[Omah]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1iFRGZ25z

Victim stabbed 15 times in 'drug-fuelled' attack

A British backpacker has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing a young woman to death at an eco farm in Costa Rica.

The 22-year-old, named by police as Alfred Alexandros Mill Saunders, was held after an alleged drug-fuelled attack on Czech tourist Alexandra Drbohlavova, 22.

Mr Saunders, understood to be the son of a leading London psychoanalyst, emerged from her tent with blood stains on his face and clothes, according to a witness.

Miss Drbohlavova, a volunteer at the remote farm in the Upala region in the northwest of the country, died from 15 stab wounds to her face, chest and neck

The suspect, said to be from west London, was detained by the farm manager who heard screams coming from the victim’s tent late on Wednesday night.

Police chief Johnny Fernandez Morales said detectives believed the attack may have been sexually motivated.

'Mr Mill told us he can’t remember anything about what happened,' said Mr Morales.

“The manager of the farm, who is British, heard screaming and shouting and as he approached the woman’s tent saw Mr Mill coming out with a torch in his hand.

'He shone his torch at him and saw blood on his clothes and face. He managed to apprehend him and tie him up with the help of his wife.'

Mr Saunders and Miss Drbohlavova, an environmental student, were staying at La Libertad farm, which attracts international volunteers who are interested in organic farming.

It is close to the Central American's border with Nicaragua and near the Rincon de La Vieja, a national park which contains a volcano and rainforest.

He is believed to have arrived at the farm the day before the incident with no luggage and little more than the clothes he was wearing. He borrowed a tent for the night.

Weird - a back-packer with no back-pack and a head full of drugs .....

A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'We can confirm a British national has been arrested. We are providing consular assistance.'

Mr Saunders appeared in court last week. A judge ordered he be held in custody for six months.

Six months in a Costa Rican jail before trial is, apparently, normal and conditions, although appalling, are better than in some other South American countries :

http://www.top10costarica.com/costa-...rights-report/

[Suze]

Why is he referred to as Mr Mill in some bits of the news item and Mr Saunders in other bits? I got a bit confused at first when reading through it because of that.

[Omah]

The back-packer is apparently called Alfred Alexandros Mill Saunders, so I guess there's just local confusion over a "foreign" name .....

[Omah]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...-in-shock.html

Mr Saunders had arrived in the country the previous day and was said to have turned up at the organic farm, called Finca la Libertad, without any luggage.

It was unclear how long he had been travelling, but police said his passport had stamps from China and Mexico.

Several witnesses were said to have told detectives that Mr Saunders had been harassing female volunteers on the farm. He was remanded in custody after a three-and-a-half-hour hearing on Thursday.

Johnny Fernandez Morales, police chief in Aguas Claras de Upala, said Mr Saunders was subject of a green Interpol alert, put out to provide warnings and intelligence about people who have committed criminal offences.

Mr Morales added: “It’s for offences relating to the use of firearms and explosives and also for a sex attack… I don’t know whether he has been convicted.” He added that records indicated Mr Saunders suffered bouts of schizophrenia.

Weirder and weirder .....

[Livia]

I'm wondering what the father's academic background has to to with the son's crime?

[Omah]

of their shock

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1iOKd7KA1

Church-going victim had been invited to spend Christmas with friends at Miami University's United Methodist ministry but chose to go to Costa Rica

Stunned friends of the young woman allegedly stabbed to death in a frenzied sexual attack by a British backpacker have spoken of their shock at the death of their church-going pal.

Lenka Janalova, 22, a fellow student from Charles University in Prague said: 'I can’t believe this has happened. It is an absolute shock to all of us who knew her. Sasa was such a kind, sweet person. She was always smiling and willing to help others. I can only imagine the horror she must have felt when she found this man inside her tent. She was always so calm and peaceful - the horror of this is beyond words.'

Sasa - a keen volleyball player - had gone on to study at Florida's Miami University in the U.S.

She had also been invited to spend Christmas and the New Year with friends at the university's United Methodist ministry in Miami but turned them down to travel to Costa Rica where she had volunteered to work on the remote organic farm.

Pictures emerged of a smiling Sasa today on a visit with her university friends to Miami's Domino Park in Little Havana, taken just five days before she flew off to Central America.

Saunders, who lives in a £1million mews house in exclusive Notting Hill, West London, with his mother Dr Catia Galatariotou, an expert on the sexual development of children, appears to have been travelling the world for some time.

Saunders’ father Max Saunders, 54, is a professor of English at King’s College London, and lives in fashionable Hampstead, North London.

His mother Dr Galatariotou, 56, who is separated from Mr Saunders, has lectured on psychoanalysis at University College London.

