Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #303: Dirty Money (Li Hua Cao & Robert Ekaireb, Hampstead, NW3)25/6/2025 
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND THREE:
Back in 2006, Flat 9 of the Pavilion Court on the Mount Vernon Estate was the plush matrimonial home of Mr & Mrs Ekaireb. For Li Hua & Robert, their whirlwind romance meant they married just seven months after they had met and with a baby on the way, it should have been the perfect start But having wedded a jealous and controlling monster, Li became a hostage in her own life, she lived in fear, she lost everything, and just two and a half weeks after her wedding, he brutally murdered her. This is a story about money, and how it never leads to happiness.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a purple 'P' below the words 'hampstead Heath'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How do you prove a murder without a body? Find out on Murder Mile. (Intro music) This is Frognal Rise in Hampstead, NW3; four streets west of the murderous mother-in-law Styllou Christofi, two streets south of the home of Pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and one street north of the bungling burglar who broke the bank and then he broke his neck - coming soon to Murder Mile. Off Hampstead Heath in one of the poshest parts of London sits the Mount Vernon Estate comprising of three mansion blocks of opulent apartments with many flats costing upwards of £2 million. Owned mostly by corporations, it’s the kind of place a shady Russian oligarch might live if believing he’s an English gentlemen; by calling his Egyptian butler Jeeves, drinking tea with his pinkie finger held high, saying ‘one does’ instead of I, eating posh chip butties, and having filthy dreams about The Queen. With high gates, security guards and CCTV, here money can buy you privacy, but not always safety. Back in 2006, Flat 9 of the Pavilion Court on the Mount Vernon Estate was the plush matrimonial home of Mr & Mrs Ekaireb. For Li Hua & Robert, their whirlwind romance meant they married just seven months after they had met, and with a baby on the way, it should have been the perfect start. But having married a jealous and controlling monster, Li became a hostage in her own home, she lived in abject fear, and just two and a half weeks after her wedding, she lost everything… including her life. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 303: Dirty Money. To tell Li’s story, we need to travel 5000 miles east to Dalian; a Chinese coastal city famed as one of the busiest shipping ports in East Asia. It’s wreathed in modern architecture being a financial centre, and with a wealth of sandy beaches and seafood markets, it’s a hot spot for tourists and ex-pats. Born in 1979, Li Hua Cao (Lay Wah Tsow) – which translates as ‘Pear Blossom’, but aptly also means ‘pretty and talented’ – was one of four children with one brother and two sisters in a loyal and loving working-class family with an incredible bond, which – regardless of distance – kept them together. As a traditional Chinese girl, for Li, her family was everything, their happiness and prosperity was her goal, but - with her parents divorced and having to live with an aunt - by her 20s, she wanted to better herself, but with her options limited in Dalian, Li and her brother (Li Bin) looked towards the West. Many mistook Li as simply ‘small’ and ‘pretty’ being just 4 foot 11 and roughly 80lbs, but dubbed a ‘fire dragon’, although warm and loving, Li was also strong, smart and independent. So in 2002, aged 21, keen to learn English, Li and her brother travelled to Cork and Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. As a student, she worked as a waitress, but with her tips and wages biting her tight budget, she began working as a lap dancer. Some tabloids have made this sound seedy, but being protected from gropes and drunks by bouncers, she earned a month’s wage in a night for doing little more than ‘hot yoga’. In November 2005 at an unnamed Dublin strip club, a client paid Li £270 for a 5-minute lap dance, he was the man who would marry her, but just 11 months from this moment, he would also murder her. Born in Hendon, West London in the autumn of 1974, Robert David Ekaireb was raised in privilege; his pampered childhood was spent in the affluent suburbs of Hampstead and Finchley, he went to all the best fee-paying grammar schools, and he never had to worry about anything as his father was minted. Rex Solomon Ekaireb was an accountant, who in the 1980s set up a company at 45 Hatton Garden in London’s jewellery quarter. By 1986, purchased by a larger company, R&R Wholesale Jewellery became one of the largest sellers of wedding rings to the high-street retailer, Argos, making Rex very wealthy, and as he invested his fortune into properties, his Influence and power only got greater. By the time Robert left school in 1990, unlike his brother who became a successful banker at Goldman Sachs, he joined the family