An Italian social worker accused of strangling a Highland policeman to death after meeting him on gay dating app Grindr will stand trial in October.
Stefano Brizzi, 50, is accused of murdering 59-year-old Pc Gordon Semple, originally from Inverness, before dismembering his body and dumping the pieces in the communal bins of his block of flats in south London.
Police were alerted after neighbours complained of a ‘smell of death’ a week after the officer disappeared.
Pc Semple, from Greenhithe, Dartford, was reported missing by his partner Gary Meeks on Friday, April 1, when he failed to come home from work.
Balding Brizzi, sporting a beard, appeared at the Old Bailey yesterday by videolink from Belmarsh prison wearing aviator Ray Ban sunglasses and a grey prison-issue tracksuit.
He spoke only to confirm his name and stayed seated throughout the brief hearing, occasionally stroking his chin or making notes in a small pad.
Brizzi was due to enter a plea to a charge of murdering Pc Semple between April 1 and 7.
But The Recorder of London, Judge Nicholas Hilliard, QC, said that hearing will how take place on 9 September.
The judge has set a provisional date of October 18 for the trial which is expected to last between a week and ten days.
‘The defendant is charged with the murder of a police officer who he met, it would seem, through Grindr,’ prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC said at an earlier hearing.
‘The Crown allege the defendant strangled the victim then dismembered his body and disposed of some of the remains in the communal waste bins and in other ways.’
The officer had worked in banking before joining the Metropolitan Police.
He was attached to a Westminster Council anti-social behaviour unit.
After the family announced his death on Facebook, his brother, Ronnie Semple, said: ‘I would like to thank everyone for their kind thoughts during the past dreadful week.
‘It has been a terrible time for us all, especially Gary.
‘Gordon will be sadly missed by all of his immediate family, his colleagues in the Met Police, former Bank of Scotland colleagues in Inverness and London, friends from his Tartan Army Days, but most of all the hardest loss is for Gary at this time.’
Brizzi, of the Peabody Estate, Southwark Street, Bermondsey, was remanded in custody and is yet to enter a plea to a charge of murder.
