For all appearances, Fadi Nasri and Nisha Patel-Nasri were a perfect couple. He was running a limousine service, while she was a hairdresser. Together they earned around 150,000 pounds, and her friends believed they were about to start a family soon.
When Nisha was found murdered in May 2006, the Cairo-born, London-bred Fadi Nasri was inconsolable.
On Wednesday, Nasri was once again desolate, when the court convicted him of organising his wife's murder to claim her 350,000 pound insurance.
Nisha, who worked as a volunteer policewoman, was found murdered on the pavement outside their London home the night after the couple celebrated their third wedding anniversary. Initially the cops believed that she was stabbed by an intruder in her home, but as the investigations proceeded the suspicion shifted to the husband when he started transferring assets in his name.
The next breakthrough was when they found a woman's photograph on Nasri's cell phone. He had met Laura Mockiene, a 25-year-old prostitute earlier that year. The two even went on a vacation to Lithuania, Spain and Los Angeles after Nisha's murder.
As the cops dug deeper they were astounded to find that Nasri had debts of over 100,000 pounds, ran an escort agency and his limousine service doubled up a front for drug deals.
Plus, unknown to his wife who he courted in style, he had a violent streak. He was jailed in 1998 for trying to mow down a police officer whose only mistake was to ask him about an out-of-date tax disk.
Apparently the streak ran in the family. Nasri Sr was accused of setting fire to his girlfriend and her son, and killed himself in prison in 2001.
Nisha Patel wanted her husband to clean up his act and lent him 15,000 pounds to start the limo firm, and even gave him 58,000 pounds towards mortgage on their home. While Nasri drove around in a Lexus, she often worked 14 hours a day seven days a week, investigators told the court.
Naturally, things were not cosy in Eden and Nasri got to know that Nisha was in fact planning a divorce. Three months before her violent death, the couple took out insurance policies. He was her sole beneficiary.
Given his business, Nasri knew enough criminal elements to do the job for him. But he didn't take care about wiping the trail clean.
Next month, Nasri and the two others contracted by him to do the dirty job will be sentenced for their crime.
Image: Nisha Patel-Nasri (right) and her husband Fadi (left) with her brother Katen Patel at their wedding. Photograph: Metropolitan Police via Getty Images.
Inset: Nisha Patel-Nasri's brother Katen Patel. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
