The murder trial began at the Old Bailey this week, following the brutal death nearly three years ago of a young man who was dismembered and had his body parts dumped near South Norwood Lake, with blood-stained clothing and bedding disposed of near a children’s play area in Love Lane.
Search scene: body parts were found in parkland near South Norwood Lake
Dajour Jones, 27, is accused of murdering 20-year-old Jamie Gilbey, whose remains were found in undergrowth off Cantley Gardens.
Gilbey was last seen alive on January 27, 2022.
Simon Denison KC, for the prosecution, said Jones had carried out a “sustained, vicious murder on a defenceless Jamie Gilbey”. The case was “deeply disturbing”, the barrister said.
“It really is a murder in cold blood.”
The prosecution’s case is that Gilbey was last seen alive going into Jones’s room at the Fitze Millennium Centre, a housing facility for homeless people where they both lived. Blunt force injuries to Gilbey’s head and body were indicative of a sustained attack with two implements.
Jones denies murder. He says he was acting in self-defence after Gilbey confronted him with a knife and stole his phone. His defence argued Jones did not dismember Gilbey’s body, but took it away from the hostel in one trip and handed it to others to dispose of.
The prosecution said Jones acquired a large suitcase on January 28 that he took back to his room and made three trips with it over the next few days. The jury was told: “The act of dismembering Jamie’s body was gruesome and would have required a great deal of force.
“He took very great care to use bedding and other items to absorb the blood and to use gloves to avoid the blood from getting underneath his fingernails.”
Murdered: Jamie Gilbey
Denison said Jones had “calmly disposed of the body in the suitcase that he acquired for that purpose” and carried out a “remarkably thorough” clean up operation in his room.
In the days after the murder, Jones was “extraordinarily relaxed and cheerful”, the court heard.
Jones kept the body parts in a crate and disposed of them in two trips to Cantley Gardens, taking the head, body and arms in one trip, and the legs in the other, jurors heard. The prosecution said Jones disposed of clothing and bedding “heavily stained with blood” in a suitcase at Love Lane Green.
Gilbey’s body was found by police in undergrowth on March 8, 2022.
Denison said Jones was a man who had a “history of violent offending and causing serious injury to others”.
The prosecutor said Gilbey was an “innocent victim of a highly dangerous man”, adding he was “incapable of presenting any physical threat to the defendant let alone taking out a knife and threatening to stab him with it”.
The trial continues.
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