A crystal meth-using Satanist strangled and dismembered a police officer he met through a gay dating app, and tried to dissolve the body in a bath of acid — a technique he learned by watching his favorite TV show, “Breaking Bad,” a London jury was told.
Stefano Brizzi, 50, a former Morgan Stanley computer programmer, is accused of heinously murdering Officer PC Gordon Semple, 59, in Brizzi’s south London home on April 1.
Prosecutor Crispin Aylett told jurors Thursday in opening statements that the case required people with “broad minds and strong stomachs,” according to UK media.
Brizzi denies the murder charges, claiming that PC died accidentally during a sadomasochistic sex game gone wrong.
Semple, described as “sexually promiscuous,” had arranged to meet with Brizzi through Grindr for drug-induced “hot, dirty, sleazy” sex, prosecutors said, according to the BBC. Other men were also supposed to join in for a sex party at Brizzi’s place.
Jurors were told that Brizzi was allegedly in the middle of choking Semple, a native of Scotland, when another man showed up at his door and was eventually turned away by Brizzi.
When the man, only identified as CD, “pressed the entry buzzer, someone who can only have been the defendant replied over the intercom, ‘We are having a situation here. Someone fell ill but we’re taking care of it. So our party is cancelled.’ CD turned around and went home,” the Independent reported.
Days later, neighbors alerted the authorities after noticing a “revolting smell” coming from the residence.
When cops showed up, they found Brizzi wearing only sunglasses and underwear, as well as something more disturbing — a bath full of acid with “globules of flesh” floating around, the jury was told.
Brizzi — who, jurors were told, was “obsessed” with the show “Breaking Bad” and believes in the devil — got the idea to dissolve Semple’s body using acid after watching the American crime drama, prosecutors said. In the episode “Cat’s in the Bag,” a character pours hydrofluoric acid on a body in a bathtub.
Brizzi allegedly told police, “I’ve tried to dissolve the body … I’ve killed a police officer.
“I killed him last week. I met him on Grindr and I killed him. Satan told me to.”
Brizzi had admitted to obstructing a coroner by dismembering and disposing of the body, UK media reported.