business. Like his father, he was shrewd, and although, in 1998, aged just 24, Robert set-up his own company (Cuzzie Properties) from that same office in Hatton Gardens, later described as “a wealthy jeweller and property developer owning a £65 million empire”, it all spawned from his father’s hard work – a familiar trope, as when things got dicey, he always ran back to daddy. Having met over a lap dance, paid for – let’s not forget - by Robert, he and Li quickly became an item. To many, they seemed like an odd couple; a tiny Chinese lady barely the size of a child, and a 6 foot 2 inch 18 stone Iraqi-Jewish hulk whose face rarely cracked a smile and whose eyes scanned in suspicion. In court, his defence counsel painted an unfair picture of Li as “a gold-digger” who saw this far-from-handsome multi-millionaire as her “cash-cow”. In truth, she was a dutiful Chinese daughter who put her family before herself, and as detectives later stated “her whole life was to support them. But what I find saddest is, despite that, I think she wanted to be a good wife for him, and she would have been”. Li wanted it to work, but because of who Robert was, the relationship was doomed to failure. Everything you need to know about Robert can be gleaned from the way he lived his life. He never lived further than a few miles away from his father, and the two of them owned many of the same properties. As a strict Jew, he only ate kosher and never worked, drove or used electricity on the Shabbat. And diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder; he constantly scribbled in notebooks getting through as many as 50 biros a day, many of the clothes in his walk-in wardrobe were still sealed in their original packaging, and unable to touch dirty laundry, he had several suitcases hidden away from earlier trips to Paris, Venice, Prague and EuroDisney, that remained unopened and unwashed. Maybe as a sign of his childish ways and his obsession with himself - or some might say it was low-self-esteem – he had a £3 million teddy bear collection, a fleet of prestige sports cars and a Bentley, a bedside phone shaped like Mickey Mouse with its number plate being his own name, and he owed an golden iPod which was engraved in diamonds with the words: “I am Robert Ekaireb, the one and only”. But mostly, we know the kind of man he was through his past relationships with women. In 2000, five years before he met Li, Robert was madly love with Martina Kamenistiakova of Slovakia. Little is known about their life together, except that he showered her with expensive gifts, he set her up in Flat 3 of Gainsborough House on the Mount Vernon Estate (a lavish three-bedroomed apartment with a gold-plated toilet and gold-leaf carpet embroidered with the Versace logo), but - having had enough of his obsessive, manipulative and controlling ways - when Martina left him, he locked the doors for six years and never returned, leaving the flat like a time capsule, or a shrine to his lost lover. Everything in his life he had to own and control, even the women he claimed to love. Detectives would later state, “Robert saw Li as a pretty Chinese doll who he could do what he liked with and no one would care”. But as a fiercely independent fire dragon, “he more than met his match”. The first few months of their romance was as ordinary as any other, as this odd couple from different worlds learned what made each other tick. As he was devoutly Jewish, she only ate kosher food and lived a solitary life on the Shabbat. He wouldn’t let her cook, but she assumed this was a cultural thing. She was sympathetic to his obsessive behaviours, and although he showered his lover with gifts and paid for everything, she thought it odd that she had no money of her own, and he didn’t let her work. In July 2006, just seven months after they had met, even though her family had urged Li to ‘slow down, they travelled to China and married. He already controlled her finances, now he controlled her life. During the trip, Li’s sister witnessed an argument between the couple which resulted in bruises to her arms and scratches to his chest. The Police were called, and although he should have been charged with assault, it was dropped when he agreed to make monthly payments to her parents. Everything Li was doing was for them, and yet for Robert, he always knew he could buy his way out of trouble. Returning from China, in the first week of August, Robert moved his blushing bride into Flat 9, a second floor, one-bedroomed apartment in Pavilion Court on the Mount Vernon Estate in Hampstead, just a few doors down from the sealed ‘time capsule’ that he once shared with his ex-lover, Martina. As an exclusive gated community for the wealthy, Li was shielded from the evils of the world. Inside, it must have seemed like she had everything that money could buy; from the latest fashions to fancy gadgets, to a large pristine apartment full of designer furniture, marble floors, again a gold-plated loo, and a £45,000 cream carpet in