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High stakes gamblers Rakesh Bhayani and Nicholas Kutner have been charged with murdering a wealthy businesswoman in order that they could fleece her bank accounts to support their gambling lifestyle.
Ms Waugh, 49, an accounts clerk in the oil industry and an escort, lived alone at a £600,000 flat in Marylebone, central London, the Mirror reported.
She had been missing since May with her body eventually discovered in a New Malden, south-west London garage.
She was stabbed in the neck once and stuffed into the boot of former lover Bhayani’s VW Golf.
Prosecutor Patrick Gibbs QC said: “Whoever struck the fatal blow or blows, Mr Bhayani and Mr Kutner planned it and were responsible for it.
“Having taken her life, they took all her worldly goods.”
Waugh had placed an ad "looking for male company" when the two men responded and came to her aid, or so she thought.
“They were professional conmen and lifelong gamblers," Gibbs noted of the two ex-cons, who had previously perpetrated fraud. "They have a long history of defrauding people. They had a taste for expensive things but, above all, both were gripped by the same compulsion – the compulsion to gamble.”
The trial is ongoing and somewhat salacious with tales of extortion, paid sex and female impersonators.
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
