A man who murdered a teenager and concealed his body in his loft for eight months has been jailed.
Gary Hopkins of Hartmoor Mews, Enfield was sentenced to life imprisonment to serve a minimum term of 22 years at the Old Bailey on Thursday.
The 37-year-old was also sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for each offence for perverting the course of justice and preventing a lawful burial – sentences to run concurrently.
Hopkins was found guilty of the three offences following a trial at the same court on 28 March.
His partner, Stacey Docherty, of the same address was sentenced at the same hearing to 27 months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice.
The 28-year-old had appeared at the same court on 31 May.
An investigation was launched after officers acting on a tip-off found a body in a second floor flat in Hartmoor Mews, Enfield, in August last year.
The body was eventually identified as Abdi Ali, 17, of Ostell Crescent, Enfield, who had been reported missing to police by his family in December 2017.
Ali’s decomposing body had been wrapped in a duvet and hidden in the loft, while Docherty and Hopkins lived with their three children below.
Police had acted on information from a female friend who had visited the flat in Hartmoor Mews.
She claimed Hopkins had been angry with a male who had fallen asleep at his address and that he intended to rob and kill the man. He then boasted he had done so before and claimed a body was hidden in the attic.
Hopkins placed a ladder against the wall and encouraged another friend who was also at the address to look into the loft, encouraging him to touch what he was looking at.
The shocked friend would later be told that the body was an unknown Somali male who was about 18 years old and that he had been disrespectful whilst in the house. Abdi often stayed in the address because he was homeless and would sell drugs in return as a mutual arrangement, police said.
On the day of the murder, just before Christmas on 21 December 2017, Abdi was asleep on the sofa. Hopkins hit Abdi with a hammer; breaking the tool and failing to kill Abdi. Hopkins fetched a knife and then stabbed the teenager in the heart, killing him.
Abdi was then robbed of money and drugs before his body was cleaned up, wrapped in bedding and black bags and placed in the loft.
The information was passed to police on 27 August, who attended the address on the same day, arresting Hopkins and Docherty.
A post-mortem examination gave Abdi’s cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head and stab wounds to the chest.