Life sentence for murder – but no bodies

A man has been convicted of killing two mothers despite the fact that their bodies have never been found.

Derek Brown, 47, was jailed for life at the Old Bailey this week. He denied murdering Xiao Mei Guo, 29, and Bonnie Barrett, 24, after taking them back to his address in Rotherhithe, East London.

Police believe Brown may have tried to emulate Jack the Ripper, as he picked up his victims in the Whitechapel area of London, famously stalked by Jack the Ripper in the 1880s.

Circumstantial evidence was used to prove Brown had dismembered and disposed of the bodies.

Sentencing Brown, Judge Martin Stephens said: “You murdered two women. Both were vulnerable, plying their trade on the streets, in each case falling into your hands precisely because of their availability and their lack of protection.

“What you did to each of those women before you killed them we can only speculate about. How you killed them we cannot know.

“What we do know is you disposed of their bodies with frightening efficiency so that not a trace of either woman has been found.”

Following his conviction last week, officers launched a nationwide review of unsolved cases to see whether Brown had links to any of them.

During the trial the court heard Brown was a convicted rapist and a serial sex attacker who was a suspect in another murder case outside London.

He was also identified by victims in five other rapes over the past two decades.

Brown admitted paying Mrs Guo, a DVD seller and illegal Chinese immigrant, and Miss Barrett, who was a prostitute and crack cocaine addict, for sex before their disappearance last year.

Mrs Guo was last seen in August 2007 in Whitechapel market. Miss Barrett disappeared from the same area on September 18, 2007.

Police have not found their bodies despite 800 hours of police searches and a trawl of the River Thames by divers.