Overview
- A jury at the Old Bailey found Eugeniu Neamtu guilty of murdering his 63-year-old flatmate Gheorghe Trica after three hours of deliberation on Tuesday, August 18, 2026.
- Prosecutors told jurors the February 20 stabbing in Walthamstow matched a 2006 attack in Romania in key details — a drunken row over money, a chest stab wound, an attempt to discard the knife and later recovery of the blade — and used those parallels to support their case.
- Neamtu, 59, had been convicted in Romania in May 2007 for stabbing a housemate in the chest and was released from Romanian custody in 2023 before moving to east London.
- Judge Richard Marks KC allowed evidence of the earlier stabbing’s facts but excluded the Romanian victim’s death and the foreign murder verdict from the jury to limit prejudice; Neamtu denied murder and said he acted in self-defence.
- Met Police recovered a black-handled steak knife from the garden after witnesses saw Neamtu throw an object from the flat’s balcony, and he has been remanded in custody to be sentenced later this week.