My sister’s evil neighbour brainwashed, beat her & tortured her with a blowtorch before leaving her to die in a cupboard

AS EREENA Spencer laid the table at the family BBQ, she couldn’t but feel something, or someone was missing.

It was September 2022 and by this stage it had been months since she had seen her sister Shakira, 35, but she still hoped she might show up.

But what should have been a happy occasion will forever stick out in Ereena’s mind as one of the worst days of her life as that same day Shakira’s body was found in her flat.

Over the previous two years Shakira had been treated like a slave by Ashana Studholme and her accomplices Lisa Richardson and Shaun Pendlebury, who she saw as her friends. 

But they beat, burned and starved her giving her just ketchup sachets to survive off.

Not only had they been starving her, stealing her cash and living in her flat, they had been encouraging her into sex work to help fund their lifestyle.

Eventually they left her in a cupboard to die. Her body was discovered at her West London flat when neighbours saw maggots crawling out from under her door.

Her sister, Ereena, says she will never recover from the way her beloved sister died, and is haunted by the guilt of not being able to save her.

Mum of one Ereena, 36, from East London says: “Shakira and I were so close, friends as well as family. It hurts so much that she couldn’t come to me for help. 

“They must have brainwashed her and controlled her to the point where she couldn’t confide in anyone.

“So many times when we were younger, we’d pile in the same bed after a night out. It breaks my heart that I couldn’t protect her and offer her a place to sleep. 

“I had no idea what she was going through.

“I hope our tragedy can be a lesson for all agencies on how important it is to share information and make checks. 

“It’s a lesson for our communities too – please look out for the people who live near you. You never know what they might be going through.

“I would hate for people to think Shakira was forgotten. She was so loved by us all and we miss her every day.”

Full-time mum Shakira and Ereena were half-sisters who shared the same father, Lloyd, with just over a year in age between them.

Ereena says: “We became close aged around age 12. 

“We got on well, we’d message a lot, and we met up for family occasions, days out and picnics. 

“We have a big extended family so there were always birthdays, christenings, weddings, to attend.

“In our teens, we liked the same R&B artists and went to gigs together. 

“We liked clubbing and shopping. We lived in different areas of London, and we’d often stay over at each other’s flats. 

“Even when I went away to uni, we stayed in touch.  We’d go bowling or ice-skating, and we went on holiday too.

“Shakira was bubbly and positive and very normal, which makes what happened all the more shocking.” 

In 2010, Shakira had a son, followed by a second son the following year. 

Ereena says: “She loved being a mum, she’d wanted boys, close together, so she was happy. 

“I always enjoyed visiting my nephews, she organised birthday parties and at one party I met her neighbour, Ashana Studholme, who was helping to serve drinks. She seemed pretty normal. 

“She told me she’d been close with Shakira for years, which didn’t ring true, as I’d never met her. 

“But there was nothing to suggest she was a murderer, or that she was targeting Shakira. Even now, I can’t believe it.”

Early in 2021, Ereena gave birth to a daughter, who needed urgent heart surgery.

Ereena says: “It was a worrying few months and I had my hands full, with a newborn who was recovering from major surgery. 

“Shakira had arranged to visit her new niece, and she told me she wanted to talk to me about something.

“But then my daughter was rushed back into hospital, and so the visit was cancelled. I never found out what she wanted to tell me, and now I torture myself that maybe I could have helped.”

As time went on Ereena gradually heard less and less from her sister. 

“In August 2021, I invited Shakira to my daughter’s christening, but the message didn’t deliver and I just thought her phone was broken,” she says.

“As time went on, I tried her on social media, but the messages weren’t getting through. 

“I wasn’t worried, she wasn’t the sort of person you would worry about, she was a regular mum, getting on with life, as I was. I thought she was maybe busy.

“It was made more difficult because we were still living under Covid restrictions. 

“Her house was two buses and a tube ride away, an hour and a half journey, and I didn’t want to take my daughter, who had a weak immune system, on public transport. I wanted to visit, but didn’t think it was a good idea.

