While London is an incredible city with so many amazing aspects to it, it is also important for us to report the crimes that unfortunately do take place in our city.

Criminals will often act alone, sometimes in groups, and even occasionally even in couples.

There's something particularly sinister about a couple that are romantically together and who also end up committing a horrific crime withe each other's help.

Listed below are individual cases, one involving trafficking foreign sex workers, another the murder of a young girl because of a fantasy obsession.

1. Benjamin Bateman and Alana Kuti

Benjamin Bateman, 20, and Alana Kuti, 19, have been locked up
Benjamin Bateman, 20, and Alana Kuti, 19, have been locked up

This young couple, both from Carshalton, jumped out of nowhere and threatened a man at gunpoint before robbing him of his wallet and phone.

At 7.30am on May 16, 2018, Benjamin Bateman, 20, and his girlfriend Alana Kuti, 19, lay waiting for their victim before jumping out at him on a bridle path just off Banstead Road and close to Banstead station.

More than a year later, the victim still suffers flashbacks of this "terrifying and distressing ordeal".

The couple have now been jailed for seven years.

After robbing their victim, they withdrew money from a cash machine using the man's card and then ordered a taxi to Mitcham.

Surrey Police were able to trace the phone number that made the call to the taxi company. They then pieced together their movements and were able to identify Kuti as a suspect.

The criminal couple had been hoping to sell the phone the next day but by the time the came to do so, the police had already flagged it as stolen so they were prevented from doing so.

How to report hate crime in London

According to the Metropolitan Police, there are a number of ways to report hate crime:

"Hate Crime can be reported through 999 in an emergency, by dialling 101 in a non-emergency, directly at a police station, through the MOPAC Hate Crime app or through community reporting methods such as Tell mama or the CST."

Kuti, of Wrythe Lane, was arrested for a separate matter just a week after the armed robbery, which flagged her wanted status and allowed officers to question her about her involvement in the case before then charging her with robbery and possessing an imitation firearm.

When officers investigated Kuti's background and searched her home for evidence, they also came to suspect that Bateman had been with her when she attacked the victim.

Bateman turned up to Kuti's remand hearing on May 26, 2018. Police quickly arrested him and found clothes that linked him to the daylight robbery, meaning they could charge him with the same offences.

In the end both Bateman and Kuti were found guilty of possession of an imitation firearm and two counts of fraud at the Old Bailey on April 30.

At the time, Detective Sergeant Leigh Wall said: "The fact that Kuti and Bateman have been sent to prison for seven years reflects the seriousness of the robbery, which saw them lie in wait for the victim and then rob him at gunpoint.

"This was a terrifying and distressing ordeal for the victim, who still suffers flashbacks as a result."

2. Sabrina Kouider and Ouissem Medouni

Sabrina Kouider was reportedly obsessed with Boyzone founder Mark Walton, which was the route of her murdering Sophie Lionnet

The judge in this trial called the murder case "stranger than fiction".

Au pair Sophie Lionnet was killed by mother-of-two Sabrina Kouider and her partner Ouissem Medouni.

They murdered the 21-year-old and then burnt her body on a BBQ in their Wimbledon garden, the Mirror reports.

But the weirdness doesn't stop there.

The couple were motivated by an obsession with Kouider's ex boyfriend, who is also the Boyzone founding member, Mark Walton.

As part of this strange obsession, Kouider was convinced her au pair was having an affair with Walton and pressured the young girl to admit it.

Hours of footage was recorded over several months showing Sophie facing accusations of being a spy or paedophile. She faced horrendous torture at the hands of Kouider and Medouni.

Ouissem Medouni was charged along with his wife for the murder of French nanny Sophie Lionnet

The French Nanny was threatened with rape, prison, and violence. By the time she made her "confession" tape a few weeks before her murder, the couple were already starving her.

It was all a figment of Kouider's imagination because Sophie had never even met Walton, but she had to 'confess' to having sex with him.

Unknown to this day is whether Sophie's murder was pre-meditated or a horrific end to the torture she was going through. When her body was found it was so burned it was impossible to know the cause of death though a later post-mortem revealed she had been waterboarded, tortured, and beaten.

