Zsuzsanna murderer handed life sentence again after retrial

Wednesday 17 March 2021

A man who kept the body of his “secret lover” in a car for three days before dumping her body on a remote beach has been given a life sentence for the second time.

57-year-old Jamie Lee Warn will serve a minimum of 14 years and two months for the murder of 37-year-old Zsuzsanna Besenyei on 10 May 2018.

Sentenced by the Royal Court today, Warn had been found guilty by a jury last November at the end of a retrial, following a successful appeal against his first conviction.

The original conviction, in June 2019, has been quashed by the Court of the Appeal after it identified irregularities in the first trial.

At the original sentencing, held shortly after the trial, Warn had been given a life sentence and was told he would serve at least 19 years.

At both trials, the construction worker was found guilty of murdering Miss Besenyei after an argument assumed to be over money.

He then tried to cover his tracks. This included depositing her body, which he had kept in the boot of her car for three days, at La Pulec in St. Ouen, commonly known as Stinky Bay, before driving through St. Aubin to abandon the Ford Fiesta in the early hours at the low tide mark at Le Haule.

Pictured: Zsuzsanna Besenyei was murdered by Jamie Lee Warn in May 2018.

He did this to ensure that the car was engulfed by the rising tide and to make it look like Miss Besenyei had taken her own life.

Warn then sent texts and emails between his own phone and Miss Bensenyei’s to give the impression that she was alive and he didn’t know where she was.

Despite not knowing how, where or when she was killed, the police used CCTV footage, data from mobile phone masts and messages sent between the pair to build up a narrative of what happened before and after Miss Besenyei’s murder.

Evidence included footage of him buying sanitiser the morning after her death and later moving her car to and from a First Tower car park to collect and then hide the body, and the fact that Warn’s phone connected with a Guernsey mast on the night of Monday 14 May 2018, which only covered Stinky Bay in Jersey.  

For the Prosecution at today’s sentencing, Crown Advocate Simon Thomas called for a minimum life sentence of 17 years and two months, which was the same as the Crown’s 20-year proposal at the first sentencing, minus the two years and ten months that Warn had already spent in custody. 

Defending, Advocate James Bell said this was too high, taking into account Warn’s lack of premeditation, the delayed legal process and his personal mitigation, which included his good behaviour in prison and his lack of relevant previous convictions. 

Passing sentence without Warn, after the defendant had refused to return at the end of the Court’s deliberations, Commissioner Sir William Bailhache said that the Court, in setting a minimum period in custody, would take a start point of 15 years and add time for aggravating features and subtract for mitigation.

He said that the only aggravating feature had been Warn’s attempt to conceal the body.

The court also accepted Warn’s lack of premeditation and the lengthy legal process, which he had not caused, as mitigation. It also took into account his good work history and the fact that he had generally led a “pro-social” life.

Sir William was sitting with Jurats Olsen, Ramsden, Ronge, Dulake and Austin-Vautier.

Warn’s conviction last November is the subject of an appeal which is due to be heard in May.