one of the six flats on the estate that he co-owned with his father. But what she lacked in her life was happiness, and freedom. One of the porters said, “Robert came across as a very nice chap but he had a nasty temper”, as having made a minor mistake, he recalled “the phone was red hot… he was absolutely fuming with rage”. Robert’s temper was volatile, his moods swung from apathetic to fiery in seconds as he was terrified that Li would return to her old life, with the irony being that they met when he paid her for a dance. He was so paranoid that he constantly checked her phone and forbade her from ever having friends. He controlled her money, her life, her existence, he treated her like an object, and now – conceived in the second week of June before they married in China – she was 3 months pregnant with his baby. It was no mystery to anyone that Li wanted to escape his control. She had barely known him a year, and yet, she had tried to leave him six times, with the first just one week after they had moved in. On the 15th of August, just nine weeks before her murder, Li fled the flat. In her broken English, she sent him a text saying: “you are not love me. Enjoy your life, you are big bad man". Replying in seconds, Robert pleaded with her “Li, I am crying my eyes out, I am going to kill myself. Without you there is no life. You are carrying my baby, please tell me where you are. I am dying". But she responded "no chance for you. You are sick. You can't find me anymore. We are finished. I don't love you no more". That day, he flooded her phone with dozens of calls and messages – on one occasion, he had sent 64 in a row – begging "Li, please, I am not bad. I will do anything, please give me one more chance. I know I am wrong. I love you more than anything in the world" - anything, not anyone. And having reported her missing to the Police, although she was scared of him, she agreed to come back if he changed. He picked her up, drove her to Flat 9, and promised he’d move the Earth to make her happy… …two weeks later, he assaulted her. On the 28th of August, just seven weeks before her murder, having dined at an exclusive restaurant in the West End, they were in the midst of a blazing row as Robert drove them home in his Bentley. He said it was because he hated her smoking while she was pregnant, she said he was jealous of her past. Driving up the High Road, their shouts and screams were heard by passersby, suddenly the car served, Li dashed out, and when the Police arrived, she was found cowering inside of East Finchley Food & Wine, an off licence at 334 High Road; she was distressed, with cuts and grazes her to arms and head. Robert was arrested for Li’s assault and possessing a flick-knife, but being persuaded to withdraw the charges by Robert’s father, Rex, having again promised to change, she gave a statement which read “my husband… has never been violent towards me”. And yet, the next time he was, he would kill her. Over the following weeks, becoming increasingly paranoid; he accused her of cheating on him (even though he was sleeping around), in August he hired a private detective to follow her, and by the fateful month of October, he had booked a polygraph machine as he didn’t believe that the baby was his. He controlled every aspect of her life, and then – as a mere formality – on the 4th of October, he had them marry in a simple ceremony at Barnet Registry Office, trapping her forever under English Law. She married him again, but she wanted out, feeling strangled by his suffocation. She told her friends and family she was leaving for good. She withdrew £1800 from a Lloyds bank account she had recently opened in secret. She told a trusted ally, Yin Tuen, she’d even work as an escort girl rather than live with him. And on the 19th of September, just four weeks prior, she scheduled to terminate the baby. She never went ahead with the abortion, as – maybe - deep down, she hoped there was a chance. But oddly that same month, in a conversation protected by doctor/patient confidentiality, he admitted “I feel unsafe by my own anger”, and although he claimed “of course, I would never do this”, he also confessed “I’ve had thoughts about stabbing Li to death”. Robert said it was just a paranoid fantasy… …but soon, it would become a horrific reality. Little is known about that happened on Monday 23rd of October 2006. That evening, Li was alone in Flat 9, her bored whistle echoed the cold cavernous walls, as with Robert out and her family 5000 miles away, she stroked the swollen bump of her pregnant belly, her baby four months from birth, yet it’s uncertain if – that night – she had already packed her bags to leave. There were no witnesses to what happened, yet the evidence told the truth. Li’s last known sighting was never recorded, but from the flat, four times that day, Li had telephoned her brother in Denmark with the final call at 8pm precisely, in which she said that she was unhappy. At 10:53pm, she called Robert’s mobile, the reason for