Store boss and his brother murdered woman, 34, to stop her exposing affair
A CASH-and-carry boss murdered one of his three lovers with his brother’s help in a bid to stop her exposing their two-year affair.
Costco store manager Roger Cooper, 41, spent at least a month plotting to kill Sameena Imam, 34, buying poisonous metals and finding a shallow grave in which to hide her body before killing her last Christmas.
His brother David, 39, helped him to kill her and dispose of the Costco worker’s body, in what police officers last night branded one of the ‘ most callous’ murders they had ever encountered.
Miss Imam had been in a relationship with Cooper, who she met through work at the Coventry store, for two years. Yet he was also seeing at least one other woman, as well as his long-term partner.
He had claimed he would leave his partner to be with Miss Imam.
But instead he was hatching a plan to kill her after fearing she would leak details of their affair, so jeopardising his relationship and his career at the wholesaler – which banned relationships between employees.
Birmingham Crown Court heard that on Christmas Eve last year Cooper and his brother smothered Miss Imam – who had hoped to spend Christmas with Cooper after booking a £500-a-night room for them at a Birmingham hotel – with a chloroform-soaked tea towel at David’s home in Leicester. A postmortem examination revealed they also administered a ‘bizarre’ combination of toxic metals, including mercury and arsenic.
The next day they dumped her body at David’s allotment.’
When West Midlands Police questioned Cooper about Miss Imam’s disappearance he claimed he had last seen her at 4pm on December 24 when she left the Costco ware- house. David told officers he did not even know Miss Imam’s name, but later admitted to pressing a towel soaked with chloroform, a chemical traditionally used as an anaesthetic, over her mouth. He initially claimed her death had been accidental, before later changing his story to say he had found her body when he was asked to move a car.
Yet when police examined the brothers’ phones, they found texts relating to the murder plans written in Star Wars references, such as ‘stay on target’ and ‘Death Star complete’. They revealed the brothers had first tried to kill Miss Imam in mid-December but their plan had failed.
Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Marsh yesterday said the case was ‘the most callous offence I have ever investigated’, adding that it involved ‘weeks and weeks of planning’.
Last night Miss Imam’s father, Imam Din, said: ‘We are absolutely devastated at the loss of Sameena. Nothing could ever have prepared us for hearing ... that our daughter had been murdered.’
The brothers – who were both found guilty of murder after a ten week trial – will be sentenced today.