He lived in a flat with a gold-plated toilet, a £45,000 carpet and owned a fleet of prestige cars, including a Bentley. The killer spent the trial on bail after paying a £1million surety and was backed at earlier hearings by his brother Jason, a £3million-a-year Goldman Sachs banker. Property tycoon Robert Ekaireb was yesterday found guilty of killing his pregnant wife Li Hua, 27, although her body has never been found, Ekaireb stared at his sobbing girlfriend in the public gallery as he was convicted of murder yesterday.
Justice Spencer QC told him he will be jailed for life. The trial heard Li Hua had a whirlwind romance with Ekaireb after he paid her £270 for private dances at a lapdancing club in March 2006.
Her family said she travelled from the coastal city of Dalian to the West to find a wealthy husband and at first he showered her with affection, cash and gifts. The couple married in China within weeks and had a simple ceremony at Barnet Register Office to formalise the arrangement. But 6ft 2in Ekaireb was obsessive, jealous and unstable, telling a psychologist he was scared of his anger and had visions of stabbing his 4ft 11in wife to death. Li Hua tried to leave him six times, but on every occasion he persuaded her to return.
At the time of her disappearance she was 22 weeks pregnant, and her husband wanted her to take a lie detector test to prove the baby was his.
Despite his jealousy, he continued to see a previous Slovakian lover and had an affair with a neighbour.
Police believe Ekaireb killed her in a fit of rage fuelled by his suspicion that she was sneaking off to charge up to £600 a time for sex. Her last known actions were calls to her family on the night of October 23, 2006, when she said she was desperately unhappy and wanted to leave. Detectives traced how she called the businessman on his mobile before he returned home late that evening. A short time later he called the manager's office of a West End club operated by a senior member of the Adams family. Police suspect he held a 'council of war' at the club to plan the disposal of her body. It was not until February 2007 that Li Hua's family reported her disappearance. A missing person inquiry began which later became a full murder inquiry in 2010. By then police could find no trace of the young woman with her bank accounts left untouched, her mobile unused and no record of the baby being born.
A second flat which Ekaireb shared with his previous girlfriend on the same private gated estate was left like a 'time capsule'.
When police searched it in 2010 they found it had been left untouched since October 2006, with cake half-eaten on a table. After the killing Ekaireb went back to the Slovakian girlfriend and the couple had a baby girl. She is now pregnant again.
Investigators were stunned by Ekaireb's gaudy possessions and brash sense of fashion. He owned a laptop studded with 'diamonds' reading, Robert 'the one and only' Ekaireb.
The 'time capsule' flat had a gold-plated toilet as well as an expensive gold-leaf carpet with the Versace logo embroidered in it.
Detectives found Ekaireb and his father Rex, a chartered accountant, amassed their property empire from 2006 onwards and owned scores of homes worth up to £3million each. Officers repeatedly tried to speak to members of the Adams family, but were blocked by lawyers who accused them of harassment. Ekaireb will be sentenced in January.