Miss Drbohlavova was a philosophy student from Prague. She had spent two terms at university in Miami, before travelling to Costa Rica. Friends said she spent every summer carrying out voluntary work, usually with children.

[Omah]

Suspect Alfred Saunders linked to string of sex crimes and likely to commit acts of barbarism

Marisel Rodriguez, of Costa Rica’s judicial police force, said officials picked up on Saunders’s alleged past when he crossed the border from Nicaragua the day after Boxing Day.

Inexplicably, he was still allowed to enter the country.

Miss Rodriguez said: ‘The man being held over the murder of the Czech woman is the subject of a green Interpol notice.

‘It’s a warning mechanism Interpol uses and makes available to other countries’ law enforcement agencies and border control organisations.

‘In Mr Saunders’s case it was for sex crimes, assault resulting in death, torture or acts of barbarism, and the possession of firearms, ammunition or explosives.
‘The notice described him as a violent individual who as well as being a suicide risk, was liable to commit sexual crimes against minors and could be armed.

‘It also described him as suffering from mental illness.’

She said Costa Rican Interpol had recommended he be refused entry to the country but immigration officials took a different view.

‘Our understanding is that Mr Saunders has a police record and may have been tried but not necessarily convicted on all if any of the crimes,’ she added.

‘We haven’t been given any detailed information on where these other offences are said to have taken place but my understanding is that it was in Britain.’

Blimey, what has this nutter been up to .....

The prison holding Saunders was in lockdown yesterday following a gang fight which left two dead and ten others injured.

Gun-toting wardens patrolled barbed wire-swathed watch towers to prevent further violence.

At least he's with his own kind .....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1iRxx7NTo

[Omah]

Crown Prosecution Service ignored warnings from British police to arrest Saunders

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1imDHgxjw

A Briton accused of stabbing a student to death in Costa Rica is an NHS mental health patient who was allowed to fly abroad despite being deeply disturbed.

Interpol considered Alfie Saunders, 20, so dangerous that when it learned he was planning to travel from Britain to Nicaragua, police across central America were warned.

Saunders is believed to have come to Interpol’s attention after an incident when he was travelling in China a year ago.

In Britain, despite the Interpol concerns that Saunders was ‘a dangerous individual’ linked to a string of sex offences, he was free to walk the streets as a ‘care in the community’ patient.

And though British police wanted to prosecute him for possessing indecent images last October, the Crown Prosecution Service refused to take action.

Last night an NHS internal inquiry was under way into how mental health professionals dealt with the son of wealthy academics Professor Max Saunders, of the King’s College English department, and Catia Galatariotou, a writer and psychoanalyst who has lectured on the development of child sexuality.

The inquiry began as the Czech parents of Miss Drbohlavova, who was studying at university in Florida, spoke of their anger that official warning systems failed to save their daughter.

Her father Dusan, a senior university academic, and her mother Sarka, a journalist, issued a statement saying: ‘The usual explanation, that she was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”, simply does not work.

'How could a dangerous individual be allowed to move freely round the world when his pathological tendencies were already known? The authorities must have failed.

‘The loss of a child is the most terrible event possible for parents. When a defenceless and completely innocent victim is brutally murdered in such an inhuman way, without any warning, such circumstances cannot be understood or absorbed.’

Their daughter had travelled to the British-owned Finca La Libertad organic farm near Costa Rica’s border with Nicaragua to work as an unpaid volunteer over her Christmas holidays.

Days later Saunders arrived unannounced, with barely any possessions beyond CDs of violent rap songs by Eminem, a book about a serial killer, a fitness magazine and an ‘SAS’ guide to unarmed combat.

The Daily Mail has discovered that Saunders, who lived with his mother in a series of luxury homes in London’s exclusive St John’s Wood and Notting Hill worth up to £3.3million, had in Britain been under the care of NHS mental health experts.

He appears to have been treated both as an inpatient and an outpatient.
According to a source, Saunders talked of killing cats by drowning, strangling and with a chainsaw, and expressed an interest in violent pornography.

While on an NHS ward, said the source, Saunders smoked powerful ‘skunk’ cannabis, often linked to psychosis, while other patients smoked crack and drank brandy.

Early last year Saunders flew to China and spent two months at the spartan Maling Shan Kung Fu Academy in countryside midway between Beijing and Shanghai.

Fellow martial arts student Nina Melander, 20, from Sweden, said: ‘Alfie was obsessed with Eminem, and thought you could become a Kung Fu expert in a few weeks.

‘He bought a knife and used to throw it at trees and into the ground. I got the idea he was bullied in Britain.’