Costa Rica blames UK over murder by Alfie Saunders

  • Crown Prosecution Service ignored warnings from British police to arrest Saunders

  • Brit then flew to Costa Rica before killing 22-year-old student

By
Neil Sears, Vanessa Allen and Sam Greenhill

Last updated at 11:40 PM on 6th January 2012

A Briton accused of stabbing a student to death in Costa Rica is an NHS mental health patient who was allowed to fly abroad despite being deeply disturbed.

Interpol considered Alfie Saunders, 20, so dangerous that when it learned he was planning to travel from Britain to Nicaragua, police across central America were warned.

Six weeks later, days after Christmas, he is said to have murdered Alexandra Drbohlavova, 22, in a frenzied sexually-motivated attack.

Just days after Christmas, Alfie Saunders, 20, is said to have murdered Alexandra Drbohlavova, 22, in a frenzied sexually-motivated attack in Costa Rica

Just days after Christmas, Alfie Saunders, 20, is said to have murdered Alexandra Drbohlavova, 22, in a frenzied sexually motivated attack in Costa Rica

Saunders is believed to have come to Interpol’s attention after an incident when he was travelling in China a year ago.

In Britain, despite the Interpol concerns that Saunders was ‘a dangerous individual’ linked to a string of sex offences, he was free to walk the streets as a ‘care in the community’ patient.

And though British police wanted to prosecute him for possessing indecent images last October, the Crown Prosecution Service refused to take action.

Last night an NHS internal inquiry was under way into how mental health professionals dealt with the son of wealthy academics Professor Max Saunders, of the King’s College English department, and Catia Galatariotou, a writer and psychoanalyst who has lectured on the development of child sexuality.

The inquiry began as the Czech parents of Miss Drbohlavova, who was studying at university in Florida, spoke of their anger that official warning systems failed to save their daughter.

Victim: Czech student Alexandra Drbohlavova was allegedly murdered by Saunders

Victim: Czech student Alexandra Drbohlavova was allegedly murdered by Saunders

Her father Dusan, a senior university academic, and her mother Sarka, a journalist, issued a statement saying: ‘The usual explanation, that she was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”, simply does not work.

‘How could a dangerous individual be allowed to move freely round the world when his pathological tendencies were already known? The authorities must have failed.

‘The loss of a child is the most terrible event possible for parents. When a defenceless and completely innocent victim is brutally murdered in such an inhuman way, without any warning, such circumstances cannot be understood or absorbed.’

Their daughter had travelled to the British-owned Finca La Libertad organic farm near Costa Rica’s border with Nicaragua to work as an unpaid volunteer over her Christmas holidays.

Ominous: These were among Saunders's few possessions

Ominous: These were among Saunders’s few possessions

Days later Saunders arrived
unannounced, with barely any possessions beyond CDs of violent rap songs
by Eminem, a book about a serial killer, a fitness magazine and an
‘SAS’ guide to unarmed combat.

He was offered a tent next to Miss Drbohlavova and the following night she was heard screaming. Retired architect Peter Donati, whose son Nick owns the farm, is said to have caught Saunders emerging from the girl’s tent covered in blood.

She had 15 stab wounds to her face, neck and chest. Saunders will face court on Monday.

The Daily Mail has discovered that Saunders, who lived with his mother in a series of luxury homes in London’s exclusive St John’s Wood and Notting Hill worth up to £3.3million, had in Britain been under the care of NHS mental health experts.

Victim: Alexandra Drbohlavova died following 15 stab wounds

Alexandra Drbohlavova died following 15 stab wounds

He appears to have been treated both as an inpatient and an outpatient.

According to a source, Saunders talked of killing cats by drowning, strangling and with a chainsaw, and expressed an interest in violent pornography.

While on an NHS ward, said the source, Saunders smoked powerful ‘skunk’ cannabis, often linked to psychosis, while other patients smoked crack and drank brandy.

Early last year Saunders flew to China and spent two months at the spartan Maling Shan Kung Fu Academy in countryside midway between Beijing and Shanghai.

Fellow martial arts student Nina Melander, 20, from Sweden, said: ‘Alfie was obsessed with Eminem, and thought you could become a Kung Fu expert in a few weeks.

‘He bought a knife and used to throw it at trees and into the ground. I got the idea he was bullied in Britain.’

 Costa Rican police said they were surprised that border officials aware of the Interpol warning let him in.

A spokesman for the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, which is investigating Saunders’s treatment, said: ‘This individual had no criminal  convictions, was not a detained patient and was not treated on a secure ward.’

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