Zahid Naseem: City banker found guilty of bludgeoning sex worker to death with pestle on her 29th birthday

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A City banker has been found guilty of murdering an escort by bludgeoning her to death with a pestle on her 29th birthday.

Zahid Naseem attacked Christina Abbotts, striking her 13 times on the back of the head with the large black ceramic kitchen utensil while she was housesitting a flat for a friend in Crawley, West Sussex.

She was hit around 30 times in total all over her body, Lewes Crown Court heard.

A jury of eight men and four women took around four hours to return the verdict on Thursday.

Naseem, 48, showed little emotion as the guilty verdict was read out, looking straight ahead with a slightly bowed head as members of Ms Abbotts’ family gasped.

Ms Abbotts, who was born in the West Midlands, was described as a “socialite” who led a party lifestyle in London, mixing with “posh” and wealthy friends, while telling relatives she worked in IT.

However, she funded this by secretly offering her services on a website called adultwork.com under the pseudonym Tilly Pexton.

Naseem was working for Toronto-Dominion Bank’s London office when he found her profile offering overnight rates from £1,000.

He contacted her and the pair later met up in Crawley on 24 May, where Naseem was captured on CCTV at an Asda supermarket kissing Ms Abbotts on the head as they bought Veuve Clicquot champagne.

However, friends raised the alarm when she failed to turn up for her birthday party in South Kensington the following day.

When police broke down the door of the flat more than a day later, on the morning of 26 May, they discovered Naseem pretending to be unconscious in the next room, lying on a sofa completely naked apart from a dressing gown and surrounded by alcohol and drug paraphernalia.

Paramedics were convinced he was play acting, but he only claimed to have regained consciousness once he was taken to hospital, where he claimed he had no idea what had happened.

The freelance risk consultant, who earned up to £250,000 a year, initially tried to continue with the story, telling police in interview he could not remember the incident and did not know how Ms Abbotts died.

However, when he gave evidence in court, he admitted striking her, but claimed he acted in self-defence after she began to strangle him in a sex game gone wrong.

He also admitted a “red mist” may have come over him during the incident.

But, prosecutor Christopher Tehrani described his testimony as “nonsense” and a “pack of lies”, telling the court Naseem had carried out the attack “relentlessly” with “savage” consequences.

He said Naseem had stayed in the flat for 12 hours following her death – drinking, taking drugs and sending pornographic pictures and videos to other escorts.

Naseem told police he did not call for help when he realised she was dead because he “couldn’t see anything positive” coming out of the situation.

He could not explain how the pestle – coupled with a mortar bowl later found in the flat’s kitchen by officers – came to be in the bedroom.

The father-of-two, of Amersham, Buckinghamshire, told the court he turned to escorts when the “whirlwind romance” with his partner fizzled out, spending the best part of a decade drinking on a near-daily basis, hiring sex workers and taking cocaine.

Naseem is due to be sentenced on Friday by judge Christine Laing.

Additional reporting by PA