Life for Euston platform killer
A jilted lover who stabbed his ex-girlfriend through the heart in front of horrified rush-hour Tube commuters at Euston station was jailed for life at the Old Bailey today.
Albanian labourer Vaso Aliu culminated his campaign of harassment after being dumped by Marquerite van Campenhout by producing "a present", a gift-wrapped seven-inch chef 's knife, and plunging it into her chest on the Northern line platform.
He was convicted of murdering his former lover and wounding her work colleague Tom Pontifex and commuter Christopher Kiely who leapt from an in-coming train to try to save her.
Judge Martin Stephens told Aliu: "This was an appalling crime. You murdered a young lady in the prime of her life who had everything to live for because she no longer wanted to live with you. You harassed and stalked her and having armed yourself with a knife stabbed her twice in the chest piercing the heart."
The killer and his victim had had a two-year relationship which she ended last year.
Miss van Campenhout, 24, who had come to London from Rotterdam to work at a shipping agency, was so terrified of his threats that she begged police for protection and moved home twice to stay with friends in south London. But Aliu, 29, continued to pursue her and followed her from her Euston Road office to the Tube station where he confronted her in January.
When she again refused to go back to her former lover, Mr Pontifex described how Aliu produced the parting "gift" and "very meticulously and slowly" unwrapped it to reveal the knife which he "swung with maximum force punching her really hard in the chest".
He struck Mr Pontifex in the arm and then attacked Mr Kiely as he intervened. After he was caught by Tube staff and police officers he then stabbed himself in the stomach.
But Aliu, who had denied murder but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of provocation and diminished responsibility, claimed he had only killed her out of "desperation".
