Minimum of 33 years for savage murderer

Marvin Samuels, 31, stabbed Sharlana Diedrick, 32, 16 times and would have continued the frenzied attack if he had not hurt his hand.

He was found unanimously guilty of murder at the Old Bailey last week and had admitted two other charges of rape and grievous bodily harm.

Sentencing Samuels yesterday, Judge Timothy Pontius told him: “These three crimes are all individually horrifying in the extent of the mere brutality with which they were committed. Taken together, they represent a level of violent behaviour carried out during a period of just a few hours that I have rarely encountered.

“You went out armed with at least one knife that day and by the time you murdered Sharlana Diedrick you had two knives.”

The judge said it was noted that he did not use a knife on his rape victim.

“Nevertheless, you raped her brutally and beat her savagely with a tree branch and, on your own admission, a bottle,” he said.

The woman “remains so traumatised by the extent she suffered at your hands that she has been unable to describe any of it”, the judge added.

“It was only six hours or so later that you killed Sharlana Diedrick, the mother of your young son.”

Powerfully-built Samuels, of Stonebridge, north west London, showed no emotion as he was told he would serve three concurrent life sentences for the three counts.

He denied murder, claiming he was not “mentally responsible” at the time.

The judge went on: “In all the evidence the jury and I have heard, in particular the number of blows and the force with which they were inflicted on a wholly defenceless woman sitting at the wheel of her car, I am not of the slightest doubt that you intended to kill her.”