the call is unknown, and at 11:07pm, Robert’s key fob to the car park on the Mount Vernon Estate was activated. CCTV captured his Bentley arriving, and he was witnessed by the security guard in the lodge who noted it in the estate’s logbook. At roughly 11:10pm, Robert entered Flat 9 on the second floor. And that is all we know. He told the court, “she left me, packed her bags… said her family needed her” and never saw her again, as this terrified lady whose life he had dominated in full for almost a year, he - supposedly - let her walk free. Besides, there was no CCTV of Li leaving, nor did she pass a porter or security guard with her bags. Yet, he was a man with a fiery temper who controlled everything, and she was about to leave him? He carried a flick-knife, once he’d beaten her, and he had confessed “I thought of stabbing her to death”. An unnamed witness in the block said they heard “a woman screaming”, but did nothing, as money can buy you privacy, it also ensures apathy as they didn’t alert the estate’s security, or call the Police. How he killed her remains unknown, but we know it happened between 11:12pm and 11:43pm, as at 11:44pm, Robert did something he always did when things got dicey, he went running back to daddy. He claimed he called his father as he was upset because Li had left him. And yet, just passed midnight, this man who struggled with OCD and had suitcases of used clothes as he couldn’t touch old laundry, suddenly had an overwhelming urge to remove a heavy roll of cream coloured bedroom carpet from a flat he had lived in for just nine weeks, and - seen on camera and by security - he loaded it into the boot of his car, and having driven 5 miles south in his father’s car, at about 1:40am, he arrived in Soho. At 1:08am, supposedly distraught that Li had left him, Robert phoned the manager of Club Tantra, a celebrity nightclub at 62 Kingly Street, just off Carnaby Street. That was the last call ever made from the phone in the flat, and Robert never returned there, ever again. He claimed, he went clubbing to “drown his sorrows”. We know he drove his father’s car, as it was given a parking ticket on nearby Beak Street. But his real reason for being there wasn’t to let off steam, but to dispose of Li’s body. Club Tantra was ran by a member of the Adams family, the infamous Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate who – it is alleged – ran extortion rackets, armed robberies, and were responsible for up to 25 murders, “with one former member having confessed to dismembering and dumping at least four bodies”. The prosecution stated, Robert used his ‘alleged underworld connections’ to have her body disposed of, and although it sounds far-fetched, in April 2015, Robert’s father, Rex was charged with converting criminal property to launder cash for Michael Adams, the brother of Terry, the syndicate’s godfather. After this, Robert went to live with his parents, and stated he never returned to Flat 9, even though between 9:45pm on the 8th of November and 12:04am on the 9th, his key fob was repeatedly used. Across the next eight weeks, the flat was professionally cleaned possibly by the gang’s own experts in forensics, as not a single bloodstain was found; they bleached every surface, painted every wall, shined the marble floor until it was spotless, and the £45000 carpet was replaced with an exact copy. Robert claimed “I had it professionally cleaned as a condition of the letting”, and that, just weeks after they’d moved in, both he and Li had planned to move to another flat he owned at nearby Heathview Court. On the 21st of December 2006, the flat was rented out, and some unlucky tenant moved in. Days after the murder, Robert was said to be in a “zombified state”, as seen by Richard Bailey, a porter at the Mount Vernon Estate, he said as they pulled up “I went to speak to Robert and his father. Robert just sat staring straight ahead, he didn’t say a word”. And even though Li had vanished supposedly taking his baby with her, he didn’t call the Police, he made no attempt to find her, he didn’t call or text her phone, and seven days later, he tried to rekindle his relationship with his old flame, Martina. But a person can’t simply disappear, especially a woman who was five months pregnant. Ken Rowan, another porter said “I suddenly stopped seeing her and never saw her again”. On the 17th of November Li missed her six month pregnancy scan, and (using her mobile) Robert lied to the midwife as to why. With the family growing concerned, as much as he manipulated Li’s life when she was alive, he did the same in death, as Robert tried to leave a false trail that she was still living, but wanted to be left alone. He told her family, “she left me… she’s ran away with someone”. He texted Li’s friend as if he was his wife writing ‘This is a message from Li Hua. Does Tina [Hong Yu] still live with you?'