Three sadistic killers who tortured, starved and battered to death a mother fed only ketchup sachets have each been jailed for life.
Ashana Studholme, 38, her lover Shaun Pendlebury, 26, and their friend Lisa Richardson, 44, treated vulnerable Shakira Spencer like a slave before she was discovered dead in her flat in Ealing, in west London.
The 35-year-old fell under the influence of the trio, and would be woken up in the early hours to clean their homes or be sent on errands to the shops over many months in which she was isolated and robbed of her money.
They also scalded Ms Spencer’s feet and fed her own ketchup from sachets.
Ashana Studholme, Shaun Pendlebury and Lisa Richardson have been sentenced for the murder of Shakira Spencer at The Old Bailey
(Metropolitan Police)
The defendants were all convicted of murder and preventing Ms Spencer a lawful burial after trial last year. On Friday, they were sentenced at the Old Bailey.
Studholme, of Greenhill Road, Harrow; Pendlebury, of Tewkesbury Road, Ealing, and Richardson, of Broomcroft Avenue, Ealing, were all jailed for life with a minimum term of 34 years.
Ms Spencer was once described as a “beautiful, happy, healthy” woman, but after months of torture at the hands of the trio she became “skeletal”, going from a size 16 dress size to a six.
(PA)
The Met Police said she had known the three for some time, in what was a complex web of relationships, but in just under a year she had fallen under their complete control.
Her death was only discovered when neighbours saw maggots coming from her flat and her badly decomposed body was found in September 2022.
Ms Spencer’s son described the trio who killed his mother as “cruel and evil” in an impact statement read out to Friday’s hearing. The individual, 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.”
The son also paid tribute to his mother, describing her as “the best” and saying he missed her every day.
He added: “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.”
This is a breaking story – more to follow