A serial killer’s drug dealer who targeted victims through gay dating apps has been found guilty of murdering a former James Bond actor with a drug overdose.
A jury at the Old Bailey convicted Gerald Matovu, 26, of killing Eric Michels, 54, after the pair met through dating app Grindr in August last year.
Mr Michels – who had an uncredited role in 2012 Bond film Skyfall and a number of other movies – was found dead at his home in Chessington in Surrey, having been plied with a fatal dose of gamma hydroxybutyrate.
The drug, known as GHB, is often used by gay men who engage in so-called chemsex – using drugs to enhance sexual experience – but has also been frequently linked to instances of date-rape.
Mr Michels was one of 12 men supplied with drugs by Matovu and his lover Brandon Dunbar, 24, over a 19-month period, jurors heard.
Matovu, from Southwark in south London, had previously admitted to selling GHB to serial killer and rapist Stephen Port, who was sentenced to life behind bars in 2016 for poisoning four young men he had met on Grindr with the substance and raping them.
After Port’s trial, Matovu pleaded guilty to supplying mephedrone and GHB – but denied knowing what Port had planned to do with it.
He was subsequently sentenced to a year’s worth of community service, 150 hours of unpaid work and 40 days of drug rehabilitation in April 2017.
At the Old Bailey yesterday, prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC told how Matovu and Dunbar used Grindr to meet men, take advantage of them and steal their property and bank details.
#BREAKING two men have found guilty on 29 counts after targeting men using Grindr, drugging them with GHB and stealing their property.
Tragically, one of their victims, Eric Michels, died after Matovu plied him with an overdose of the drug. #WATCH to hear more about the case👇 pic.twitter.com/7xxCM8g4aH
— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) July 15, 2019
After a night out in Soho in August last year, divorced father-of-three Mr Michels messaged Matovu on the app and invited him to his home, the court heard.
He picked up his would-be killer from a homeless hostel before they stopped at a Sainsbury’s, where CCTV footage shows the pair laughing and shopping.
When they returned to Mr Michels’s Surrey home, Matovu drugged him and, with his victim incapacitated, took photographs of his bank cards and driver’s licence, before making off with his laptop, mobile phone and a suitcase full of alcohol.
That evening, Mr Michels’s 14-year-old daughter sent him a text but received no reply, the court heard. After a follow-up message the next day, she received a ‘totally uncharacteristic’ response saying: ‘Hello hun im a little busy talk soon.’ When she called her father’s phone, a man answered and quickly hung up.
The following day she and her mother – Mr Michels’s ex-wife, who he divorced in 2010 after coming out as gay – went to his home and discovered him motionless in bed, covered by a duvet. An empty syringe without a needle was found on the floor next to him.
After deliberating for 26 hours, the jury found Matovu guilty of murder, and his lover Dunbar culpable of a string of other charges.
Mr Michels’s family shouted out ‘yes – the rest of your life in prison’ as the verdict was read out, while their loved one’s killer looked on impassive.
Speaking to BBC News, Mr Michels’s son Sam said: ‘I’ll never meet anyone like him ever again in my life. Losing him has been like losing a limb.’
His other son, Josh, said: ‘The devastation it causes is unbelievable. Especially when he had so much to live for. He was only 54.’
Matovu and Dunbar are due to be sentenced on September 5.