Wembley school dinner lady murdered for insurance money, Old Bailey hears (From Harrow Times)

Wembley school dinner lady murdered for insurance money, Old Bailey hears

2:05pm Tuesday 9th March 2010 in

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A SCHOOL dinner lady was murdered by her cheating husband for £375,000 of life insurance, a court heard.

Elif Oruc, 42, of Carlton Avenue East, Wembley, was stabbed in the heart and left to bleed to death on her kitchen floor in a “sickening” planned attack by Mikdat Sahpaz, prosecutors claim.

The 46-year-old defendant allegedly used money taken from a bank account set up for his daughter to fund his lifestyle and went on holiday to Germany with his mistress and her children.

But when faced with the prospect of a messy divorce from his loveless marriage, he killed his wife and ransacked their home in an effort to make the murder look like a botched burglary, the Old Bailey heard.

Duncan Penny, prosecuting, told jurors how Mr Sahpaz later collected their two children, 13 and nine, and brought them back to the house where their mother, who worked at Barham Primary School, lay dead.

The two children went into the living room after arriving at the house, at around 10pm on July 10, to find their Nintendo Wii had been ripped out of the wall.

Referring to the defendant, Mr Penny said: “When the man entered the kitchen he confronted a truly terrible site.

“There lying in front of him on the kitchen floor was the lifeless body of his wife, stabbed in the heart.

“She had been left to bleed to death in the last three hours. To most men, you might think, this sickening site would be something of a shock.

“To this man it was not and the reason was because this man was both her husband and her murderer.”

Mr Sahpaz, a translator at the Kurdish Community Centre, in Haringey, stood to gain from the death through a £375,000 life insurance payout and by taking control of two properties they had owned together.

Mrs Oruc was a successful businesswoman, having previously owned a sandwich shop in Preston Road, and was also a former dinner lady at Preston Park Primary School, in College Road, Wembley.

Mr Sahpaz denies murder.

The trial continues.