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Vindictive’ killer pens bizarre ‘Dear Sophie’ APOLOGY letter for torturing French nanny to death with her ‘timid’ boyfriend as couple are jailed for total of 60 years.

A French couple who tortured their nanny to death before trying to burn her body in the back garden of their London home have been jailed for life.

Sabrina Kouider and Ouissem Medouni convinced themselves au pair Sophie Lionnet was spying on them for Kouider’s ex, former Boyzone member Mark Walton.

Kouider’s obsession with Walton drove her and her partner to increasingly extreme lengths as they tortured and interrogated Lionnet, a shy French 21-year-old who had never even met the former popstar.

A chilling clip, filmed days before her death, showed her emaciated and weak at the couple’s home near Wimbledon. She was killed in the bath during an interrogation session in September last year.

Kouider and Medouni denied Miss Lionnet’s murder, blaming each other for her death, but were found guilty by a jury. Today they were each jailed for at least 30 years.

Despite having put Miss Lionnet’s family through the ordeal of a trial, Kouider apologised to her victim in a statement read out in court today.

Sophie Lionnet came to London to work for Sabrina Kouider and her partner, who killed and tortured her due to paranoid delusions. She is pictured before her ordeal

The 21-year-old is pictured emaciated and starved a few days before she was tortured to death

Kouider and her boyfriend Ouissem Medouni interrogated Miss Lionnet before killing her

Miss Lionnet's mother, Catherine Devallonne (second from the right) and her father Patrick Lionnet (left) attended today's sentencing hearing — Miss Lionnet’s mother, Catherine Devallonne (second from the right) and her father Patrick Lionnet (left) attended today’s sentencing hearing

Kouider wrote: ‘Sophie I am shocked and sad that you are not part of this world any more. It feels like a horrible dream to me that I wish I could just wake up from.

‘I am suffering every day thinking of you and what happened to you and I wish I could turn the clock back.’

Passing sentence, Judge Nicholas Hilliard said Kouider and Medouni could have used the interrogation videos showing Sophie’s false confessions to extract money from Mr Walton.

Judge Hilliard said: ‘It always struck me that there might be a reason, that the videos might be sent to Mark Walton to extract financial gain from him.’

The judge told the couple: ‘It is plain that you were volatile and prone to outbursts of temper.

‘I am sure that subsequent accusations were, to a significant degree, driven by a desire to exact revenge upon Mark Walton for what you managed to persuade yourself he had done and not simply to ensure that the matter was investigated and justice take its course.

‘In June 2017, Sophie wrote to her father and said she was being verbally abused and accused of things she wouldn’t do and wanted to come back.

‘Where you had previously been involved in a kind of mental torture of her during the interrogations of her, it is plain to me that you now engaged in physical torture of her.’

They blamed each other for the killing, but were convicted of murder and jailed for life today

The judge added: ‘I am sure on all the evidence that you were in fact both involved in torturing Sophie in the bath in the lead up to her death and making her think she would drown unless she gave you information that you wanted but was not in her power to give because it didn’t exist.

‘The suffering and terror you put her through before her death was prominent and without pity.’

Killer’s bizarre apology to dead nanny read out in court

Kouider wrote a letter to court ahead of her sentencing hearing

Sabrina Kouider bizarrely apologised to the victim after she and her boyfriend killed, in a letter read out in court.

Kouider said she was sorry for killing the au pair and wished she could ‘turn the clock back’.

She said: ‘Dear Sophie, May peace be with you. First of all I wish everyone especially her parents and family well, all are suffering.

‘How deeply sorry I am for what happened and in fact we shared many good times.

‘Sophie I am shocked and sad that you are not part of this world any more.

‘It feels like a horrible dream to me that I wish I could just wake up from.

‘I am suffering every day thinking of you and what happened to you and I wish I could turn the clock back on what happened and you could still be alive today.

‘Sophie I wish things could have been different and that you rest in peace with a God.’

The trial heard more than eight hours of recorded interrogations, in which Miss Lionnet was slapped, likened to a Nazi collaborator and called ‘worse than a murderer’ by the couple.

In her final days, Miss Lionnet was hit with an electrical cable and beaten so badly she had five fractured ribs and a cracked breast bone.

She appeared broken and disorientated in a videoed confession hours before she was tortured and killed in the bath.

When firefighters investigated a pungent-smelling smoke coming from a bonfire, Medouni tried to pass off her charred remains as a sheep. The couple were also cooking a barbecue in an attempt to mask the smell.

And Kouider claimed to police that Miss Lionnet had run off with LA-based Mr Walton in an attempt to frame him for her disappearance.