Ex-Boyzone star bore outrageous slurs with 'integrity and honesty'
Irish-born music mogul Mark Walton suffered the indignity of being wrongly accused of a host of heinous crimes.
Sabrina Kouider branded him a cat abuser, paedophile, and accidental killer of her unborn child, the Old Bailey heard.
She even claimed he had hired a helicopter to hover above her south-west London flat to spy on her.
What tipped Kouider and her partner over the edge was the outrageous allegation that he had conspired with their nanny, Sophie Lionnet, to drug and molest the family.
Softly spoken Mr Walton, 40, shouldered the ludicrous slurs and responded with "integrity and honesty", prosecutor Richard Horwell QC said.
Because he lives in Los Angeles, Mr Walton could not be compelled to give evidence but willingly agreed to bare his soul in front of a packed Old Bailey courtroom.
Dublin-born Mr Walton launched his successful music career in 1993 when he founded Boyzone with a group of friends.
He was with the boyband for a year before he set up Fifth Avenue and has more recently found TV stardom in Asia as a judge on Vietnam's Pop Idol.
The millionaire songwriter, who has worked with the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Shaggy and Enrique Iglesias, described his relationship with Kouider as the most turbulent of his life.
He met Kouider in 2011 at a bank in Notting Hill and it was love at first sight.
Mr Walton, who described himself as a friendly kind of guy, told jurors: "I was in love. She was my life then so..."
They lived together for two years in Queensway, London, before she disappeared without warning.
A couple who spun a web of lies to justify the torture and murder of their vulnerable young nanny [pic] have today been convicted of murder at the Old Bailey https://t.co/I0VRwumXYg pic.twitter.com/iZ1ClK0Yg4
— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) May 24, 2018
During their relationship, Kouider would "flip" and became jealous if he spoke to her nannies, he said.
Mr Walton said: "Sabrina shared some stories from her past. I guess knowing that I felt it brought us closer together at times but it was turbulent, probably the most turbulent relationship I had ever been in.
"She would go from softly spoken French accent then she would flip, get very angry, very loud and just not care where we were. She would just go crazy over something trivial."
In 2013, he paid £12,800 in rent on Kouider's Wimbledon flat but stopped the financial support in February 2014, the court heard.
In retaliation, she rang his mother in Dublin, contacted his business partners and created a fake Facebook page on which she called him a paedophile.
He dismissed Kouider's claims against him, saying he had never heard of or met Miss Lionnet and had not been in the UK since October 2015.
In his closing speech, Mr Horwell told jurors: "Walton is a wealthy man - and good luck to him for that - but it is of course a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune will often be parted from it."
It was perhaps his generosity towards Kouider that proved his undoing, as the vicious vendetta against him took off after the handouts stopped.
