Man quizzed over student murders

12:56am Sunday 6th July 2008

Detectives are questioning a 21-year-old man over the brutal murders of two gifted French research students.

Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were bound, stabbed to death and set alight in a bedsit in New Cross, south London, on Sunday night.

Officers arrested the suspect in connection with the killings and held him for interview at a police station in south-east London.

The Frenchmen were living in the capital while they worked on three-month research projects at Imperial College.

Mr Ferez, who lived in South Norwood, had travelled to spend the evening at his friend's rented flat in Sterling Gardens, New Cross, where they were playing computer games.

Neighbours dialled 999 after an explosion blew the windows out and ignited a fierce blaze shortly after 10pm. They called out to find out if anybody was in the flat but nobody responded.

A pathologist documented 243 separate injuries to the students' badly-burned bodies, with Mr Bonomo suffering 80 wounds after he died.

Police are investigating whether they were killed for the sake of two handheld Sony PSP games consoles stolen from the flat. Officers are also hunting a black Packard Bell laptop taken in a previous burglary six days earlier while Mr Bonomo was in the shower.

The bio-chemistry students were in the second year of a three-year Master's degree. Mr Bonomo, from Velaux, near Marseille, and Mr Ferez, from Prouzel, near Amiens, had been selected to take part in three-month research projects and were due to return home later this month.

Det Chief Insp Mick Duthie, leading the investigation, said: "The more we find out about them the more we find they were good, honest, hard-working young men - very intelligent, never caused anybody any problems, they were well liked and come from respectable families. This is just a tragedy."

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