Pensioner killed after fighting back

A robber who inflicted sickening fatal injuries on a defenceless 82-year-old woman is facing life imprisonment.

Hilda Ashdown hit out with her stick and tried to raise the alarm as Elroy Simmonds battered her after barging into the flat where she had lived for 47 years.

The attack was just one in a terrifying series against vulnerable old women around Camberwell from June 2002 until Simmonds's arrest last year. In each case he is alleged to have made off with small amounts of cash from purses and handbags.

Simmonds, 24, was convicted unanimously yesterday at the Old Bailey of murdering Mrs Ashdown as well as five charges of robbery and a count of assault with intent to rob.

The jury are continuing deliberations today on six further charges of robbery and related offences against women aged between 68 and 95. Nicholas Atkinson QC, prosecuting, had told them how Simmonds, sometimes accompanied by another man, would knock on doors claiming to be employed by the council or to be looking for someone. If he could not con his way in he would push his way past his victim.

In March last year Simmonds and his accomplice barged into Mrs Ashdown's home. She was kicked and punched in the face as she tried to activate her alarm, then held down in a chair while the thugs rifled her handbag.

Her son Roy told the court how he arrived home to find his mother seriously injured and deeply distressed. "She told me she had been burgled. She was in the hallway, her face covered in blood," he said. Mrs Ashdown died from bleeding in her brain 10 days later.

Simmonds, of Kennington, denied all the charges. He was trapped when a footprint at the scene matched a pair of his trainers which bore traces of blood from his victim. He will be sentenced after all the verdicts have been returned.