The son of a wealthy art collector who stabbed a maid at his family’s £20 million London home asked police not to arrive armed because he was “a nice boy from Chelsea”, a court has heard.
Maximillian Bourne attacked Joselia Pereira Do Nascimento at the five-bedroom property in Justice Walk on Feb 25 last year, before calling 999 and telling the operator he had stabbed a “demon woman”.
The 26-year-old was recorded on police body-worn camera footage telling officers “it was the devil” as he repeatedly apologised after his arrest.
A jury at Southwark Crown Court decided on Monday that Bourne had committed the act of attempted murder charged against him. He had been deemed unfit to stand trial because of his mental health.
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After the attack Bourne called 999, stated his name and told the operator: “There is this demon woman in my house and I stabbed her.
“I’m a nice boy from Chelsea. You’re just going to have to please not bring a gun. I do have blood all over me.”
He went to his uncle’s house after the incident, telling him from outside the front door: “I’m a good person but I had to stab the maid because she was full of demons.”
Bourne, who is the great, great grandson of Epitácio Pessoa, the former Brazilian president, described himself as “a nice, very good-looking white boy from Chelsea” during his appearance at Westminster magistrates’ court last year.
‘I pleaded with him to stop’
Jurors heard on Monday that Bourne and Ms Nascimento had been the only two people living in the house for around three months before the incident, as the defendant’s mother was abroad.
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In a statement read out by the prosecutor, Ms Nascimento said Bourne knocked on her door on the evening of Feb 25 and said: “Josey, come outside.”
“He started to attack me with a knife and he didn’t say anything,” she said.
“He was holding me by the blouse and he started stabbing my blouse. I was bleeding so much that I was using the blouse to stop the bleeding.
“When he was stabbing me he eventually let go of the knife and started to strangle me around the neck with both hands.”
Ms Nascimento said she managed to escape and lock herself in a bathroom, where she used her phone to call for help and told one of her friends she was dying.
The court heard that she tried to breathe quietly in the hope that Bourne would think she was dead.
She added: “He then said: ‘Open the door,’ which he repeated and was knocking.
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“I could feel my blood going down my body. I was losing blood.”
Describing the attack, she said: “I told him I have a daughter and I pleaded with him to stop.
“He told me that it was because I was evil, but we had never had an argument or a disagreement.”
‘Mentally very unwell’
Ms Nascimento said Bourne had not been behaving normally in the lead-up to the incident, recounting how he had been sleeping on the bathroom floor and talking to himself, the court heard.
Judge Gregory Perrins had explained to jurors that Bourne was not fit to stand trial because he was “mentally very unwell” and suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
He told them Bourne would not be present during the trial and that they would not be asked to return a verdict of guilty or not guilty but instead consider whether the defendant did the act charged against him.
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Following the jury’s decision that Bourne had committed attempted murder, the judge said it was “almost inevitable” that he would remain in a secure hospital for the foreseeable future.
Bourne will be sentenced at the same court on Tuesday.
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