A British woman who murdered and dismembered her roommate before stuffing her body in a suitcase has been handed a 23-year prison sentence. Gareeca Gordon, 28, stabbed Phoenix Netts, also 28, four times in their Birmingham home on April 16, 2020 after Netts rejected her romantic advances, according to the Evening Standard. She later tried to cover up the murder by using texts, emails, and voicemails to convince Netts’ family and friends that she had moved to London. Thankfully, she was later arrested and charged with the horrific crime.
West Midlands Police
- Gordon was caught a month after Netts’ death. She was arrested near a quarry in Coleford, at which point two suitcases containing Netts’ remains were also discovered. It was later revealed that Gordon had dismembered the body into six pieces after purchasing a circular saw on the online marketplace Gumtree. She pleaded guilty only four days before her sentencing at Bristol Crown Court on May 4.
- Sexual rejection was behind the crime. According to prosecutor Andrew Smith, Netts confided in a friend that Gordon had “demanded sex with her” and became “aggressive” when she declined. “There’s a girl here who keeps asking me to be sexual,” Netts wrote to the friend in a text message dated April 7, 2020. “I think I’m going to move back to London. It’s scaring me lol.”
- Gordon called a Samaritan’s helpline shortly before the murder. In a call made on April 11, Gordon made a “tipsy” call to the emotional helpline. “The clear focus of the call was Ms. Gordon describing that she liked another woman and wanting to have sex with her,” Smith said. “At one stage Ms. Gordon said either that her loins were warming up or were hot.”
- Gordon wasn’t exactly conspicuous. Another woman living in the home shared by Gordon and Netts said that she heard drilling and banging noises on the day of the murder and shouts of “Help me! Help me!” Later, authorities discovered searches of “hot to fix punctured lung,” “internal bleeding,” and “can someone recover from getting stabbed” on Netts’ cell phone. There were also “handwritten plans and notes concerned with her removing the body from Coleford and moving it to Wales to burn further” in Gordon’s room.
- Now, Gordon will spend at least 24 years behind bars. Netts’ father said: “Our lives have been irreversibly changed and the anguish is indescribable.” Her mother added that she was “forever devastated, forever empty.”