The tapes were played in court, revealing that Sophie was both verbally and physically abused.

In the background of a tape, Kouider said: "I will not leave you alone until you tell me the truth, is this clear, do you understand?"

When they realised they had killed Sophie, the couple took her body into the garden and burned it, cooking chicken on the BBQ to mask the smell, but a neighbour called the police when they smelled burning.

Sophie was starved before she was tortured and killed

There was evidence Sophie wanted to leave, she had written to her parents to say so, but the passport and plane ticket her mother had bought her were nowhere to be found and it was believed they had been confiscated.

On June 26 last year Kouider and Medouni were sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 30 years to be served for Sophie's murder.

3. Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters

Victim Percy Thompson with his wife Edith Thompson, who was executed

Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters were secret lovers and ended up being imprisoned for the murder of Edith's husband, Percy.

This all went on during the 1920s when capital punishment was very much still in practice and both were subjected to the death penalty.

Edith and Percy were married and living in Ilford, East London. They met Bywaters, a ship steward, when he accompanied them on holiday to the Isle of Wight in 1921. Soon after he moved in as a lodger to their London home.

Bywaters, 18 at the time, and Edith started having a passionate affair and Percy ended up discovering it. The married couple rowed and Bywaters soon left as his next ship was sailing.

Edith Thompson had an affair with Frederick Bywaters

While he was away at sea, Edith and Bywaters wrote more than 60 letters to each other, musing over how she could get out of her marriage to Percy.

In the letters she mentioned adding crunched up lightbulbs to Percy's food and adding poison to his tea.

One night, when Bywaters, 20 by now, had returned from sea, Edith and Percy were returning home from the theatre and a figure jumped out of the bushes to stab Percy, 32, who later died.

There was no doubt that Bywaters had done this. Edith identified him as the killer and Bywaters also confessed to the crime.

Frederick Bywaters felt he was setting his lover free by murdering Percy.

However, the letters exchanged between the secret lovers ended up being used to charge Edith with conspiracy to murder because she had talked about it in the letters. Edith was 28 when she was sent to the gallows.

Yet many people thought this was wrong, and she should not have been charged since it was Bywaters who sprung out of nowhere and killed Percy.

Even before she was killed, a million people signed a petition calling for her to be spared.

Debate still goes on over whether it was a fair conviction, especially since reports suggest Edith was pregnant when she was hanged as she may have miscarried, which if she was, would have made her execution illegal. She was the first woman to be hanged in Britain for 16 years.

4. Karl Ring and Ivett Szuda

This couple trafficked Hungarian women to private brothels in London and took half their earnings

This former special constable, Karl Ring, 34 and his wife, Ivett Szuda, 32, were found guilty of controlling the prostitution of women trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation purposes.

They were convicted of the crime after a trial at Isleworth Crown Court, West London, in January 2019.

The pair from Hanwell made hundred of thousands of pounds by running multiple brothels during a six year period.

Szuda would advertise for women to work as prostitutes then book flights for them to the UK from Hungary. They would collect them from the airport, take them to a brothel, and set them to work.

The pair also created profiles for the women on escort websites but then took half their earnings from the work.

Despite taking part in this criminal activity, Ring had been a voluntary special constable for the Metropolitan Police from 2013 to 2015.

The money that was flooding into their bank accounts every month was impossible to explain since neither person had solid income sources.

Many of the women that Ring and Szuda brought here worked from an expensive Chelsea flat. The couple used their earnings from the sex work to pay for the £2,300 a month rent. In total, the couple spent more than £100,000 in rent for London flats for the women.

Paul Goddard from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said: "The victims in this case travelled to the UK to find a better life but were taken advantage of and manipulated by the defendants who organised and oversaw their prostitution while enriching themselves.

"Even where women are willing to work as prostitutes, the moving of anyone for the purpose of sexual exploitation is a criminal offence, as is the controlling of women providing sexual services.

"The defendants’ crimes brought them an extravagant lifestyle. They now face prison sentences."

The pair were found guilty on January 22 of human trafficking, controlling prostiution for gain, and money laundering. Ring was jailed for four years, while Szuda received a six-and-a-half year prison sentence.

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