Man gets 29 years behind bars for brutally murdering a barmaid in a park on Christmas Eve 2017
"Wicked" Kasim Lewis, a 31-year-old predator who killed a barmaid in a park as she was going home for Christmas, has been finally put behind bars for 29 years. He pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to the murder of 22-year-old Iuliana Tudos at the Finsbury Park in north London.
Tudos, who was known to many as Julie, was attacked in the park as she was making her way home on Christmas Eve in 2017. Her body was found three days later naked, dumped at an abandoned hut in a park close to her house.
Tudos was of Russian and Greek origin and she was found with her gashes on her neck, abdomen, and wrists. The murder weapon was a broken bottle. There was also a wound on her chest that strangely looked like the Batman logo.
The jury at the Old Bailey heard that the officers had found videos on Lewis' phone of a woman being tied up. Tudos' family went for the hearing which took place in the court of Judge Richard Marks QC.
Crispin Aylett QC, the prosecutor, said that the attack was brutal and torturous. He said: "Iuliana was struck over the head most likely with a bottle, she was also stabbed with a broken bottle in the neck, on her abdomen and on her wrists with a broken bottle."
"Although there is no evidence that Iuliana was actually sexually assaulted, the prosecution allege that this was a sexually motivated and sadistic attack." Lewis managed to get Tudos to tell him the PIN number for her card and it was found out that he had withdrawn money from her account using this information.
Tudos' family said in the court that the attack that happened to her was "repelling and inhuman".
Costa Vasiliou, her stepfather, traveled to London from Cyprus and gave Tudos an emotional tribute at the Old Bailey. He said: "She was murdered in the most repelling and inhuman way, a disgrace to the human race."
"As parents we have lost our beloved daughter. This youngster was full of energy. She was loved and treasured by all her family and relatives. She studied hard and worked hard. She was a shining example to many other young people. As parents our dream was for Iuliana to come back to Cyprus. She was murdered. All her dreams have been lost. This gives us great sadness."
Lewis has been jailed before for another sex attack. He was born in Monserrat but he lived in north London. He was given two years in jail for sexual assault and exposure on a bus. His name was also put in the sex offenders register then.
He got eight more months in prison for not obeying the sex offender notification requirements and an added community order.
The jury heard that Lewis was a bisexual man and that he was currently in an "on-off" relationship with a man. Lewis' boyfriend told the authorities that Lewis visited Finsbury Park often to have "casual sexual encounters with other men".
The two of them had a fight on the day Lewis murdered Tudos and Lewis stormed out of their house. He had also left his wallet in another pair of trousers.
Tudos, on the other hand, worked in a 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift at the World's End pub. She had finished her shift for the day and had gone to a nearby bar with some friends of hers. Two hours later, she left the pub and was on her way home after drinking only a pint and a half of Guinness.
She was heading home to pick up a change of clothes to go over to a friends house with whom she would spend Christmas Day with. She had caught a bus that went from Camden to Manor House and she was last seen heading towards the park at 8:30 p.m.
Aylett said: "Iuliana was never to make it out of the park." According to the information that the court was given, Tudos was born in Moldova and had a job, before she died, at the World's End pub in Camden High Street.
When she did not show up at home that evening, Judith Laszlo along with her partner Pepa Shumareva, started looking for her. A group of friends decided to look for her in the park on December 27 and that's when they found her body.
The corpse was on it's back with a jacket laid out on top of it. The cuts to the wrists were so deep that the bone could be seen. The other cuts and wounds she had on her chest were also deep enough that her chest cavity was revealed. There was also a piece of denim tied around her neck and it looked like a "horrific injury".
Aylett said to the jurors: "After the paramedics had confirmed that Iuliana was dead, a police officer went back inside the shed. He has described the incised injury to the centre of Iuliana's chest as looking like either the logo for the character "Batman" or else the letter "M"."
"A number of white cable ties, some of which appeared to have been connected before being cut, were also found alongside Iuliana's body."
Shortly after the police arrested Lewis, they seized his cell phone and found out that he had used it to watch a porn film called "Step Sisters Caught" last year on October 19. They also found the trailers for other adult films which included one of a woman running into an alley and a man shouting that "she ain't getting away again".
The woman in the trailer pleads with the man and says, "please don't hurt me, I'll do anything" and the man replies, "they all say that," before he ties some white cable ties around the distraught woman's wrist.
The prosecutor said that the phone also had a picture of a woman with her throat brutally slashed. Lewis has had many convictions which started when he was 15-years-old.
The defence lawyer, Jeremy Dein QC, said that Lewis wanted his legal team to "express remorse" on his behalf in court. He said: "His mind was bedevilled by a concoction of drink and drugs. He was in a low mood. He was prone to depression and vulnerable to committing acts of robbery in order to finance a drugs habit."
Dein also said that Lewis' thought process was "devastated" by the regular use of drugs.
One of Tudos' friends paid tribute to her fallen friend by saying: "She was working and studying and never got herself in trouble. When she went missing I asked her friends if that ever happened to her before and they told me that she had never disappeared before and would never turn off her phone. From what I hear, she was just following her usual route from her workplace back home. She took that route many times."
Many people left floral tributes for the slain woman at the site where her body was found. Her family flew to London from Moldova and Cyprus after she was murdered.
Elina Vasiliu said that her daughter "didn't have any enemies".
She said: "She was very friendly and didn't have any enemies. I've never heard that she got into an argument with anyone, or made any enemies. I didn't hear that someone was threatening here either. She was a very nice and likeable person."
Agnieszka Jackman, Tudos' friend, said in a victim impact statement on May 18: "She was a friend to so many and a part of so many people's lives. She had an eternal love for music. We knew something was wrong. She would never cancel plans without letting someone know, especially on Christmas Eve."
"Here, we are the only family in the UK she had. A piece of our lives died with Julie that night. Every single one of our lives has changed for the worst. I worry about being out on my own at night. The pain I feel makes me feel self-destructive, I want to know why. Why did he do this to my beautiful friend?"
"It's unimaginable what she went through that night. The fear and the idea that she was scared and felt pain, it haunts us all. We just hope she didn't suffer. He has taken one life and destroyed many others. I wish I could turn back the clock. Dear Julie, we love you very much and we will never forget who you were."