Henriett and Mihrican: The missed chances to identify a killer

Henriett Szucs (left) and Mihrican Mustafa

A series of police failings before the murders of two vulnerable women, who were found dead in a freezer, can be revealed for the first time.

Violent sex offender Zahid Younis, 36, from east London, was jailed last year for the murders of Henriett Szucs and Mihrican Mustafa.

BBC Newsnight has found how officers "lost" one of the victims and missed chances to identify the killer.

The Metropolitan Police said it had treated the case "very seriously".

The bodies of Henriett and Mihrican were discovered in a freezer in the east London flat of Younis in April 2019. A sadistic sex offender with a history of violence, he was jailed for life last year.

Zahid Younis was jailed for life

But a BBC investigation has examined whether the two murders were preventable, uncovering a series of missed chances to protect the women or locate them after they vanished. The family of Mihrican, the second of the women to die, told the programme she could have been saved.

Henriett

The 32-year-old, a Hungarian national and mother-of-three, came to Britain in 2014, but was abandoned by the man she arrived with. She said the man was a pimp and she had her passport stolen. She found herself homeless on the streets of east London and was treated as a trafficking victim.

Henriett was highly vulnerable and known to the Met Police, which received reports of her being assaulted. She told police a local man, David Dallison, had raped her. He was charged, denied the offence, and was remanded in custody before trial.

What followed was a major missed opportunity to protect Henriett and then later detect her murder. Newsnight has obtained transcripts of the proceedings, which were so disastrous - due to late paperwork and abandoned hearings - that a judge described the Crown Prosecution Service's handling of the case as "deplorable" and "disgraceful".

In January 2016, prosecutors told Snaresbrook Crown Court that Henriett had been "lost" by police. The defendant was released and the rape charge left to lie on file.

However, unlike the police, Dallison found Henriett and within four days she was in his flat. She was later discovered seriously injured outside the block of flats, saying she had been pushed out of his fifth-floor window.

While in hospital, Henriett met Younis, a convicted sex offender with a long record of imprisoning, torturing and sexually abusing women and girls. The Met Police judged him as a "medium risk" and officers monitoring him visited his flat and collected intelligence on his relationships.

Younis and Henriett stayed in touch after she moved to a safe house for trafficking victims outside London, but she left and headed for Younis's flat in spring 2016, without telling staff the address. Evidence from the later murder trial showed how she was then coercively controlled and eventually falsely imprisoned by Younis in the flat. She spent weeks severely injured prior to her death.

In June 2016, a fateful hearing took place in the rape prosecution involving Henriett. It was at this hearing - attended by police and prosecutors - that she went off the radar of key authorities.

Prosecutors again came to court to say she had been "lost". The court was told police could not find her and that officers had earlier suggested to her that it might be in her "best interests" to leave the country. The judge said that Henriett might have followed the advice, despite not having a passport.

The defendant David Dallison was cleared of all charges and walked free. There was no evidence Henriett had left Britain. No-one reported her missing.

Days after the rape case was dropped, a Met detective received a text, apparently from Henriett, saying she was too unwell to attend court. The number was not traced. But Newsnight has established the message came from a phone attributable to Younis. Scotland Yard says it has no record of whether officers informed the CPS or the judge about the text.

Weeks later, when Younis was stopped in the local area by officers, he was with a thin woman whose face was covered by a scarf. The woman's name triggered no alert. This was the last sighting of Henriett.

Mihrican

Known as Jan by her family, the 37-year-old, vanished from her native east London in 2018 - long after Henriett had been killed in autumn 2016.

Newsnight has seen the internal Scotland Yard report into the year-long missing person inquiry for Jan, who was first reported missing in May 2018. In it:

• Call records show Younis was one of the final people Jan was in contact with. Younis, a known liar and violent sex offender, told police he barely knew her

• Mobile data showed her phone was last active in the area where Younis lived

• A serial number was misread on a mobile phone handed to police, leading to it being disregarded. The phone would have shown contact between Jan and Younis

• Police protocols were breached when a senior investigating officer did not review the case, despite the family's appeals for it to be prioritised

• The Met fixed on the wrong date for her last sighting, based on a claim by an abusive criminal. After seven months, officers checked the real date with her family.

Officers refused to class Jan as a high-risk missing person and, just weeks before she was found dead, wrote it was not a "working hypothesis" that she'd been harmed by someone else.

However, Newsnight has established that police knew she was at grave risk of male violence and a local drug support group had anticipated the danger she was in.

Before going missing, she had been referred to the care of a local multi-agency panel, which included the Met Police, for high risk victims of domestic violence.

Four months before she disappeared, a letter from a local drug support agency said Jan had "a history of domestic violence" from various partners and was "very vulnerable" to it happening again. The Met's internal report exonerated the force, saying Younis was being "appropriately managed" by officers.

Separate reviews into both deaths are currently underway, but Jan's family was not even informed a review had been launched, first finding out through the Newsnight investigation.

Jan's family outside Southwark Crown Court

Her family has since received an official apology. They believe Jan would still be alive if Henriett's case had been dealt with properly.

The child victim

There was a series of earlier chances to deal with the threat Younis posed.

He had raped, tortured and imprisoned various girls and young women. He was never held fully accountable even when prosecuted, with offences dropped and victims disbelieved by judges and juries.

One victim he was convicted of abusing gave evidence in the murder trial.

Speaking publicly for the first time, she told Newsnight that if Younis had been dealt with by police earlier the two murder victims "would still be alive today." "They didn't take the victims seriously," she said.

She is from a non-Muslim background, and was groomed by Younis from the age of 12. She approached police after the bodies were discovered and was a key witness in the murder trial.

• Read the full story of Henriett and Jan

But she says the Met has still not investigated a central issue, namely that Younis "married" her in a mosque against her will when she was underage.

She says officers failed to investigate it because she was unable to provide full details to a detective who rang after she had given a statement to the homicide inquiry. She adds: "I feel like if they allowed me to get married under age, how many more children has this happened to? Is it still happening now?"

The victim became pregnant by Younis as a child, bringing up her child alone. Her daughter, who also spoke to Newsnight, says even as a child she understood the threat he posed. "When people found out [about the murders] they were shocked and surprised," she says, "I knew what he was like."

Scotland Yard says the passage of time meant it was not in the public interest to pursue the forced marriage complaint any further. The Met Police says its officers took Jan's disappearance very seriously and conducted a full investigation with hundreds of actions taken by officers. The force said Jan had lived a transient lifestyle and had been identified as medium risk.

Regarding Henriett, the force says it is not policy to report people as missing if they fail to turn up to trial - and that officers had conducted extensive enquiries to locate her. The CPS says there is no causal link between the court case involving Henriett being discontinued and her murder.

But Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, said the evidence had revealed a "systemic failure". She said domestic violence needed to be elevated to the same priority as other crimes, with changes needed in how serial perpetrators are managed.