A crack addict who savagely beat three sisters in a 'vicious and merciless' claw hammer attack as they slept in a luxury hotel before leaving them for dead was jailed for life today.
Philip Spence, 33, was told he would serve a minimum of 18 years behind bars after he bludgeoned the three wealthy tourists repeatedly in front of their children at the the four-star Cumberland Hotel in central London.
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Spence had been smoking crack for two days when he spotted a stash of designer bags through a partially open door as he prowled the corridors on the seventh floor of the hotel.
He had entered the hotel lobby at 1.13am, taking the lift to the fifth floor, before using the stairs to go up to the seventh floor, where the family were asleep in their shared adjoining rooms.
After creeping into their room, Spence began cramming iPads, phones and precious jewellery in a suitcase he found.
When Khulood woke up, Spence leant over her and yelled ‘Give me f****** money!’ before raining down blows with the hammer he had concealed in his jacket.
Her screams woke sister Fatima who, showing 'remarkable courage', desperately tried to stop the attack on her sister, whose two daughters, aged just 11 and seven, were also in the room.
Spence, however, simply turned his attention to her and struck her repeatedly on her head with the hammer,' he went on. 'Ohoud was subjected to an even more ferocious assault as she lay in her bed in the adjourning room. Her skull was smashed so badly that brain tissue protruded from a hole in her head.
'The attack on Ohoud was not witnessed by Khulood or Fatima. Spence may have attacked her after he had already savagely assaulted Khulood and Fatima and rendered them insensible.
'The attack on the women, shocking in its persistence and ferocity, was carried out in front of Khulood's children.'
The fourth sister Sheika Al-Mheiri returned later that night and discovered her sisters lying injured on the floor while blood had spattered on the walls.
Spence had fled the scene with a stolen suitcase stuffed with valuables including iPads, a white Cartier diamond encrusted watch worth £12,000, Louis Vuitton jewellery and mobile phones, and dumped the claw hammer just outside the hotel in Marble Arch, the court has heard.
Mr Mayo said CCTV footage captured Spence on a bus examining items he had stolen from the women.
'Bearing in mind that less than an hour earlier he had carried out a vicious and sustained attack with a hammer on three defenceless women, his concern appears to have the profit that he might make from his awful crime rather than the plight of his unfortunate victims,' he said.
Mr Mayo told the court that the scene confronting police and emergency services as they arrived at the hotel was 'horrific'.
'The unchallenged evidence is that the injuries to each of the victims were life threatening,' he said.
'The further unchallenged evidence was that Ohoud's survival was miraculous. Despite the skill of surgeons who saved her live, Ohoud Al-Najjar is barely recognisible as the woman who travelled to London for a family holiday.
'Her skull has been substantially reconstructed. She has been left blind in her left eye and is now severely disabled - both physically and mentally.'
After he was arrested, Spence told police they would not find any blood on the hammer because he 'licked it all off', the court heard.
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William Nash, mitigating, said that while his client's offending was of 'particularly high seriousness', it was not of 'exceptionally high serious' to warrant a whole life term.
'It's extremely rare and in exceptional cases where people have committed actual murder,' he said.
Mr Nash said Spence had considered writing a letter to his victims and their families but he felt they found his crimes 'disgusting' and he did not think contacting them would make the situation better.
He added that Spence had consumed a 'large amount of drugs' at the time of the attack.
'He didn't know of any other crack head as big as him,' the barrister said. 'He can't forgive himself. He describes himself as being a totally different person. He is not unempathetic.'
Spence, who 'always had a hammer with him' has 37 convictions for 62 offences going back to 1993 including theft, drug offences, grievous bodily harm, robbery and burglary, the hearing was told.
He wore a hooded jacket and blue shirt in the dock and showed no reaction as he was sentenced.
Judge Leonard said: 'You were responsible for a sustained attack with a hammer on three women visiting this country from the United Arab Emirates.
'The ferocity of that attack was such you left one woman so badly injured she will never walk again unaided.'
Judge Leonard said it was relevant that Spence carried out his attack in front of Khulood's three children.
'It is impossible to say what long term affect this incident will have on the children,' he said.
'Hardened police officers and paramedics who attended the scene said what they saw was horrendous and the worst they had seen across their careers.
'Whatever sentence I impose cannot in the eyes of the family satisfactorily compensate for or reflect sufficiently the injuries you inflicted on these three women.'
Judge Leonard said he had 'no doubt' Spence had a difficult childhood after the court heard he was permanently excluded from school aged eight, smoked cannabis from the age of 11 and was addicted to crack cocaine and heroin aged 18.
Spence suffers from a personality disorder but not of a serious enough nature to warrant him being detained in hospital.
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According to friend Emma Moss, the thug ‘always has a hammer with him’ and had once tried to batter his landlord with the weapon years before the hotel assault.
On the night of the attacks, Spence had been smoking crack for two days and was high when he spotted the ajar door while creeping through the corridors at the Cumberland Hotel.
It not the first time he had casually walked into the hotel unnoticed by security.
Spence started visiting the hotel when he was just 13 and would climb onto the roof with his friends to ‘play around’.
In the years that followed, Spence regularly slipped unnoticed into the upmarket hotel looking for an open linen cupboard to sleep in.
Just one month before he attempted to murder the wealthy sisters, Spence snatched a suitcase from a guest at the hotel.
And on the night of the attacks, CCTV images from the hotel show Spence strolling confidently through the lobby apparently unnoticed by security.
While demonstrating how he carried out the attack using a rolled up magazine, Spence lost his cool during the trial and managed to stop himself before he launched the prop at the prosecutor.
He had to be kept apart from ‘partner in crime’ Neofitos ‘Thomas’ Efremi when entering and leaving the dock after scuffling with him in the doorway.
The pair led a depraved lifestyle, funding their mutual crack addiction through benefits and flogging stolen goods.
Jobless Spence would regularly crash as Efremi’s north London pad, smoking drugs for days at a time, sleeping and borrowing his clothes.
Born in Islington, north London to an Italian mother and Jamaican father, Spence was expelled from school at the age of eight following an incident of sexual abuse.
He later attended Northampton Residential School but left with no qualifications and went to live in a hostel.
He was 19 when his descent into drugs began with cannabis, before his addiction to crack and heroin took hold.
Spence said he supported his habits through the dole and stealing until he was arrested and attended a rehab clinic in Weston-Super-Mare.
But after a six-year dry spell, homeless Spence relapsed into using crack and heroin in 2012.
He was in debt to dealers and told jurors he was scared and had been stabbed.
Spence had also threatened his landlord in Walthamstow, on 13 November, 2007.
He became abusive, snatched a hammer from his landlord’s bag and chased him, battering the door with a hammer and smashing the glass panels to try to reach his victim.
Spence also once flew into a rage after a man rebuffed his advances on a dating website, and threatened to stab the would-be suitor, as well as breaking into his home in Peckham.
Spence once attacked an innocent pedestrian in central London, kicking a box at the passer-by, spitting at him before punching the victim and biting him on his left shoulder.
While living in a care home for the homeless he launched a verbal attack on staff, throwing a glass of water which smashed against a wall and shouted he would ‘f*** [them] up’.
Just over two years later, Spence attempted to burgle a recruitment building in west London but was found hiding in the toilets after police chased him off the premises.
A year later, Spence punched a woman employee at Islington Borough Council offices in north London after he visited to raise issues with his accomodation.
She lost consciousness and was later taken to hospital after waking up the next day with serious head pain.