courage to look down at the figure on the pavement properly. A woman was crouching over her beloved father, giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She only pulled back as two paramedics forced a pathway through the crowd. Then Michelle noticed her father’s pullover was soaked in blood.

Nimal Samarasinha – known as Sam to everyone – died before the ambulance could even get him to hospital. He’d bled to death from a single knife wound to the heart. It later transpired he’d been stabbed as he went to open the door of his garage. Then he’d managed to stagger a few yards before crashing on to the pavement.

Police immediately sealed off the area and began interviewing witnesses and residents. One man claimed he saw two or three men in a white Ford Escort, who’d driven off so fast that the witness had presumed they were late for work. He couldn’t even provide a description of their clothes, but he did recall that they all looked ‘Indian or something’. He hadn’t even managed to get a note of any part of the car number plate. Detectives were baffled by the cold-blooded nature of the attack in a quiet suburban street. Was it a botched robbery? But it was so unusual to die from one single
thrust of a knife and, in any case, few muggers ever resorted to murder.

Detective Inspector Tony Kirby then went to call on the grieving widow and child of the deceased. He was expecting a lot of tears, especially because of the violent, sudden nature of Samarasinha’s death. Victim’s wife Florence Samarasinha answered the front door wearing dark glasses, elegant clothes and fashionable slingbacks, and dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

It was that style which had so impressed Sri Lankan-born Sam when the couple first met in Africa in 1978. He was 22 and had just been posted to Nigeria with Bristow Helicopters. Sam took great pleasure in bringing Florence back with him to London at the end of his Nigerian contract. However, Sam’s extremely conservative family were horrified when he announced he was marrying an African woman rather than someone from his own cultural background.

Sam’s parents even made some discreet enquiries about Florence’s background. But communications between Nigeria and the UK were not good and they found precious little information about her family or circumstances. They just hoped and prayed that the romance would fizzle out before the couple could take their marriage vows. But Sam remained besotted with Florence and the wedding quickly went ahead.

Florence knew her husband’s family didn’t approve of her. But she ignored it all. Her first job in London was as an administrator for Brent Council. Then in 1985 she beat dozens of rival applicants to an important administration job at Croydon Council, in south London. Soon she was head of
the housing benefits department, with a staff of 80, earning £30,000 a year. She was the first black woman to become a senior official at Croydon Council.

All this apparent success left Detective Inspector Kirby wondering why the family hadn’t moved to a more expensive house. This one was extremely modestly furnished. Kirby noted daughter Michelle’s private school uniform and Florence’s immaculate Mercedes in front of the house. But apart from those two extravagances, the family weren’t exactly big spenders.

However, Kirby was already aware there had been some serious domestic problems between Sam and Florence in recent months. Police had been called to the house four times by Florence, including one incident which resulted in Sam getting a nasty cut on his head. On another occasion, officers arrived to find the couple arguing in the street. Another time Florence claimed her husband had attacked her with a knife. Officers even told Sam – who always denied his wife’s claims – to go and sleep at another address until things cooled down. But when police urged Florence to get a legal injunction out against her husband, she refused.

Back in their Wallington home, DI Kirby listened intently as Florence suddenly made a revealing comment: ‘I don’t know if I should be telling you this, but my husband was involved in the drugs business,’ she sniffed. ‘I never knew what was going on, but I know there had been some threats against him. He used to get these strange phone calls at night.’

Moments later, Florence burst into tears as if she was trying
to emphasise the point. DI Kirby sensed she was acting. But it wasn’t that surprising if she’d been subjected to the alleged spousal abuse, which had prompted all those earlier calls to the house. Maybe she was just pleased that he couldn’t bully her any more?

But when investigators began checking on murder victim Sam’s background, a completely different picture emerged. No one had a bad word to say about him. Friends and associates described him as a kind, thoughtful man who doted on only-child Michelle. She believed her father to be one of the most gentle people in the world. Sam didn’t even like watching police shows on TV because he found them too violent. He adored sport but thought football was turning increasingly rough and so preferred cricket.

Most mornings, Sam would drop his daughter at school and then make the 45-minute drive to Bristow Helicopters in Redhill, Surrey, where he was an aviation engineer. During the school run, father and child always had the most enjoyable conversations – something that Michelle later said she would never forget.

However, on the day before he was killed, Sam had revealed to little Michelle that he and her mother were about to split up. He told his daughter: ‘You’re going to have to make a very difficult choice. You have to decide which of us you’re going to live with.’

‘With you, Daddy. I want to live with you.’

Little did either of them realise that would never happen.

Head of the murder investigation, Detective Superintendent Brian Younger and the rest of his colleagues soon concluded
that Sam was the type of man who really did not deserve to die. And every one of his friends said there was no way he’d ever been involved in the shady world of drug dealing. In that case why was Florence trying to suggest it?

Back at the family’s Wallington home, DI Kirby went back to Florence to gently confront her about those earlier drugs claims. She immediately responded by insisting her late husband must have been dealing in ‘something bad – pornography or smuggling’. Over the following few days, Florence poured out theory after theory as to why her husband was killed. But none of it added up.

Florence also boasted to DI Kirby about her powerful job at Croydon Council and how she had an honours degree from Cambridge. Later that day, Kirby got his office to check out her qualifications and they turned out to be bogus. Even Florence’s seven GCSE ‘O’ levels and five ‘A’ levels in her application for the Croydon job were
non-existent
– as were a bunch of glowing references from her previous job at Brent Council.

