'Sadistic' west London killers of woman tortured and battered to death jailed for life
ITV News' Helen Keenan reports from the Old Bailey. Warning: This report contains details viewers may find distressing
Three people who tortured, starved and beat to death a woman from west London have been jailed for life with a minimum term of 34 years.
Shakira Spencer, 35, died after falling under the influence of her former neighbour, Ashana Studholme, 38, her lover Shaun Pendlebury, 26, and their friend, Lisa Richardson, 44.
The trio were found guilty of the murder and preventing the lawful burial of Ms Spencer, from Ealing, at the Old Bailey in December last year.
On Friday, Studholme, Pendlebury and Richardson were each ordered to serve minimum terms of 34 years.
The court heard how Ms Spencer was "treated like a slave”, how the vulnerable woman had her feet scalded scalded her feet and was fed only ketchup from sachets.
The 35-year-old victim went from being a “beautiful, happy, healthy” size 16 to a “gaunt and skeletal” size six shortly before her death, jurors heard.
Ms Spencer suffered a campaign of cruelty and humiliation by her tormentors, who left her body to rot.
It was not until two weeks later when neighbours reported maggots crawling under her front door that her badly decomposed body was found after neighbours saw maggots coming from her flat in Ealing, west London.
Studholme, of Greenhill Road, Harrow, was the leader of the sadistic trio which included her friend, Richardson, of Broomcroft Avenue in Ealing, and one-time boyfriend, Shaun Pendlebury, of Tewkesbury Road in Ealing.
The three defendants had denied murder and preventing Ms Spencer’s lawful burial.
But in December last year, a jury found all three defendants guilty of both charges against them and Pendlebury reacted by clapping his hands and walking out of the dock.
In a impact statement read to the court, Ms Spencer’s son, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: “I’ve suffered with daily nightmares and anxiety over what happened to her, I cannot get the horrible image of my mother looking skinny and unwell out of my head.
“Why were they (the defendants) so heartless? What could cause them to torture another human?
“I hope that every day they feel bad for the choices they have made.
“I cannot believe people she thought were her friends would ever do this to her.
“These people are cruel and evil, they do not deserve to live a normal happy life again.
“To me, my mum was the best – she was not perfect but she made me feel happy, safe and loved, I miss her every day and wish for a chance to see and speak with her again.
“I never got to say goodbye to her, or to tell her that I loved her – these people let her die alone with her feeling she was unloved, as they had taken everybody away from her.”
Previously, jurors heard how Ms Spencer had been subdued and dominated mainly by Studholme and Richardson to the point where she was under all of their “complete control”.
Over many months, she was isolated, prostituted and robbed of her self-respect and finances, it was claimed.
She would be woken up in the early hours to clean the defendants’ houses and sent on errands to the shops.
They subjected her to a prolonged campaign of beatings, enslavement, coercion and control, humiliation and degradation over a period of months.
This culminated in a frenzied, violent assault reaching a climax between September 9 and 12, 2022, from which Ms Spencer most likely died on September 14, 2022.
Instead of taking her to hospital, Pendlebury and Studholme drove Ms Spencer back to her home in the boot of a car and in a completely unfathomable evil act, bundled her in a cupboard and left her to die.
Officers ecovered CCTV footage and bank transactions where the sadistic trio used Shakira’s bank card to purchase a cleaning product.
Studholme and Richardson were also shown to have used their own bank cards to purchase items including refuse sacks and gloves, all in an attempt to clean-up the crime scenes and conceal their involvement in the murder.
Their mobile phones were seized, which laid bare to detectives just what they had done to Shakira.
Hundreds of messages were found on their phones referencing the abuse they had subjected Shakira to.
Richardson and Studholme exchanged images of a bedraggled Shakira, mocking her.
Videos of Shakira being beaten up while the others laughed and jeered were also discovered.
Detective Chief Inspector Brian Howie said: “My thoughts today, and that of my team, are with Shakira Spencer’s family and friends. During the trial they listened to deeply traumatising evidence of the depraved acts of indescribable cruel torment committed by the three defendants.
"They murdered Shakira in the most savage and inhumane way imaginable. Shakira was a beautiful, happy mother who was kind and had a trusting nature.
"Shakira could be vulnerable and these defendants took advantage of that by controlling and isolating her from everyone she knew in order to control and enslave her in the most dehumanising and degrading way.
“The family’s ordeal has been compounded by the behaviour of the defendants, who have each lied, providing implausible accounts and explanations to try and absolve themselves of any responsibility.
"Whatever their cruel and sadistic motives were, there is no acceptable explanation for what Shakira was put through.
“This was a complex and challenging investigation. A meticulous timeline was created to pull together the different strands of evidence, paralleled against each other, in order to prove the defendants’ campaign of controlling behaviour and violence.
"This included the retrieval and viewing of thousands of hours of CCTV, extensive forensic examinations, pathology, witness accounts, searching of houses and vehicles and reviewing the defendants’ phones.
"That examination revealed what Shakira had been subjected to, with footage, messages and voice notes recorded by the defendants themselves that would prove key.”
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