Man thought he'd joined 'family' until they buried him in concrete garden tomb

Christophe Borgye, 35, was murdered by his housemates Sebastian Bendou and Dominik Kocher.

A detective who helped crack a murder case has revealed the chilling moment a man admitted to killing his housemate alongside two other flatmates.

Frenchman Christophe Borgye, 35, walked into his kitchen to discover his three flatmates all brandishing knives in Merseyside back in May 2009. The globe-trotting enthusiast then vanished without a trace, with his case going cold for four years.

Christophe, who was employed as a Ryanair cabin crew member, was killed, interred and entombed in concrete within the outbuilding of the property he shared with Manuel Wagner, from Germany, and Sebastian Bendou and Dominik Kocher, both from France.

Christophe encountered the trio after his work colleague introduced him to a mate he played football with, reports the Mirror. His pal, Kocher, offered Christophe lodgings in a property on Hylton Court in Ellesmere Port.

Kocher, a wed dad-of-three, wouldn't demand rent but would take his monthly wages to cover bills and groceries with the pledge that any leftover cash would be handed back at the end of his stay. Anton Sullivan, a former Inspector at Cheshire Police who probed the killing 16 years ago, said: "Kocher said to him that the way it works is it's a family group who looked after each other.

"Kocher said he would do the cooking, the cleaning, do the weekly shop, and Borgye had to pay his wages into this joint account. Christophe was a trusting soul, people might think he was naïve but he wasn't, he took them on face value and gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. He was happy, he got the best room in the house and could travel with work.

"Bendou and Wagner would go out doing menial labour jobs - pot washing, cleaning, those kind of things. It was apparent that Kocher would take all of their earnings and treat them like children. If they wanted new clothes or anything like that, Kocher would get it for them. He would do their cleaning, their cooking, and they were happy to live like this.

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"Looking back on it, Kocher was probably planning that there was going to come a point where there was no money left. It became apparent that the bills were being paid for by Christophe because Kocher and his wife were living well beyond their means."

But Kocher's hand was forced when Christophe told him he was being moved to Brussels.

Kocher assisted him in booking his flight to Dublin where he was due to meet with Ryanair to arrange his new life in Belgium, but the unsuspecting Frenchman had no idea his own murder was already being plotted, reports Liverpool Echo.

Mr Sullivan said: "On April 23, when Christophe had returned late at night from work, the three of them went out, bought additional equipment and prepared the kitchen, telling him they were going to conduct a thorough clean of the house. The following morning they summoned the victim downstairs to the kitchen where everything had been arranged.

"The tarpaulin had been spread out, they were wearing gloves, they had protective shoe covers on and each one of them had a knife. The victim was instructed to begin cleaning beneath the sink and that's when they launched their attack."

The trio commenced their brutal assault on the 35 year old but the knives "weren't up to the job" after he was stabbed twice, with Wagner producing a claw hammer and striking Christophe over the head, killing him.

Mr Sullivan continued: "We didn't know until the last investigation when Bendou admitted that Wagner was the one to bring the hammer which wasn't part of the original plan. The knives were very ineffective in causing fatal injures and the victim was in shock. Then they started using the hammer and they're the injuries that the pathologist determined to be what killed him.

"Once they committed the murder they quickly wrapped him up in the tarpaulin, stuffed him into the grave they pre-prepared in the shed and started preparing the concrete before cleaning up the scene. A few hours later, we have receipts that show they all went to Chiquito's at Cheshire Oaks where they all had lunch and then they just carried on with their lives."

Christophe was buried in a concrete structure in the garden of the property alongside the weapons.

Mr Sullivan continued: "They sold his car, they sold his records and CD collection to Music Magpie, we even managed to prove that Kocher had used the victim's credit card to buy an anniversary card for his wife. It became apparent that Kocher was the ringleader who orchestrated this."

When dedicated worker Christophe failed to show up for his job for a week, his workmates grew concerned and eventually alerted police after visiting Ellesmere Port but receiving no response.

One colleague contacted Christophe's brother Noel to inform him of his disappearance, prompting Cheshire Police to launch a missing person investigation. However, there were no clues to follow.

Bendou informed officers he had disappeared without indicating his destination, and investigations pressed on. Subsequently, an email arrived in his relatives' inboxes claiming he had suddenly departed to travel around China with a woman he had encountered.

Several elements didn't sit right with his family, especially Noel who was set to wed that year - an occasion Christophe had promised he wouldn't miss. Wagner and Bendou continued residing in the property where they had savagely killed their housemate before relocating to Warrington with Kocher and his family in 2012.

They later moved to rural Scotland, establishing themselves in the town of Dumfries. Mr Sullivan believes that the burden of the murder began to erode Bendou, who started showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia.

One evening in April 2013, Cheshire Police received a call from a French-speaking man confessing to having killed his flatmate four years prior. From a phone box, he told the police: "This is too much for my mind".

Bendou journeyed to Cheshire where he admitted to the murder, claiming it was self-defence. Mr Sullivan, an Acting Inspector at the time who could speak fluent French, was called in.

He said: "I sat down with him and we had a brief conversation which went along the lines of him telling me in his own language what he was on about. He looked dishevelled, like he hadn't had a bath in weeks, and he just said 'I want to confess to killing my housemate in 2009, we had an argument and I buried him under the shed at the bottom of the garden'.

"Clearly, not what I was expecting, but I decided to take down some notes and conferred with a colleague. He'd given the name of Christophe and that's when we realised we had an outstanding missing from home case and he was still missing.

"We made the decision to lock him up, arrest him on suspicion of murder, and at that point I wrote down the details of what he said in French. I asked him to read it and sign it, and at that point he asked to speak to a solicitor."

Mr Sullivan traced Christophe's relatives before assisting in securing convictions against the three murderers across two separate court cases. Under interrogation, Bendou altered his account to disclose the complete scope of his co-conspirators' participation.

As the situation became clearer to investigators, Kocher and Wagner were detained on murder charges. Kocher and Bendou were later formally accused of murder whilst Wagner faced allegations of assisting in relocating the corpse.

Kocher and Wagner appeared in court in 2014, where Kocher was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 23 years. German citizen Wagner was part of the identical proceedings; nevertheless, he escaped a murder charge due to inadequate evidence.

He confessed to unknowingly assisting in moving Christophe's remains and was acquitted of aiding an offender and obstructing a lawful burial. Bendou required treatment for his psychiatric condition before appearing at a separate hearing.

He was convicted of murder and handed a life sentence with a 14-year minimum term. Officers were determined to secure Wagner's conviction for his involvement in the killing, with Bendou serving as a crucial witness in the murder case that occurred in 2017.

Bendou testified that whilst he and Wagner wrapped Christophe's remains and transported them to the shed, Kocher prepared the concrete. Upon initial arrest, Wagner claimed he was unaware of events and believed Christophe was "living happily ever after" in China with a girlfriend.

He informed officers: "I didn't play any part in disposing of his body. I was shocked and shaking. I couldn't believe it. Christophe and I lived together for a long time. I considered him more of a friend than a housemate."

Wagner later informed the police that he remembered coming home and seeing Bendou, who asked for his assistance to move a tarpaulin-wrapped "package". He attempted to persuade the jury that he thought this might contain some rubbish, adding: "I don't know if it was the body or not."

However, the jurors saw through his deceit and returned a unanimous verdict of guilty for murder, before he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 16 years.

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