David Alexander Smith

The offence

What the court heard

He was found guilty (retrial) of murder in Southall, west London, on 29 August 1991. Sentencing Remarks of Mr Justice Bryan 1. David Smith, you have been found guilty of the murder in 1991 of Sarah Crump. I must now sentence you for that abhorrent murder which was, I am sure, both sexual and sadistic in nature, and which culminated in you sexually mutilating her body having fatally stabbed her in the neck as she lay naked on her own bed. I make clear at the outset that it will be necessary for me to identify the nature of such offending as it is relevant to the minimum term I must set. 2. This is not the first time that you have been tried for that murder, having stood trial for Sarah Crump's murder at the Central Criminal Court in July 1993 before Mr Justice Blofeld and a jury, at the end of which you were found not guilty by the jury. 3. Nor is this the first time you have been found guilty of murder. Following a trial at the Central Criminal Court some six years later on 8 December 1999 you were convicted of the subsequent murder of a sex worker, Amanda Walker, in strikingly similar circumstances to your murder of Sarah Crump, with Amanda Walker's body also being sexually mutilated by you, for which you were sentenced to life imprisonment. No recommendation as to minimum term was made by the trial judge, although a minimum term of 18 years' imprisonment was set subsequently. You had not yet been released on licence for that murder when you were charged with Sarah Crump's murder. 4. The relevance of your conviction for the murder of Amanda Walker to the present trial is that it was one of the areas of new and compelling evidence that led to you again being charged, on 20 May 2021 with the murder of Sarah Crump, and that also led to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division ordering that you be retried for the murder of Sarah Crump, having quashed your earlier acquittal. 5. I am satisfied (as were the CACD before me) that the killing of Amanda Walker was an important element of a wider spectrum of evidence that reveals, indeed, it was the culmination of, an escalating pattern of, violent and sexual offending by you against, but not limited to, escorts and sex workers, which commenced with your conviction in respect of the knife-point rape in 1976 of a housewife in her own home, and in front of her young children, continued with your alleged attempted rape of an escort on 18 August 1991, again at knife-point (and of which you were acquitted at another trial…

Around this case

• Inner London Crown Court
• Prosecuted by Crown Prosecution Service
• Investigated by Metropolitan Police Service