Matriarch, 71, Jailed for Helping Son Cover up Killing of UK Drug Dealer

Matriarch, 71, Jailed for Helping Son Cover up Killing of UK Drug Dealer
An undated police mugshot of Sophia Kokkinos, who was jailed for perverting the course of justice at the Old Bailey in London on Nov. 1, 2022. Metropolitan Police
Chris Summers
Updated:

LONDON—A 71-year-old woman who helped her son dispose of the body of a London drug dealer, which was later found on fire, has been jailed for two years.

Sophia Kokkinos helped her son Raphael when he called her after killing Loeike Guei, 23, at his flat in Streatham, south London.

On Tuesday, Kokkinos, 35, was jailed at the Old Bailey for nine years for manslaughter and his mother was locked up for two years by Judge Angela Rafferty for perverting the course of justice.

Rafferty told Sophia Kokkinos, “You have failed to express any remorse to the probation service.”

The trial heard that two days after Guei was killed, at around 6 a.m. on Sept. 17, 2020, a cyclist spotted a body on fire on Mitcham Common in south London.

The jury heard Guei had been beaten to death by Kokkinos, who owed £40,000 ($45,850) to him after a batch of Guei’s cocaine was stolen from his apartment.

Kokkinos admitted the manslaughter of Guei and conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Undated handout photo of Loeike Guei, 23, taken prior to his death in September 2020. (Metropolitan Police)
Undated handout photo of Loeike Guei, 23, taken prior to his death in September 2020. Metropolitan Police

After a trial Sophia Kokkinos and Aaron Williams, 30, were convicted of perverting the course of justice in June this year. Williams was also jailed for two years on Tuesday.

Benoni Thomas, 38, was acquitted of manslaughter and Michael Brain, 29, was cleared of perverting the course of justice.

Kokkinos’s brother, Joseph Kokkinos, 32, was also acquitted of perverting the course of justice.

Prosecutor William Emlyn-Jones, QC, told the jury Guei was a drug dealer who had entrusted Kokkinos with £40,000 worth of cocaine but it was stolen from his flat in Streatham during a burglary in August 2020.

A month later Guei arrived at the flat after Kokkinos told him he was going to give him his money.

After a fight, Guei was killed and Kokkinos recruited his mother and Williams to help him dispose of the body, Guei’s car, and his mobile phone.

Emlyn-Jones said they took the body of Guei—who was six feet two inches tall and weighed 18 stone—to Mitcham Common in the middle of the night and set it on fire.

Guei’s girlfriend, Simone Hales-Johnson, gave birth to his son three weeks later and she told the court, in a victim impact statement, that he will grow up to have questions about his father which she will not be able to answer.

Hales-Johnson said: “Loeike was a special man. He was growing into the man he was destined to be.”

She added that on some days she was “crippled with grief.”

The judge was told Sophia Kokkinos had a number of convictions for dishonesty, but they all dated back to the 1970s.

Matriarch Acquitted of Smuggling Drugs in 2003

The Epoch Times can reveal that in 2004 Sophia Kokkinos was acquitted of attempting to smuggle more than 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of cocaine and 345 kilos (760 pounds) of cannabis into Britain.

In August 2003 the drugs —with a street value of £4 million ($4.6 million)—were discovered hidden in a consignment of yams from Jamaica that arrived at Portsmouth docks on the south coast of England.

The Epoch Times can also reveal that in 2015 Sophia Kokkinos was interviewed by Tanisha C. Ford for a book called “Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul.”

Ford wrote that Sophia Kokkinos’s family were Greek Cypriots who had come to London from Cyprus in the 1950s and she had grown up in south London and became fascinated by black, and particularly Jamaican, culture as a teenager.

Ford wrote in her book, “Kokkinos claimed that if you went to a blues party in Brixton in the early 1970s, ’the only white face you might see is me, or my brother'.”

Sophia Kokkinos told Ford she became “militant” because she saw the racism black people were facing and she said her friend, the feminist and black nationalist activist Olive Morris, went to a house where the British Black Panthers were based to see if they would let Sophia join.

Ford wrote, “Kokkinos was greatly disappointed when Morris returned to tell her that the Panthers would not accept her because she was not black.”
Chris Summers
Chris Summers
Author
Chris Summers is a UK-based journalist covering a wide range of national stories, with a particular interest in crime, policing and the law.
Related Topics