Minicab controller gets life for murder

A minicab controller was jailed for life today for strangling a student and hiding her body under his bed.

Rafael Lopez, 45, was covicted by an Old Bailey jury last month of murdering 20-year-old Clare Drummond but sentence was adjourned for reports.

Miss Drummond, who had been missing for two weeks, was found bound with wire and wrapped in plastic sheets.She was strangled and hidden under Lopez's bed in Plumstead, south London, in August last year.

Miss Drummond, a horticultural student, worked with Lopez in a mini-cab office in Archway, north London, at the weekends.She disappeared after having a row with her live-in partner and spending the day with Lopez with whom she had a brief relationship six months earlier.

Peter Kyte QC, prosecuting, said the two had spent the day in Kent and went back to the flat Lopez shared with his sister.During the evening, they rowed about her boyfriend. Lopez said he placed his arm round her neck from behind and they fell to the floor. He had applied more pressure to stop her screaming.

Lopez told police he had wrapped her body in a quilt and put her in his bedroom. A couple of days later, he had tied her up and put her in plastic sheets under his bed.Mr Kyte said Lopez denied knowing where Miss Drummond was when they interviewed him. But officers were overcome by the smell of her decomposing body when they returned a week later.Lopez was making plans to fly to Spain to visit his dying mother. He told detectives: "We just had a big argument. I think it was the culmination of a lot of things.

"I have been under a lot of pressure. My mother has got cancer and so has my sister. I have not been sleeping. All of a sudden, I just went mad and I just strangled her."

Judge Peter Beaumont told Lopez: "You took the life of a young woman who had that life before her. The jury were satisfied you murdered her - for that there is but one sentence which I can pass, which is life."