Sado-masochistic couple murdered and dismembered victim, court told

A couple who relished their relationship of “sado-masochistic violence” killed a woman in a “premeditated blood-thirsty murder” and dumped her dismembered body in a park, the Old Bailey has heard.

Steve Sansom was out of prison on life licence for another murder when he killed Sarah Mayhew, 38, and dumped her remains in Rowdown Fields, New Addington, south London, last spring.

The 45-year-old builder and his partner Gemma Watts, 49, have admitted murder and perverting the course of justice by dismembering Ms Mayhew’s body, distributing the parts at “various locations” and cleaning up the scene.

Prosecutor Tom Little KC told the court that messages between Sansom and Watts show their relationship was “characterised by sado-masochistic violence” and “such was the intensity of their relationship that they have often referred to dying together if caught”.

He said: “The defendants acting together conducted the planned and premeditated blood-thirsty murder of Sarah Mayhew.

“It is a murder which the prosecution submit involved sexual and/or sadistic conduct.

“Having committed the murder they then made very extensive efforts to pervert the course of justice over a number of days.

“Prior to the murder the defendants had exchanged a range of depraved messages including those indicating a desire on their part to kill victims whilst involved in sexual activity with them, with a knife or knives, and then have sex with each other whilst covered in the blood of the victim and they even discussed eating human flesh but we do not suggest they did so.”

On Thursday, Sansom, from Sutton, south-west London, and Watts, from New Addington, sat quietly in the dock as details of their “kinky” sexual relationship – including a stream of messages between them about bestiality, humiliation and causing hurt – were outlined at their sentencing hearing before Mrs Justice Cutts.

Mr Little added: “Given what was subsequently to happen to Sarah Mayhew this murderous, sexual and sadistic discussion was manifestly not an idle fantasy.”

Ms Mayhew, who lived in New Addington, on the outskirts of Croydon, was never seen again after she joined Sansom, whom she had met years before on a dating site, at his ground floor flat in Sutton at about 11pm on March 8 2024. Watts was already at the property.

Mr Little said: “From that point in time she was never seen again and she never left that property alive.

“How long she lived for only the defendants know and they have never said.

“What precisely happened to her body after she had been murdered by them in that property only the defendants know.”

Ms Mayhew’s head and limbs were found more than eight miles away in Rowdown Field in New Addington, just over three weeks later on April 2 2024.

Her torso was discovered much later in the River Wandle and some pieces of evidence were destroyed or disposed of by the defendants, the court heard.

The prosecution believe Ms Mayhew must have been killed or incapacitated inside Sansom’s flat on the night of March 8 to 9 2024 and given the messages sent between the defendants in the months before “it is not credible to conclude that she was killed immediately.”

Sansom tried later tried to justify what they had done, saying “we’re not evil, we done the world a service”.

The court head that Sansom sent Watts a voice message on September 11 2023 which said: “Everything looks like meat now don’t they? A plaything, something to cut, something to bleed, they all look different now.”

She replied: “Wonder what they taste like, cooked flesh, maybe even rare so blood drips down our faces.”

A screenshot of a note was sent by Watts to Sansom on September 7 2023, saying: “I am writing this of my own free will. Should any serious injury, or even death occur whilst I am with Steven Sansom let it be made fully understood that I enter the act of violent, dangerous sex games with Steven Samson of my own free will.”

By March 10 2024, Samson and Watts had decided to cut up Ms Mayhew’s body, the prosecution said.

On that day he used cash to buy a 300mm hacksaw, a 300mm blade and 14-litre bucket.

In the days after the murder is believed to have taken place Sansom and Watts were seen walking by the River Wandle and near his flat, and at one point he is pulling a suitcase that is “noticeably heavier” than before because “it now contained Sarah Mayhew’s torso,” Mr Little said.

The defendants later messaged each other and joked about disposing of someone in a suitcase, the court heard.

DNA tests carried out on blood traces in a bucket, in the kitchen and the lounge floor and walls at Sansom’s flat showed they belonged to Ms Mayhew.

Her bloodstains were also found in the bedroom and bathroom sink.

In a victim impact statement Ms Mayhew was remembered by her mother Angela as a “beautiful, pretty girl” and she said “it breaks my heart she is not around”.

Ms Mayhew’s father David thanked the defendants for pleading guilty and saving his grieving family from the ordeal of sitting through a trial of this “horrendous case”.

He added: “That said whatever sentence you may receive will never compare to the pain you have caused us.”

“I ask myself the same question all the time, why did you have to kill her maybe I will never know?”

Sansom is facing his second life sentence, having been jailed in May 1999 after admitting the murder and robbery of a minicab driver on Christmas Eve the previous year, when he ordered a cab to take him home from East Croydon.

The victim in that case, 59-year-old married father-of-two Terence Boyle, had crawled from his cab after Sansom attacked him and stole £25 to buy presents.

Sansom, then 20, laughed afterwards and told a friend: “His kids are going to have to see him in hospital over Christmas.”

He was freed from prison on licence in 2019 after his case was considered by the Parole Board, and was under probation supervision when he killed for a second time.

The Ministry of Justice has confirmed a serious further offence review is under way.