Kentish Town transsexual prostitute was strangled by last customer, court is told

A PRE-OP transsexual was strangled at her home in Kentish Town by a man who had visited her for a sexual encounter, a court was told. Murder victim Destiny Lauren, 29, of Leighton Crescent was choked to death in the early hours of November 6 last year by

A PRE-OP transsexual was strangled at her home in Kentish Town by a man who had visited her for a sexual encounter, a court was told.

Murder victim Destiny Lauren, 29, of Leighton Crescent was choked to death in the early hours of November 6 last year by her "last customer" Leon Fyle, 22, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard this week.

Ms Lauren, who worked as a prostitute, was born Justin Samuels - and her uncle was Paul Hill, a member of the Guildford Four who wrongly served 15 years in jail for two IRA pub bombings.

Duncan Penny, prosecuting, said: "The Crown's case is the defendant Leon Fyle telephoned Destiny Lauren on that evening and it was he who travelled across London to visit her.

"It was he who went to her place for the purpose of a sexual encounter, it was he who killed her there by compressing her neck, most probably by strangulation."

The murder victim was born a man but changed her name at the age of 17 and began living as a woman - getting breast implants but retaining male genitalia, the court was told.

Her brother Linden, who suffers from schizophrenia, had been staying with her but whenever a client called round he would leave the flat.

That night he waited outside the block, walking around streets, where he saw a man matching Fyle's description with a "bad looking face" arrive in the flat soon after he had left, the court heard.

Fyle, of Laleham Road, Catford, denies murder.

The trial continues.

Updates to follow.