“I thought she’d be in touch eventually.”

In February 2022, Ereena invited Shakira and her sons to her daughter’s first birthday party.

She says: “Shakira replied but told me her boys were with their dad with her which stunned me. I couldn’t imagine why on earth that would happen. 

“I managed to catch her on her landline, because she said she no longer had a mobile, and we had a long chat.

“She sounded OK, not her usual bubbly self, but I put that down to her losing the boys. 

“I didn’t want to grill her over the phone, especially since we’d been out of contact for so long. I thought it best to see her in person.”

Shakira did not come to the birthday party and when the girls’ father, Lloyd, visited her, he was shocked at her appearance. 

Ereena says: “Dad said she’d lost lots of weight. He thought she might be taking drugs which I just couldn’t accept. 

“That was not Shakira at all. I tried messaging but they didn’t always deliver.

“By now, I had to contact her either by landline or social media. I got the impression she was checking her social media sporadically, maybe using a local library or a café.

“Dad planned a get together for Shakira’s birthday in June so that we could see her. I went along, but Shakira didn’t show up.

“She later messaged me to ask for £30, which again really shocked me. Shakira was the sort of person who did her Christmas shopping by October. She was organised and responsible and would never ask for money. 

“She was really sensible with her finances and so I was perturbed when I got the request for money. 

“Now, looking back, we know it was probably someone else controlling her social media.”

In September 2022, Ereena invited Shakira to a family BBQ, but again, she did not show up. That same day, her body was discovered at her flat.

Ereena says: “I was devastated. I presumed it was a natural death until police said they’d arrested three people, one was Ashana, her neighbour.

“It broke my heart to think that whilst we were all having fun together as a family, she was lying alone in her flat, waiting for someone to find her.”

Ereena and her family had to wait for the court case, in September last year, to learn the horrifying details surrounding Shakira’s death.

The Old Bailey heard Ashana Studholme, 39, and her accomplices, Lisa Richardson, 45, and Shaun Pendlebury, 26, had befriended Shakira and controlled her life in the year before her death.

She was lying alone in her flat, waiting for someone to find her

Ereena Spencer

She had trusted them as friends, through the loneliness of Covid lockdowns, but they had stolen her money, beaten her, burned her with a blowtorch and scalded her with a kettle.

Prosecutor Allison Hunter KC described the three as “a pack of feral savages” after they treated her like a slave. 

Shakira was forced to wake up early and run errands, after being fed only sachets of ketchup.

She was starved, burned and eventually battered before they bundled her into the boot of her own car and drove her back to her home in Ealing, West London.

She was last seen alive on September 12 2022, struggling to walk and falling to the ground. She was then locked in a hall cupboard to die.

Ms Hunter told the jury: “Shakira Spencer was clearly viewed as less than human by these three wicked defendants.”

The killers later moved her to a bunk bed where it is not known whether Shakira was alive at this point. They then left her body to rot for weeks.

The court heard that in the months leading up to her death, Shakira had fallen under the trio’s “complete control”.

She was isolated from friends and family as her freewill was “seemingly sapped and stolen from her”.

The pictures – taken in act of “unbelievable depravity” by the defendants – showed Shakira “bruised from head to foot with hollowed black eyes”, Ms Hunter said.

Jurors heard how Shakira was likely murdered between September 11 and 12.

CCTV captured the killers buying cleaning products and returning to the flat four days later where the decomposition would have been so bad, the defendants “left her there to be found”, the court heard.

A cause of death could not be determined but a postmortem found horror injuries Shakira had suffered before her death.

She had “crushing” injuries where her left ear would have been, lacerations on her scalp and wounds to her left eye socket.

The court heard there was “epidermal degloving of the feet, consistent with scalding”, where the top layer of her skin had been burned away.

They were found guilty of Shakira’s murder and preventing a lawful burial. In March this year, they were jailed for life with a minimum term of 34 years.