A criminology student could have stabbed a woman to death on a Dorset beach because he wanted to know what it would be like to take a life and how it would feel to make a woman feel afraid, a jury has been told.
As he plotted the attack, Nasen Saadi asked his lecturers so many questions about how police tracked suspects that one teacher asked him if he was planning to commit a murder, Winchester crown court heard.
After police arrested him at his home in Purley, south London, for the murder of the sports coach Amie Gray, 34, and the attempted murder of her friend Leanne Miles on a beach in Bournemouth, they found he had a collection of knives and an axe.
Saadi, 20, told police he was fascinated by true crime and had been in Bournemouth at the time of the attacks, but he denied any involvement. He has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder.
Sarah Jones KC, prosecuting, told the jury that Gray and Miles had lit a fire on the beach at Durley Chine on Friday 24 May, a beautiful night lit by a full moon. She said they chatted and shared stories, thoughts and hopes.
Jones said Saadi “hovered at the edges of the promenade” then stepped on to the sand, and walked directly towards the two women with a knife in his hand. She said: “In an act horrifying in its savagery and in its randomness he stabbed them both multiple times, chasing after them as they tried to escape or divert him from the other and continued his attack.”
She added: “He left them on the sand to bleed to death while he moved away and tried to disappear back into the shadows, away from the glare of the streetlights or the moonlight and back into anonymity. He got rid of his weapon. He changed his clothes and shoes and got rid of them.”
The barrister said: “This defendant seems to have wanted to know what it would be like to take life. Perhaps he wanted to know what it would be like to make women feel afraid. Perhaps he thought it would make him feel powerful, make him interesting to others. Perhaps he just couldn’t bear to see people engaged in a happy normal social interaction and he decided to lash out, to hurt, to butcher.”
Jones said Saadi lived with an aunt, close to his parents’ home. He was enrolled in the University of Greenwich, where he was doing a degree in criminology.
The barrister said his interest in criminology was not academic. At the end of one lecture he asked a teacher about the concept of self-defence to a murder charge and about DNA. The lecturer asked him: “You’re not planning a murder are you?”
During a Q&A with a Met police officer he asked about forensics and how forces worked together if a crime was committed by someone from another area, the court heard.
From January 2024 he allegedly researched knives, comparing the deadliness of daggers to knives, and looked up high-profile murders including that of Brianna Ghey. On 24 April he allegedly searched for information about machetes and Bournemouth.
On 21 May he travelled to Bournemouth and began carrying out what the prosecution said was reconnaissance. He also went to the cinema and watched the horror film The Strangers: Chapter 1, a slasher home invasion movie where assailants chase the inhabitants with knives.
On the night of the killing, Gray and Miles met at 10pm and sat close to the water to enjoy a bonfire and picnic. Miles told police: “It was just really nice and peaceful and calm.”
At 10.38pm, Saadi allegedly launched the attack, saying nothing. Miles ran to get help but then returned to her friend. She said: “He was continuously stabbing me, and I told him to stop … I said: ‘Please stop, I’ve got children.’”
Miles dialled 999. Gray could not be saved. She suffered 10 thrusts from the knife including one to her heart. Miles suffered about 20 wounds including three to her chest but survived.
Saadi left Bournemouth the next morning. He was arrested on 28 May. Police found knives in his bedside drawer and hidden between a wall and wardrobe. His parents supplied police with another two knives and an axe that they had taken from him. None of these knives could be connected forensically with the stabbing of Gray or Miles, the court heard.
Jones told the court that, upon being interviewed, Saadi accepted he had an interest in true crime and said he had been in Bournemouth, but denied attacking the women. He said perhaps he had had a blackout because he had been drinking.
In a police interview with Miles on 27 May that was played in court, she described how a “shadow” appeared as she and Gray sat on the beach. She said: “We turned around, and I looked at this boy. I thought maybe Amie knew him and she had a smile on her face.”
She thought perhaps the boy was playing a prank and it was a fake knife. She said: “It didn’t feel sharp, it felt like I was being punched. I didn’t feel pain until he had stopped attacking me.” Miles said Gray was in her football kit, having come from training to meet her.
The trial continues.
