Brixton man jailed for 29 years for murdering wife and blaming son

Amidu Koroma, 48, blamed his innocent teenage son for the killing

A man who murdered his wife before setting his home alight to conceal the crime and blame his teenage son has been jailed for 29 years.

Amidu Koroma, 48, stabbed Mariam Kamara to death at the property in Brixton, south London, in January 2022.

Judge Rebecca Poulet KC told the Old Bailey it was "particularly cruel and unpleasant" to blame his innocent son, then aged 17 years old.

Koroma received a concurrent seven-year sentence for arson.

Jurors found the delivery driver guilty on Thursday.

Koroma stabbed Ms Kamara, 46, a community nurse, four times in the face, neck and chest with a kitchen knife as she slept in her bed, the court heard during the trial.

He then used petrol to start a fire to hide what he had done before blaming his son Ishmael, now 19, wrongly accusing him of being mentally disturbed and re-enacting a scene from the Netflix thriller You.

Jurors heard the couple's relationship was "toxic" and Ms Kamara had repeatedly expressed fears to friends that he was going to kill her.

The fire broke out in a house in Railton Road, Brixton, in the early hours of 24 January

They were also told that Koroma, who had a child with another woman, had feared his wife would leave him for a man she had struck up an intimate friendship with in Sierra Leone.

On Monday, Judge Poulet told the defendant he had planned the murder because he did not want Ms Kamara to travel to Sierra Leone.

She said: "You had planned to burn her body and thereby destroy the evidence of her injuries but very careful investigation and your own inconsistent statements have exposed your crimes and your undoubted responsibility for them."

The court heard other aggravating features included the fact that the killing was carried out in a background of abuse and "terrifying threats", and that the victim's son was asleep in the house.

Contrary to the defendant's claims, Ishmael was a "typical teenager" and Ms Kamara was a "deeply caring and responsible mother", the judge said.

In a victim impact statement, he said how much he missed his mother and that he had been deeply affected by her death, now finding himself unable to trust anyone.

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