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Murderer jailed for life 15 years after stabbing man

Malcolm Curtis
Malcolm Curtis - [email protected]
Murderer jailed for life 15 years after stabbing man
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A 40-year-old man was sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison, 15 years after he killed a 50-year-old gay taxi driver in his Geneva apartment by stabbing him 47 times with a knife .

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The Geneva criminal court handed down the sentence sought by the prosecutor Claudio Mascotto.

The case dates back to 1999, when the victim, who was adept at “evening encounters” was stabbed in his apartment by the convicted man, a Portuguese citizen, the ATS news agency reported.

The killer is currently serving a 25-year prison term in Luxembourg for having killed another man with a club and a knife under similar circumstances in 2006.

As a result of the Luxembourg case, detectives in Geneva were able to charge him for what had previously been an unsolved murder case, ATS said.

Court heard that the convicted man, after establishing a bond with his victim, agreed to visit the tax driver’s apartment and to sleep in his underpants with the man in his bed.

The convicted man told the court that he acted in self-defence after the taxi driver threatened him with a gun in a bid to have sexual relations with him, ATS reported.

The accused man angrily told the court “I am not a homosexual” when the prosecutor asked him if he was attracted by men, the news agency said.

His lawyer attempted without success to have the court hear testimony from another Portuguese man who was allegedly raped by the victim in 1988.

The prosecutor called the accused “an assassin” not a victim who killed two homosexuals older than him.

The murder of the taxi driver was perpetrated “with a particular savagery on a defenceless man in his bed”, he said, according to the ATS report.

The accused alleged that he had been raped when he was 11 or 12 years old, something he never told anyone about at the time “because he was ashamed”.

After that, he took to always carrying a knife, he told the court.  

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