Who was Zara Aleena, what happened to her - and how was murderer Jordan McSweeney caught?

Zara Aleena was just minutes from her front door when she was attacked by Jordan McSweeney. The 35-year-old law graduate had been on a night out and was walking along Cranford Road, Ilford in London towards her home on 26 June.

Her death sparked renewed debate about women’s safety, in the wake of the murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa. Ahead of McSweeney’s sentencing campaigners including members of Million Women Rise Up, and Refuge were outside the Old Bailey to show support for Zara’s family and demand an end to violence against women.

McSweeney, 29, pleaded guilty to Zara’s murder and sexual assault and was jailed for life at the Old Bailey on Wednesday and will serve a minimum term of 38 years.

Jordan McSweeney was caught on CCTV drunkenly lurching in the street after being ejected from a pub for pestering a female member of staff.

He followed three women and confronted a fourth before he targeted Zara. The attack lasted nine minutes and resulted in 46 separate injuries. Zara was found with severe head injuries and struggling to breathe.

Emergency services were called at 2.44am but she died in hospital from compression to the neck and blunt force to the head. But who was Zara Aleena, who is Jordan McSweeney and how was he caught?

Who was Zara Aleena?

Law graduate Ms Aleena, 35, was a “active citizen” who lived by the principles of fairness and justice. She was training to be a solicitor and was known in the movement to end violence against women and girls before she became a victim of it herself.

Zara had begun working at the Royal Courts of Justice five weeks before her death and was “the happiest she had ever been”, her family said.

Speaking as her murderer was jailed for life Zara’s aunt Farah Naz said: “We want to get a message across to say this should not have happened. Violence must stop towards women. Zara should not have been killed and this was avoidable.

“Zara’s death has made campaigners out of all of us and we will not stop.” She described her niece as “an assertive, outgoing, articulate and funny person”. She said: “What she talked about was fairness and justice and that was her real focus – she saw herself as equal to any person.”

Finding out she had been murdered after a night out in Ilford in June, Ms Naz went into “extreme shock, disbelief, anger and paralysis”. On how Zara would be remembered, her aunt said: “We don’t want her last hours, her end, to define her. Zara means literally radiance and she was the heart of us.

The heart of our family. And the heart of her community, the heart of her friends, and that’s how we remember her. That’s what’s been taken, the heart of us. I think of her as an ambassador of the end of violence against women and girls. And I think she would be really proud to be that.”

At McSweeney’s sentencing hearing Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said Zara was a talented and spirited woman, the judge said, adding: “The defendant had the advantage of strength and surprise. In everything else, she was better than him. She was simply a happy, healthy woman living her life in what most Londoners think of as the best city in the world.”

While Refuge Chief Executive Officer, Ruth Davison, said: “Refuge and our sister organisations across the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) sector today stood outside The Old Bailey in support and solidarity with the family of Zara Aleena.

“Refuge’s thoughts are firmly with Zara’s family today and with the families of all women who have lost their lives to male violence. The details that have emerged today as Zara’s murderer was sentenced are abhorrent. Zara was a woman with her whole life ahead of her.

“She should be alive today. What we have learned about the man who brutally murdered her is that he had followed four other women that night, he had fully intended to commit an act of violence against a woman. This is why women are afraid.”

Who is Jordan McSweeney?

McSweeney has 28 previous convictions for 69 separate offences including burglary, theft of a vehicle, criminal damage, assaulting police officers and assaulting members of the public while on bail.

Even though McSweeney had a long history of low-level crime, there were precursors before the night of the murder. However, a jigsaw of CCTV from earlier in the night showed he had followed other women after leaving a bar drunk and possibly high on drugs.

The footage showed him lurching in the road and almost being run over by a car, before he spotted a lone woman. Detective Chief Inspector Dave Whellams of the Met Police said: “The first thing that you get from this particular case is Sweeney’s determination, his focus. He is one track, he’s just going to follow females.

“We see him following at least two females before the attack on Zara. And he’s persistent. The worrying thing for me is he’s not put off. These females become aware of his attention and they decide to take evasive action, they come into shops, they run down roads, they run past their own address, rather than go in. But he is not put off. He then moves on to another and he moves on to Zara.”

McSweeney had been released from prison on 17 June and his licence was revoked after he missed probation meetings. Some 24 hours before the murder, police went to his family address but found he was not there. Whellams said: “As far as I’m aware, the police did as much as they could do with what they knew at the time.”

Whellams said McSweeney had been driven by a desire for sexual gratification and had shown no remorse. The senior officer said: “He can only be described as a danger to women. His very demeanour, the way he is, the focus that he has and his don’t care less attitude. He is somebody that we really can’t allow out on the streets. Women will always be a danger in my opinion.”

How was McSweeney caught?

McSweeney was arrested the day after Zara’s murder. A bloody fingerprint helped police crack the brutal murder of Zara within a matter hours, the officer who led the investigation has revealed. Detective Chief Inspector Whellams described how Met Police officers moved in to arrest sexual predator Jordan McSweeney while he slept in a caravan at a fairground – just one day after he killed Zara.

Whellams said his mind began racing as soon as he was given the basic details of the case he and his team were to take on. He said: “It was a stranger attack so there is no suspect per se. It is a case of whodunnit. I know it’s a lone female and I know that she’s walking through a busy residential area which has a footfall and traffic flow and yet somebody has mounted a very violent attack.

“I have to decide the priorities and where I think the best possibility of wins can be achieved, whether there is CCTV, whether there is forensics, wherever there is house-to-house or witnesses that may have seen something.”

Working backwards from the crime scene, officers recovered grainy CCTV footage of the attack on Zara and the minutes that led to it. Whellams said: “We pick Zara up in Cranbrook Road. He is behind her for a considerable period of time. We’re talking hundreds of yards.”

“There comes a point where he catches up with her and he must make his mind up that he is going to attack whether he thinks there’s nobody around or whatever, he attacks then. He jumps on her and he drags her into a front garden. It’s absolutely shocking.

“He’s in the front garden of a house, a residential house, where people are in. There would have been an altercation, there would have been a lot of noise but he wasn’t worried about that. He just single-mindedly wanted to attack. You get the sense of the ferocity of the attack, how brutal it was. And it was brutal. And it was sustained.

“We’re talking about a grown man of proportionate size against a small, slightly built woman who had no idea – this was completely out of blue.”

By tracking the killer’s movements on CCTV, police were able to circulate a clear image which produced around half a dozen possible suspects. A forensic examination of the scene also uncovered a fingerprint in blood which, which due to the poor quality, initially failed to provide a match on the national database.

However, details of the six potential suspects were sent to a fingerprint expert who compared each one and came up with a positive match to the bloody print.

Whellams said: “The fingerprint expert said that’s a match for Jordan McSweeney, and that was it. That was a crucial piece of information.” Having retraced the attacker’s route from Cranbrook Road to a fairground in Valentines Park, an officer was deployed to ask if anyone knew him.

Whellams said: “Lo and behold, yes, they said that’s Jordan McSweeney. And then the next question was, ‘Do you know where he is?’ “The answer to that was yes, he’s in that caravan asleep. So that was how quick it all took place.”

When officers went to make the arrest, McSweeney appeared “confused” and “dazed”. In his police interview, he remained silent and gave no explanation or sign of remorse when shown the CCTV. But an examination of McSweeney’s caravan and the fairground provided further overwhelming evidence. It included a bag deposited under the skirting of another caravan containing his bloody clothes and shoes.