1:17pm Thursday 22nd July 2010
By Alex Hayes
AN EDGWARE drug dealer has been found guilty of murdering Barnet pensioner George Smith today.
Dwayne Cupidon, 26, of Edgwarebury Court, was found guilty on what Judge Forrester described as “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” in the case, although the 60-year-old's body has never been found.
Sentencing in the case was postponed until tomorrow morning to give Cupidon, an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, time to tell police where the body has been dumped.
As the judge was telling him this Cupidon shouted “I didn't kill him, how can I know where he is?” and to the jury “You people don't know what you're doing”.
He refused to give evidence in his defence during the three week trial, during which the Old Bailey was told Cupidon and Mr Smith, of Finch Close, had an ongoing “feud” after the pensioner stole drugs and cash worth more than £30,000 from his flat.
The pair were also at loggerheads over a mutual lover, Kerry Mustoe, with whom both men were having relationships and a dispute over the parentage of her unborn child.
Police believe Mr Smith was murdered overnight on Saturday August 22 last year and then brutally dismembered in his own bath tub.
He had spent the day on Saturday drinking with a neighbour, and the last thing he said to him was “See you tomorrow”, but he was never seen again.
On Wednesday, August 26 the alarm was raised by Mr Smith's ex-wife, who used a key to get into his flat where she discovered blood in the bathroom, but no sign of him.
DNA on taps and a nail brush at the scene linked Cupidon, a known drug dealer, to the murder, as did bloody footprints which matched his trainers.
When he was arrested in early September, after being spotted by an undercover officer, police found the freshly-washed trainers inside a backpack which had Mr Smith's blood on it.
Officers think he may have returned to the house several times between the murder and the family discovering he was missing.
It is believed Cupidon used a car, which he bought shortly before the murder, to transport the body and computer searches on his computer included “How to dispose of a body”.
Judge Forrester told him: “You had your opportunity to give evidence in the trial and did not do so.
“At this particular moment his family have a particular concern with giving Mr Smith a decent Christian burial, and his whereabouts is completely unknown to anybody except you.
“You have that opportunity if you choose to exercise it and if you do choose to exercise it, even at this late stage, it will lead to some mitigation of sentence.”
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