. And in very poor Mandarin, he called Li’s sister to tell her “Li has given birth to a baby girl”, yet four months premature. By Sunday 18th of February 2007, having neither seen nor physically spoken to Li except for a few texts in bad English, having failed to wish her family a Happy Chinese New Year, they reported her missing. As part of the inquiry, Robert gave four voluntary interviews; he stated she left him in mid-November, she had walked out on him five times prior, he said he didn’t know where she had gone but suspected she had returned to Ireland, and with no evidence of wrongdoing, with Li “being a free spirit… used to travelling and had many short-term relationships”, the investigation was “no longer actively pursued”. Li’s parents couldn’t tell her elderly grandparents that she was missing or possibly dead for fear it would kill them, so instead believing she had simply run away, “we have to put up with them slagging her off, saying ‘what a bad daughter she is’”… when the truth was much darker and sinister. Li’s body was never found. Whether the gang had dismembered her body, dissolved it in acid, burned it, or buried it on the 560 acres of wasteland with old warehouses, a disused canal, tunnels and sewers in Stratford - which two weeks before the murder, it was announced that McAlpine won the contract to build the 2012 Olympic Stadium – with construction not starting until the 22nd of May 2008, detectives believed but couldn’t prove that this is where she was dumped, as the gang’s lawyers blocked any attempt to question them. Detective Inspector Andy Manning stated “we will never know how Li died or what happened to her body…”, but her family never gave up hope, nor quit the pressure to seek the truth. In 2009, the case was referred to the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, but owing to the passage of time so much evidence was gone; the flat was clean, a witness had died, the logbooks were binned, the CCTV was routinely erased after 14 days, and although extensive ‘proof of life’ enquires were made in Ireland, China, Japan and Europe, nothing suggested that Li or her baby were alive after that date. Getting on with his life having got away with murder, by 2012, Robert had a 2-year-old daughter and another baby on the way with a new long-term partner. But you don’t need a body to prove a murder… …you just need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a murder has been committed. For years, Police has built a ‘brick by brick’ case of circumstantial evidence to prove his guilt, including the flat, its clean-up, the calls, the arguments, the assault, and that – since the 23rd of October 2006 at 8pm – no-one had spoken to her, and her bank accounts, emails, phones and passport remained untouched. It was impossible not to leave a trace of yourself in a digital world for whole seven years. Then at a storage unit rented by Robert and his father, Rex, Police found Li’s wedding ring, and on the 7th of June 2012, he was arrested and charged as he tried to fly to Prague on a one-way ticket. (Out) The ten-week trial began at the Old Bailey before Judge Nicholas Cooke QC in October 2013. 39-year-old Robert pleaded ‘not guilty’, but owing to the weight of ‘circumstantial evidence’, even without her body found, on the 19th of December 2013, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 22 years, this being a higher tariff as he refused to say where her body was buried. Judge Cooke described him as a “callous, manipulative and selfish hypocrite… your disposal of the body is a very serious aggravating feature”, and having maintained his innocence, “the bereaved will have suffered agonies of false hope… this was a murder of a pregnant wife, so in that sense you have ended two lives. This is a case of extreme domestic violence in a bullying and controlling relationship”. The Chief Prosecutor said: “after seven years of deception and denial, Robert Ekaireb has now been brought to justice for the murder of Li Hua Cao. Ekaireb wove a web of lies in order to deflect suspicion away from him…. I hope that this conviction today can provide some small comfort to Li’s family”. But bullish to the last, Robert lodged an appeal on the 29th of October 2015; claiming his lead counsel was incompetent and rendering his conviction unsafe, that he suffered with depression and OCD, and that he had recently been diagnosed with Asperger, which impacted his questioning by the detectives. In the years since Li vanished, he never expressed any loss at the wife and baby he wouldn’t see again, or about her family who could never bury her, or fully grieve her passing. On the 16th of December 2015, his appeal was rejected, and as of today, Robert Ekaireb remains in prison until at least 2035… …and it was all because of dirty money. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
Archives
July 2025
Subscribe to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast
Categories
All
Note: This blog contains only licence-free images or photos shot by myself in compliance with UK & EU copyright laws. If any image breaches these laws, blame Google Images.
|