Gareeca Gordon sentenced to life in Phoenix Netts murder and dismembering. Victim’s remains were discovered in two suitcases after she spurned her housemate’s advances.
A UK woman was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for murdering her housemate who spurned her sexual advances — and then dismembering the corpse with a saw and stuffing the pieces in suitcases in which she intended to burn in a nearby forest.
Gareeca Gordon, 28, stabbed Phoenix Netts, also 28, four times in their Birmingham home for homeless women on April 16, 2020, the Evening Standard reported.
After murdering Netts, Gordon deceived her friends and relatives via text messages, emails and voice messages, saying that she’d moved to London.
Upon her arrest outside a quarry in Coleford about a month after the girl’s slaying, police found the victim’s remains stuffed into two suitcases, according to the news outlet.
Days before she was due to stand trial, Gordon pleaded guilty. She was sentenced Tuesday in Bristol Crown Court to life in prison with a minimum sentence of 23 years jail and six months the Guardian reported.
‘Loins were warming up’
Prosecutor Andrew Smith said Netts had told a friend that Gordon had ‘demanded sex with her’ and became ‘aggressive’ when she declined.
‘There’s a girl here who keeps asking me to be sexual,’ Netts told a friend in a text on April 7 last year. ‘I think I’m going to move back to London. It’s scaring me lol.’
Smith told the court that Gordon made a call to the Samaritans, an emotional support charity, on April 11, in which she appeared ‘tipsy.’
‘The clear focus of the call was Ms. Gordon describing that she liked another woman and wanting to have sex with her,’ he said. ‘At one stage Ms. Gordon said either that her loins were warming up or were hot.’
The last known contact from Netts was in a phone call with a friend early on April 16, 2020. He tried to call her back later that day but did not get through.
But there’s more.
The murdered woman’s cellphone was used to make internet searches including ‘how to fix punctured lung,’ ‘internal bleeding’ and ‘can someone recover from getting stabbed’ on the same day, the court heard.
Defendant acquired circular saw via classified ads
Other internet searches over the course of the next month included, ‘How do killers get caught?’ and ‘Can a body burn to ashes with petrol?’
Smith said that another woman living in the shared home heard noises of drilling and banging, as well as shouts of ‘Help me! Help me!’ on April 16.
After killing Netts, Gordon bought a circular saw on Gumtree, an online classified ads site, and it was delivered shortly before 11 a.m. the following day.
The tool was used to dismember Netts’ body when it was either clothed or partially clothed. The saw was discovered in Gordon’s room.
‘Dismemberment took place at five different locations of the body, dividing the body into six parts,’ Smith told the court.
Gordon then made several trips to the Forest of Dean, where she tried to burn the remains.
‘Ticking time bomb’
The prosecutor said ‘handwritten plans and notes concerned with her removing the body from Coleford and moving it to Wales to burn further’ also were found in Gordon’s room.
It was revealed the murder took place as the victim planned to return living with her parents in London but had been held back amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
‘Her future was looking bright, shining and promising. A fresh start was ahead of her,’ Justice Cutts told Gordon during sentencing. ‘You robbed her of that fresh start. You took her from the supportive parents who loved and cherished her.’
Cutts described Gordon as a ‘very dangerous young woman’, saying none of the wounds would have been fatal had she called for help but she refused to do so and it may have been 12 hours before Netts died.
Gordon’s mother during court described her daughter as a ‘ticking time-bomb.’ She said her daughter had a number of unresolved personality disorder issues according to the Guardian.
Netts’ father, Mark Netts, told the court: ‘Our lives have been irreversibly changed and the anguish is indescribable.’
Her mother, Saskia, said she was, ‘forever devastated, forever empty.’
