Murderer's girlfriend got Police job to access files

A woman who got a job at UK’s Hammersmith Police station so she could data track a witness whose evidence helped convict her gangster boyfriend of murder has been jailed.

Lydia Lauro, from Earl’s Court , tried to find a key witness who had given evidence against Leon De St Aubin at his trial in a bid to help his appeal while working as a civilian Designated Detention Officer (DDO) in the custody suite of the Shepherd’s Bush Road station.

The 33-year-old and her co-defendant, Hayden Cheremeh, a former Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) who she seduced and enlisted to help, were jailed for five years each.

She did not show any emotion as the sentence was passed, while Cheremeh, who was “totally obsessed” with Lauro, refused to attend court.

Lauro and Cheremeh, 36 and from Clapham, gained illegal access to sensitive data on the Metropolitan Police Service’s (MPS) Criminal Intelligence Database on a number of occasions in 2012.

More than 150 confidential reports were looked at while trying to track down the witness. They were convicted of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a Public Office at the Old Bailey last year.

In sentencing, Judge Anthony Morris said Lauro also used the database to look up the details of people in custody at Hammersmith Police Station “in order to find sexual partners”.

She had joined the Met just two months after St Aubin’s sentence, in January 2012, and continued to visit her partner in prison.

St Aubin and Rupert Ross had been convicted of the gangland execution of Fulham resident Darcy Austin-Bruce at an Old Bailey trial in November 2011.

Within two months she made her first attempt to unlawfully gather information from Met’s Criminal Intelligence system, but as a DDO she could not gain access.

Lauro enlisted the help of fellow detention officer Cheremeh who, as a former PCSO, did have access to the intelligence system. Phone records showed a number of texts from Lauro to Cheremeh, persuading him to access the system to gather information about a number of individuals who it was believed may have supplied information to the police.

The messages also revealed she plied Cheremeh with sexual favours to get his access to the system.

Audits of the intelligence system later showed Cheremeh made numerous unauthorised attempts to discover the identity of the protected witness and others.

The information gathered was passed on, and as preparations began for the appeal hearing, it became apparent to officers that highly sensitive details was being obtained from the MPS intelligence system. A full investigation was begun by officers from the MPS Anti-Corruption Command and subsequent enquires uncovered the conspiracy.

Cheremeh was arrested in May 22 2013, and Lauro three days later at Luton Airport as she returned from a holiday. They resigned from the Met after being charged with conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office in March 2015.

Laurie-Anne Power, defending Lauro, said she was misguided, vulnerable and had been badly influenced. Jeminipe Akin-Olugbade, defending Cheremeh, described him as a “naive, infatuated and possibly over-idealistic person who got caught up in actions far greater than himself”.

Diana Lank, the 60-year-old mother of Ross, from Fulham , was found not guilty of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice at the Old Bailey following a second trial in December last year.

One of the witnesses who testified against the St Aubin, from Chelsea , and Ross, from Fulham, in 2011 did so after being granted anonymity, speaking from behind screens with the additional protection of voice modification.

Mr Austin-Bruce, from Fulham Court, was gunned down in a car park outside Wandsworth prison in May 2009. The 20-year-old was blasted several times in the back and torso in front of women and children also visiting the prison.

Two years later St Aubin, of Lucan House, and Rupert Ross, from Vera Road, were sentenced for the gangland execution.

St Aubin and Ross had their leave for appeal refused at the Royal Courts of Justice in May 2013.

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