Marina Koppel: Sandip Patel jailed for life over 1994 murder

A man whose bloody footprint tied him to the murder of a woman almost 30 years ago has been jailed for life.

Marina Koppel, 39, was found dead by her husband in a flat in Marylebone, central London, in August 1994. She had been stabbed more than 140 times.

Sandip Patel became a suspect in 2022 after his footprint and DNA was matched to a hair from the scene.

He was convicted of murder at the Old Bailey on Thursday and sentenced earlier to a minimum 19-year jail term.

Mr Justice Cavanagh sentenced him using guidelines that were in place when the crime occurred in 1994.

He said aggravating factors included the use of and attempted disposal of a knife, the gratuitous and sustained violence, the vulnerability of Mrs Koppel and a lack of remorse.

Sentencing Patel, the judge added: "The terror and pain that you inflicted on Mrs Koppel is difficult to imagine. You deprived [her] of many more years of life.

"No sentence that I pass can compensate the family of Mrs Koppel for their loss."

Weeping could be heard in the public gallery after the sentence was handed down.

Earlier in the trial, the court was told a bloody footprint found at the scene matched that of Patel, from St John's Wood in north London.

The jury heard his DNA also matched a hair found by a scientist in 2008 on a ring that had been on the victim's finger.

Mrs Koppel, who had two children in her native Colombia, rented the flat in London because she worked as a masseuse and a sex worker, the court was told.

Her husband, who lived in Northampton, "did not necessarily approve" of her work but "accepted it", jurors were told.

Mr Koppel drove to London because his wife was not answering her telephone and found her body shortly before 23:30 BST on the floor of a bedroom where she took clients.

Jurors heard there was blood "everywhere".

Mr Koppel died in 2005, never having discovered who murdered his wife.

The jury deliberated for three hours and 10 minutes before finding Patel guilty.

In a victim impact statement read out in court, Mrs Koppel's son Javier Rios, said: "It is not easy for me to relive the saddest moment of my life after 29 years.

"I am convinced that my mum had a lot of life to live still, it was not her time and this is very painful - it tears my very soul.

"I hope to be able to close this chapter and to remember my mother how she was - the best mother in the world."

Mrs Koppel's sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Mary and Martin Koppel, describing her as an "extremely bright, highly intelligent and charismatic person, who saw good in her family and all people she met", adding she was "much loved by all of us".

"Her family and friends would have been in a much better place because of her abundance of energy for life, had she not died," they said.

"We have all suffered these many, many years because we lost Marina so early in life."

Martin Koppel added that his brother had suffered "an increasingly rapid decline" following the murder, adding, "the day Marina was murdered, I lost my brother."

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