A killer who fled to Colombia has been found guilty of murder and false imprisonment. Jurick Croes, 38, of no fixed address was found guilty of murdering Riches Obi and the false imprisonment of a woman following a trial at The Old Bailey yesterday (May 28).
Rachell Felomina, 40, of no fixed address, was found guilty of false imprisonment. Suvenca Martis, 34, of Panmure Road, Lewisham, was found guilty of false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice.
All three will be sentenced at the same court on Tuesday, July 2. Officers were called to Mr Obi’s home address in Harper Road, Southwark on Tuesday, November 17 2020, and found the door partially open.
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Having entered the home they then found Riches lying on the floor, with stab and slash wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
When an officer called out to see if anyone else was in the house, a woman shouted “I’m here”. Police followed the voice through the flat until they found her in a bedroom, bound with cable ties.
A scarf was tied around her neck to be used as a gag. Officers also found a bag of cable ties, identical to the ones used to bind the woman.
They had a price tag to a nearby hardware store which police went to. They watched the CCTV and identified Martis as the person who bought the ties. CCTV also showed her driving away from the shop in a rented vehicle which detectives later established she had hired for the days spanning the murder.
When police arrested her and searched her phone, it showed she had been in contact with Felomina and Croes. The phone included ferry times showing them arriving from Holland before the murder, then fleeing on the same ferry on the night of November 17.
It also revealed that Martis had been searching for heavy duty duct tape the night before the killing, as well as news of the murder afterwards. Two knives had been recovered from the flat, both of which had been used to attack Riches.
Forensics found DNA on both weapons matched Felomina and Croes. Other items found inside the address, including envelopes and the cable ties had traces of both mens’ DNA. DNA from Croes was also found on a black baseball hat that had been discarded in the bedroom of the flat.
When the hire car Martis had used was seized and examined, Croes’s blood was found inside. Detectives traced Felomina to Holland and he was arrested and extradited back to the UK in November 2021.
Croes managed to flee to Colombia but was arrested in February 2022. His extradition took 18 months. Detective Chief Inspector Matt Webb from the Met’s Specialist Crime Command led the investigation and said: “While it has never been comprehensively established why Riches Obi was attacked and killed in such a horrifying manner in his own home, it is thought that the three suspects were involved in some way in a money making scam with the woman they targeted.
“Whether Riches tried to intervene is not known, but it is clear he was subjected to a sustained and violent assault. Thanks to fast-time and diligent police work, we were able to identify Martis as playing a key role in the preparation for this attack. Her arrest led us to identify Felomina and Croes’s role and, despite their efforts to evade capture by fleeing the country, they could not escape the consequences of what they had done.
“I hope this conviction demonstrates to those engaged in significant criminality, international borders are not a barrier and UK Law Enforcement will utilise the repertoire of international co-operation tools available to bring offenders to justice. Our thoughts remain with Riches family who have been made to endure a significant wait to see justice done. I only hope that these convictions can allow them to begin to move on in some way.”
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