Valentin Lazar: Extra jail time for murderer who confessed to raping his victim

Valentin Lazar battered and strangled 45-year-old Maria Rawlings
PA Media
Emily Pennink28 March 2024
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A convicted murderer who admitted raping his vulnerable victim has been sentenced to a further five years in jail.

Valentin Lazar, 23, battered and strangled 45-year-old Maria Rawlings before leaving her naked in undergrowth in Romford, east London, on May 3 2021.

The manual labourer admitted the murder and was jailed for life with a minimum term of 23 years and six months in February 2022.

The following month, Lazar, formerly of Newham, east London, admitted to an officer at Belmarsh prison that he had also raped Ms Rawlings.

On Friday, Judge Mark Lucraft handed Lazar a further five years' imprisonment to run consecutively to his life sentence.

The judge said: "In the admissions you made you said you removed Maria's clothing before then raping her.

"You knew Maria was not consenting to sexual intercourse and that then having killed her you took her handbag to make it look like a robbery."

The further sentence effectively defers the date the defendant can be considered for release.

Maria Rawlings
PA Wire

The court heard that at the time of Lazar's sentencing for murder there was not enough evidence to establish any sexual motive which would have raised the starting point for the original stentence.

In mitigation, Christopher Whitehouse said that Lazar had wanted to "unburden himself" and that it was hoped the guilty plea would bring "a degree of finality for the victim's family".

According to the victim's father Tony, "15 minutes of anger" towards the defenceless grandmother had caused him and his family a lifetime of pain.

At Lazar's sentencing in 2022, the court heard how Ms Rawlings had visited King George Hospital in Chadwell Heath complaining of a headache after suffering a head injury on the evening of May 3 2021.

Having left hospital without being seen, Ms Rawlings got on a bus just after 11pm, where her path crossed with Lazar's.

The mother of two, who had been staying with her daughter in Witham, Essex, got off the bus when it terminated, along with her killer.

They appeared on CCTV to engage in a brief conversation before Lazar guided his victim by the arm towards some shrubbery where they disappeared from view.

After 31 minutes, he emerged from the undergrowth alone, with Ms Rawlings's white handbag slung over his shoulder.

He rifled through the bag then discarded it on the pavement, the court heard.

After the attack, Lazar boarded another bus, eventually arriving home after 1am.

A post-mortem examination found Ms Rawlings died from neck compression and a blunt force head injury.

The court heard there were more than 100 sites of blunt force trauma, 15 rib fractures, injuries from multiple blows to the head, defensive wounds to the hands and footprints consistent with being stood on.

At the earlier sentencing hearing, prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones KC suggested a possible "sexual motive" to the murder because Ms Rawlings had bruises on her inner thighs and was found naked.

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