Forensics student admits murdering woman in Dexter-style ‘kill room’
A 20-year-old forensics student obsessed with Dexter has admitted to murdering a sex worker who he lured to a plastic-lined ‘kill room’ in an Airbnb in the West Midlands.
Benjamin William Day, a University of Worcester undergraduate, was 19 when he inflicted 78 knife wounds on Maria Saceanu, 24, and started to dismember her body, a murder trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court was told.
Some 20 miles from his home in Redditch, Worcestershire, prosecutor Rachel Brand KC said the defendant spent several hours preparing the so-called kill room at the three-bed Airbnb on Barncroft Road, Tividale.
He then left the £40 rental home at about 12.30am on 21 December, walked some distance away and then called 999 at 12.50am asking for medical help.
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Day changed his plea to guilty after discussions with his lawyer on the second day of his trial on Tuesday (6 October).
The decision came around three hours after jurors were shown footage of Day claiming to have been attacked by a ‘wild dog’ or fox.
Jurors were shown footage of police officers helping Day with a hand injury, which was wrapped in duct tape, at the junction of Highview Street and Brewery Street in Dudley.
Addressing Mr Justice Bryan before the trial judge decided to delay sentencing for further psychiatric assessments, defence barrister Gurdeep Garcha KC said of Day: “He is well aware of the nature and inevitability of the sentence that must follow.
“It seems to us that given his age and the absence of (previous) criminal offending, the court would be assisted by a pre-sentence report.”
Prosecutor Rachel Brand KC said: “He lured Maria Saceanu to a room that he had rented via Airbnb.
“He had prepared himself to kill her.
“He had planned to dispose of her body without leaving signs of what had happened, and he planned to get away with it.
“But it all went wrong and he was caught.”
After Day was taken to Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley, he was arrested on suspicion of murder at 3.42am while laying on a bed in hospital in a Dexter-style khaki top, the court heard.
Brand told the court that on 18 November last year, Day had made a ‘shopping list’ on his phone of things that were required for the killing, including knives, scissors, a mask, an apron, disposable gloves, plastic sheeting, duct tape, a staple gun, a T-shirt, trousers, cleaning chemicals, microscope slides, a pipette and ‘hefties’ – a word used by Americans to describe heavy-duty black bin bags.
Previously expected to claim self-defence, it was though that Day was setting up the room to film a 'tribute' to Dexter which he could post on TikTok.
Anish Vij