Dubai: The London thug who admits to bludgeoning three defenceless Emirati sisters with a claw hammer had faced a similar accusation last year.
Philip Spence, now 32, was cleared last April in a London Magistrates Court of attacking his pregnant girlfriend as she cowered in a bath from a rain of blows delivered with a chair leg.
And Spence was also accused of pouring boiling water over the defenceless victim.
Court records show Tracey Hughes, then Spence’s lover, was attacked in a small flat in Clapton, a hardscrabble neighbourhood of east London.
The then-28-year-old woman was in the late stages of pregnancy when the vicious and frenzied attack took place.
Spence, the two-day trial heard, was allegedly high on illegal street drugs when the Clapton bath battery took place.
Hughes was scalded and battered in the attack.
As she tried to protect herself from the chair leg, Hughes’ wrist snapped and one of her finger’s broke.
“Slag,” Spence shouted at Hughes as she was hit again and again.
She tried to defend herself as best as she could — she was stabbed, one of her lungs collapsed and she suffered cuts, stab wounds and bruising across her body.
During the trial in Magistrates Court in April 2013, Spence denied trying the kill Hughes. Instead, he and his lawyer successfully argued, he acted in self defence and wasn’t fully aware of his actions.
Almost a year to the day later, Spence was on radar of the Metropolitan Police again.
Court testimony this week heard that Spence was allegedly behind the vicious attack on Khuloud Al Najjar, 36, and her sisters Ohoud, 34, and Fatima, 31 as they slept at the Cumberland Hotel.
Spence admits entering their seventh-floor room at the four-star hotel near Marble Arch. He carried a claw hammer in the robbery attempt and is accused of repeatedly hitting them, inflicting life-threatening injuries on the sisters.
