A life of drug abuse, petty theft and mindless violence

A profile of the troubled life of Philip Spence, who battered three Emirati sisters with a hammer at a London hotel.

Philip Spence after his arrest. Courtesy Metropolitan Police

LONDON // Crack addict Philip Spence racked up a string of convictions for violent attacks before trying to kill the Al Najjar sisters with a hammer.

According to friend Emma Moss, the thug “always has a hammer with him” and had once tried to batter his landlord with the weapon years before the hotel assault.

On the night of the attack, Spence had been smoking crack for two days and was high when he spotted the women’s room ajar while creeping through the hotel corridors.

It not the first time he had casually wandered into the Cumberland unnoticed by security. Spence started visiting the four-star Marble Arch hotel when he was just 13 and would climb onto the roof with his friends to play.

In the years that followed Spence regularly slipped unnoticed into the upmarket hotel looking for an open linen cupboard to sleep in.

A month before he attempted to murder the Sharjah sisters, he snatched a suitcase from a guest at the hotel. On the night of the attack, CCTV images from the hotel show Spence strolling confidently through the lobby, apparently unnoticed by security.

During the trial, while demonstrating how he carried out the attack using a rolled-up magazine, Spence lost his cool and managed to stop himself before he launched the prop at the prosecutor.

He had to be kept apart from “partner in crime” Thomas Efremi when entering and leaving the dock after scuffling with him in the doorway.

The pair led a depraved lifestyle, funding their mutual crack addiction through government benefit payments and flogging stolen goods.

Jobless Spence would regularly sleep at Efremi’s north London flat, smoking drugs for days at a time, sleeping and borrowing his clothes.

Born in Islington, north London, to an Italian mother and Jamaican father, Spence was expelled from school at the age of eight following an incident of sexual abuse. He later attended Northampton Residential School but left with no qualifications and went to live in a hostel.

He was 19 when his descent into drugs began with cannabis, before his addiction to crack and heroin.

Spence said he supported his habits through state benefits and stealing until he was arrested and attended a rehab clinic.

After a six-year dry spell, homeless Spence relapsed into using crack and heroin in 2012. He was in debt to drug dealers and told jurors he was scared and had been stabbed.

Spence threatened his landlord in Forest Road, Walthamstow, on November 13, 2007. He became abusive, snatched a hammer from his landlord’s bag and chased him. He battered a door with the hammer, smashing the glass panels to try to get to his victim.

Spence also once flew into a rage after a man rebuffed his advances on a dating website. He threatened to stab and kill him and broke into the man’s house on Peckham Grove, south-east London.

The thug once attacked an innocent pedestrian in central London. He kicked a box at the person, spat at him, punched him and bit him on his left shoulder.

He also launched a verbal assault on staff at a care home for the homeless where he was living. He threw a glass of water, which smashed against a wall and shouted he would “f--- [them] up”.

Just over two years later, Spence attempted to burgle a recruitment building in west London. He was found hiding in the toilets after police chased him off the premises.

The crack addict has racked up a number of convictions for burglary, with his first brush with the law in 2003. In June 2004 he notched up further sentences for burglary and battery.

By February 2006, Spence was convicted for a further three offences related to burgling commercial premises and attempted burglary.

A year later he visited Islington Borough Council offices and launched into a tirade about his accommodation problems, shouting “you will deal with this!” to a female member of staff. He then punched her in the face, causing her to lose consciousness.