London - A South African man, dubbed the “Artful Dodger”, has gone on trial in the UK accused of killing his gay lover.
Ricardo Pisano, 36, of Cape Town, allegedly left murdered Michael Polding to rot in his Brighton flat for nearly two months before police found his body wrapped in bedding after being alerted by concerned relatives.
The Crown Prosecution Service claims Pisano abused and then violently assaulted the 62-year-old in May 2012 before fleeing the town and going on the run for nearly a year before being captured by British police.
On Wednesday, at Lewes Crown Court, Pisano denied charges of murder and causing grievous bodily harm, but has admitted preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body.
Pisano – who also went under the names Brandon Pillay, Ree or Ricky – was dubbed the Artful Dodger in South Africa after escaping from a New Zealand prison 12 years ago while serving a sentence for extortion. Aged 24, he had served eight months of a 15-month sentence when he escaped from a work prison party and disappeared.
A fellow escapee was recaptured in Australia in 2006 and extradited to New Zealand but Pisano had never been found.
He was the only one of 55 inmates to escape from Waikato prisons in the past decade and not be recaptured.
On Wednesday the court was told Pisano befriended Scot Polding in December 2009 after advertising himself in a gay magazine as a rent boy. The two lived together in south London before moving to Brighton in East Sussex.
Police previously said the victim had struggled to come to terms with his sexuality in his early years living in Scotland and had later moved to London and then Brighton in 2011, which has a sizeable gay community.
Prosecutor Philip Katz told Lewes Crown Court that Pisano pretended to be Polding’s carer and even godson while at the same time spending his money before battering him to death in his flat in May 2012.
A post-mortem said he died from “blunt force trauma consistent with an assault”.
He said: “The Crown’s case is that this defendant and other friends of his effectively bled Mr Polding dry financially.
“In fact, we say he abused and assaulted Mr Polding, resulting in a serious assault.
“We say that he eventually killed him, and having killed him, left him to rot.”
British detectives spent two months searching for Pisano.
Police issued an R80 000 reward, launched a dedicated website regarding the murder and made an appeal via YouTube.
Pisano was eventually caught by police in May in Southampton after police were called to a disturbance at a house. He has since been in custody awaiting trial.
In police interviews Pisano says he returned to Polding’s flat and found he had committed suicide by hanging himself from a banister. He said he tried to revive him but then panicked and fled, fearing that there were people in South Africa who wanted him and his family dead, so he couldn’t tell anyone about Polding’s death.
However the family of Polding told police he was not the type to take his own life.
Polding’s family
said: “Last year he decided to move to Brighton as he wanted to start a new life in the gay community.”
The trial is due to last five weeks.
Cape Times