For the friends and neighbours of Mariam Kamara, her death at first would have seemed a tragic accident. A house fire had seemingly broken out in the first-floor bedroom of her home in Brixton during the middle of the night and she had become trapped.
As flames and smoke gushed from the windows, her teenage son Ishmael frantically called the emergency services, with the fire brigade rushing to the scene in Railton Road at 4.12am on 24 January last year.
Upon arriving, her husband Amidu Koroma calmly told firefighters that his wife was trapped inside. His demeanour and the overpowering smell of accelerant in the burnt-out bedroom would be the first indicators that Ms Kamara’s life had been taken in an even more horrific manner.
A 46-year-old community nurse with a wide smile, she had been known in her south London community for her “kind and charitable” ways. A devoted mother, she had set up various generous life insurance policies to assist him in his future, and was supportive as he planned to study accountancy at university.
But close friends knew that her marriage was in difficulty. Her husband was frequently unfaithful and fathered a child with another woman, while others had described their relationship as “toxic”.
Koroma had returned on several occasions and pleaded for forgiveness, while the couple had frequently argued over money.
In the months before her death, Ms Kamara had confided to a friend that she feared her husband would kill her. She was only remaining in the relationship for the sake of her son until he left for university, and she had formed a close attachment to a man in her native Sierra Leone.
Her hopes for her future and new relationship would cruelly be dashed, however, after she was stabbed to death in the place where she should have felt safest.
Her badly burnt body was found lying on the bed of her bedroom, with an empty jerry can and funnel left discarded on the ground.
Amidu Koroma had been jealous of her friendship with a man in Sierra Leone— (Met Police)
Despite attempts to conceal her murder, her blood was identified on the staircase and a post-mortem examination found that she had died from stab wounds to the neck and chest from a kitchen knife.
Realising the net was closing in, Koroma decided to blame his son for the killing, despite knowing he had been fast asleep in his bedroom at the time.
Claiming that the teenager was troubled, he told police officers that Ishmael had murdered his mother while re-creating a scene from the Netflix thriller You.
In season three, the primary character Joe, who possesses stalker tendencies, murders his wife and sets fire to their home to cover up the scene, before faking his own death.
Under cross-examination, however, it became clear that Ishmael was not unstable and had not killed his mother after enduring a supposed bad parents’ evening.
He was jailed at the Old Bailey for life with a minimum term of 29 years— (PA Archive)
While Koroma had denied entering the bedroom while the blaze was ongoing, his clothes had suffered heat damage and a burn was found on his foot.
No evidence was found that anyone had forced entry to her home, while it would have been near impossible for a killer to stage a fire and escape unnoticed.
In a police interview, Koroma said he had been asleep on the sofa and was woken by the smoke alarm at 3am.
He claimed he ran upstairs, noticed “black smoke everywhere” and shouted at Ms Kamara to get out - but did not try to go inside her bedroom due to the “big flame”.
He changed his account during the trial, saying Ishmael had woken him up downstairs and he had wanted to protect him.
Despite his denials, he was convicted of murder and arson with intent by a jury at the Old Bailey. In his victim impact statement, Ishmael spoke of how much he missed his mother and that he now felt unable to trust anyone around him.
Koroma has now been locked behind bars for life, with a minimum term of 29 years for his “appalling” crimes.
Jailing him for life, Judge Rebecca Poulet KC 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 judge said that blaming his son was a “particularly cruel and unpleasant” aspect of the case.
