Stafford Road victim murdered by restaurant staff, court told

A jury were warned they would have to view extremely graphic images of the murder scene before being shown computer reconstructions of horrendous injuries caused by a knife, a metal scaffolding pole and a threaded barbell.

Alan Kent QC told the jury at Lewes Crown Court the images and videos they would have to view would not be easy to watch.

The scene was heavily bloodied, he told them.

“We’ve tried to sanitise the evidence but it is impossible to sanitise it completely,” he said.

“The injuries have to be graphically set out because it is important for you to understand the different type of weapons used.

“Even the computer generated images are graphic but you will need to look at them,” Mr Kent said.

Police found Albanian Serxhio Marku, 21, either dead or dying in the kitchen at a tiny one bedroom Brighton flat shared by Italians Francesco D’Agostino, 44, and Giuseppe Petriccione, 45, in Stafford Road, Brighton.

The Italians worked in a restaurant in the city.

Marku, known as Jack, was a drug dealer the court heard.

Mr Kent said bloody hand prints around a doorframe at a flat showed Mr Marku was hanging onto it as the defendants tried to drag him back in.

“Looking at the blood distribution on the outside of that flat, you might reach the conclusion Serxhio Marku tried to get out and reached the front door before he was pulled back inside to where the assault continued.”

The Albanian drug dealer was the victim of a brutal, sustained and determined attack at the flat in Brighton on September 11 last year, Mr Kent said.

The police computer reconstruction of Marku’s body showed more than a dozen wounds from a sharp object and more than 20 blunt force injuries.

Both men were covered in blood as if they had been jumping in a puddle, Mr Kent said.

“The connection between Serxhio Marku and the two defendants was drugs, notably cocaine.”

The Italians had contacted him several hundred times in the months before the attack.

Both men are blaming each other for the murder, the court heard.

“What we don’t know is why he was attacked in the flat within minutes of him arriving,” Mr Kent said.

“All we can do is trace it back to the text message.

“The plan to lure him to the flat and for the two defendants to beat him, assault him and kill him in the way they did.”

Mr Kent said: “What we do know from telephone records is at 11.41 pm a text message was sent from D’Agostino’s phone.

“It was sent in Italian.

“The text was sent to a contact in his phone, translated it says this Tonight I will commit a murder.”

Both men deny murder.

The trial continues.