Homeless man sexually assaulted and murdered mother-of-one as she walked to work

Vadims Ruskuls was found guilty of murder at the Old Bailey
Met Police
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A homeless man who sexually assaulted and murdered a mother-of-one as she walked to work before hastily burying her body on wasteland is facing life in prison today.

Vadims Ruskuls, 25, pounced on hotel housekeeper Pardeep Kaur after stalking to a secluded underpass, subjecting her to a brutal sexual assault while her screams for help were drowned out by traffic on the nearby M4.

After carrying out the murder, chilling CCTV footage shows Latvian-national Ruskuls dragging the 30-year-old’s body along the pavement towards a bleak stretch of wasteland where she was found hidden beneath a sleeping bag and branches.

When police made the grisly discovery of her body five days later, they found Ruskuls’ DNA on Mrs Kaur’s body and under her fingernails where she had tried to fend him off.

Pardeep Kaur was murdered in October last year
Metropolitan Police

But an unrepentant Ruskuls refused to accept his guilty, suggesting someone else had killed her and putting Mrs Kaur’s traumatised family through a trial at the Old Bailey.

This afternoon, a jury unanimously found him guilty of the murder, on October 17 last year. Ruskuls will be jailed for life when he is sentenced on Wednesday morning.

In a heartbreaking impact statement, Mrs Kaur’s husband Rachpal Singh revealed how their six-year-old daughter still believes her mother is “missing” and asks when she is coming home.

“This man, Vadims Ruskuls, has not only killed Pardeep but he has destroyed our future”, he said.

“Pardeep and I had plans to try and settle in the UK eventually, bringing our daughter here to live and hoped for a good life here with our daughter, but then something terrible happened to us. All our dreams are now shattered.”

He continued: “I’m completely lost without her, and very lonely. For Pardeep to be murdered in such a terrible way at a time when I couldn’t be with her will always bother me.

“It is six months since Pardeep was murdered, but I haven’t forgotten her for even six seconds, I always think about what Pardeep must have gone through on that dark morning when she was killed.”

CCTV image issued by the Metropolitan Police of Pardeep Kaur on her way home from work the day before she went missing
PA

Mr Singh said he has struggled to tell her family in India how she died because the killing was so “disturbing”, and added that the reasons for the death will remain a mystery because of Ruskuls’ silence: “The circumstances of Pardeep’s death will forever haunt me because Ruskuls will not give an explanation.”

Mrs Kaur was walking her usual route to work at the Sheraton Skyline Hotel near Heathrow airport when she was ambushed by Ruskuls, as she approached Harlington Bridge in Hayes at around 6.30am.

Chilling CCTV shows the two entering the underpass at the same time, and around 20 minutes later Ruskuls is seen dragging her body away to the wasteland where it was found.

“The defendant must have pounced on Pardeep Kaur at some point on that ramp, he must then have sexually assaulted her and then murdered her”, said prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC.

“If Mrs Kaur had cried out, her screams would have been drowned out by the sound of the early morning traffic.”

The court heard Mrs Kaur, who was born in India, had been working in the UK and sending money back to her family in India, where her young daughter was still living.

She was reported missing the same day, but it was not until five days later that she was eventually discovered. Her body was so badly decomposed that the pathologist could not be sure how she died.

Ruskuls, of no fixed address, denies murder. He puffed out his cheeks as the guilty verdict was delivered, but displayed no emotion.

Judge Richard Marks, the Common Serjeant of London, remanded him in custody until sentencing tomorrow morning.

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