Maureen Gitau: Caretaker guilty of murdering woman dumped in bin

A caretaker who killed a woman before placing her body in a bin which is then believed to have been incinerated at a rubbish processing plant has been found guilty of her murder.

Mark Moodie, 55, of Woolwich, south-east London, was convicted at Woolwich Crown Court of the murder of Maureen Gitau on Thursday.

Her body has not been found since she disappeared on 5 December last year.

Moodie will be sentenced on a date to be set.

Ms Gitau was last seen by her family as she left her aunt's birthday party at the address where they both lived in Deptford. Her family reported her missing five days later.

The trial heard that she left the party to meet Moodie.

The court was told that he took her to a block of flats where he worked and she never left the building alive.

Prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward said Moodie was seen moving a large communal waste bin around the basement of Richmond House in Deptford, and it was later seen outside the cleaners' room by some of the block's residents.

He then put it back in the bin store and covered her body up with rubbish before it was taken to a processing plant where it was "inevitably" incinerated, the prosecutor said.

Det Ch Insp Kate Blackburn, of the Metropolitan Police, said a large-scale search was launched to find Ms Gitau's body.

This involved 125 trucks carrying 2,750 tonnes of waste being transported to a police search site in Essex, with 60 officers each day involved in the operation, which totalled 20,000 search hours in total.

Following Moodie's conviction, Ms Blackburn said: "I am glad we have been able to bring to justice the man responsible for her death."

She said Moodie never admitted responsibility and told "lie after lie".

"He is a contemptible individual and I am glad the jury has seen through his deceit and found him guilty of Maureen's murder."

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