When Kirby went back and confronted Florence, she dismissed all her lies as irrelevant, saying her employers in Croydon said she was doing a splendid job. But her colleagues reported that Florence rarely completed more than half a day of work at a time and often only made a brief appearance in the morning before putting on her coat and leaving. She told staff she was out investigating bogus claims for housing benefits. Florence insisted she often ended up working in the evenings to catch these money-grabbing cheats.

Then investigators discovered that, despite her high salary, Florence was constantly in debt. She’d even borrowed money
from junior colleagues and recently added £5,000 to the mortgage on the family home. She also had a £5,000 claim against an insurance company rejected because it was bogus. And she was currently more than £34,000 in debt.

DS Brian Younger attended the funeral service for Sam at Croydon Crematorium a few days later and got the distinct impression that the murdered man was trying to tell him something. Sam had been so wary of an early, unexpected death he’d carefully written out the directions for his funeral, right down to the music, which turned out to be Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand By Your Man’. Younger later recalled, ‘Standing there listening to it. I could only think it was a bit ironic.’

So it was no surprise that the first real break in the case came from the victim himself. It emerged that Sam – a meticulous character – had made an appointment for himself and Florence to see a local social services official to decide who should get custody of Michelle in the event of their legal separation. Sam had made precise notes in preparation for the meeting. He’d even written that Florence’s career at Croydon Council was a complete sham. He also branded her an unfit mother for their child.

And when Sam had uncovered that Florence was heavily in debt he’d presumed she was having an affair, so he’d even hired a private detective called Yousef Ghida to shadow her every movement. Ghida soon reported back that she was spending all her money on gambling. She adored amusement arcades and would spend hours each day on the fruit machines.

Rudy Drummond, manager of the MDJ amusement arcade on Church Street, Croydon, near Wallington, later told police: ‘She was in here four days a week. At first it would only be for an hour or two. Then it was three, four, five hours. Sometimes all day. Now and then she’d be up to about £30 or so. But I’d say she was losing an average of 50 quid a day. Several hundred pounds a week, anyway.’ Florence was losing something in the region of £1,000 a week at various arcades across south London.

But then private eye Ghida came up with some even more dramatic news: Florence was working for the Effleurage Escort Agency as a hooker to try and pay off her debts. It then dawned on Sam that his wife was capable of
anything
. He hoped all these revelations would help him win custody of Michelle, so he instructed private eye Ghida to get some solid evidence which could be used in a court of law if necessary.

A few weeks later Ghida returned with secretly filmed videotape of him going to an appointment with Florence as a prospective client. On the film, Florence – wearing just a pair of skimpy white panties – tells Ghida she’s ‘new in this business’ and is working to pay off some debts. ‘If there is anything you want me to do, just say so.’ Moments later Ghida pretends he can’t perform and apologises, saying, ‘I’ve lost my bottle.’ Then Florence asks him, ‘Would you like a massage?’ He politely declines, puts on his clothes and takes back part of the £100 he’s paid her.

Sam felt humiliated and appalled as he watched the video, but realised it was crucial evidence, along with her gambling, to put before a judge to convince him that Florence was an
unfit mother. Later that same day, Sam confronted his wife about her secret life as a vice girl. Florence accused her husband of lying and told him there was no way she would leave the house and abandon her child. She knew then she would have to do something very drastic.

During that summer of 1991, Florence met a cleaning contractor called Simon Wash at a neighbour’s drinks party. He clearly found her attractive and was extremely sympathetic when she told him that her husband regularly beat her up. But Wash’s ears pricked up even more when Florence mentioned that she handed out cleaning contracts at Croydon Council.

‘Come to my office and we can talk about some contracts due for renewal,’ she told Wash. He wanted to impress Florence enough to ensure she gave him the business, so he decided to take an associate called Gerry Smithers, a nightclub bouncer and weightlifter, with him to the meeting. Florence gave the muscle merchant a friendly ‘Hmmmmm!’ as Smithers walked in. ‘You’re a big boy. You might be able to help me.’ Smithers offered to provide Florence protection from her brutal, violent husband. He even said he might ‘have a word with him’ if necessary.

While Simon Wash’s main priority was discussing cleaning contracts, Florence had other ideas on her mind. ‘My husband’s been beating me up all the time and he stole £350,000 from the textile firm we own,’ she told the two men within minutes of their arrival. The ‘textile firm’ was a figment of Florence’s colourful imagination. She continued, ‘He’s even tried to kill me, can you imagine? Someone fired a
gun at me not far from home. I know he hired somebody to do it.’ Then she paused for a moment before ever-so-casually asking, ‘Would you kill my husband for me?’

Wash and Smithers coughed and spluttered and a long silence filled the room. Then Wash chipped in, ‘Wouldn’t it be a better idea if you moved into a hotel for a while? Let things cool down a bit?’

But all that did was send Florence into floods of tears. ‘You don’t understand. He’s molested our daughter. You wouldn’t believe it. He had one of his uncles rape me once, and,’ she sobbed,’ he stood there and watched.’

Smithers handed Florence a huge, manly handkerchief and assured her, ‘Don’t cry, love. We’ll sort it all out for you.’ As they left the building both men shrugged their shoulders with bewilderment at what they’d just heard. It seemed a bit of a steep price to pay for a cleaning contract.