by Dan Bloom
An arson attack which killed three generations of one Chatham family was “murder in its purest form”, a jury heard today.

The Chatham Hill murder trial heard a dramatic closing speech by chief prosecutor Mark Dennis QC after a mammoth five weeks of evidence.

He said car salesman Danai Muhammadi, accused of torching his wife Melissa Crook’s home in Chatham Hill at 2.30am last September 10 after their marriage broke down, was “a very highly dangerous and unbalanced individual”.

Stories the 24-year-old told colleagues, police and the court were “absolute tosh”, “poppycock”, “nonsense” and a “complete charade”, the prosecutor said.

He added: “Mr Muhammadi has come up with the most ludicrous fantasy of a blackmail plot for which he has given no evidence in support.

“Can you imagine that Melissa (pictured below with her son) would be just sitting inside number 210 [her home] knowing Mr Muhammadi was about to meet blackmailers who had threatened to kidnap her son? Just chatting away to family members? It is so fanciful.”

Muhammadi, of Britannia Street, Coventry, said mystery men had threatened to burn down his estranged wife’s home if he did not pay them £5,000 – and his late wife stopped him going to police.

He said he went to meet them nearby in Gillingham and a deal fell through.

But Mr Dennis said the blackmailers must have had a “phantom” car to avoid CCTV, adding: “I’m being sarcastic for a very good reason. It’s absolute tosh.”

Muhammadi and his friend Farhad Mahmud, 35, deny setting the house alight by pouring petrol through the letterbox with a garden sprayer.

His new girlfriend Emma Smith, 21, who was in Maidstone at the time of the fire, denies “goading” him into murder after he tried to reconcile the marriage.

Murder trial defendants Danai Muhammadi and Emma Smith

The blaze killed Melissa, 20, her father Mark, 49, and her and Muhammadi’s 15-month-old son Noah.

Mr Dennis said: “Petrol does not self-ignite. Therefore the arsonist would have the opportunity, the time to squirt as much petrol and he or his accomplice wished, even stopping to let the other person have his turn.”

Earlier today the court heard police sifted through Muhammadi’s phone records, and found no trace of any “blackmail” calls like the ones he claimed to have received.

Mr Dennis said he was in an “unbalanced mental state”.

“This was planned and premeditated,” Mr Dennis said. “You do not have a spray device containing petrol if you have not thought it out beforehand.

“They have not gone to cause a fright or some annoyance, some minor harm or inconvenience.
“This is murder in its purest form.”

He claimed Muhammadi and Mahmud even stopped to watch the house be engulfed in flames by “travelling into the maze of streets in the valley below Chatham Hill… the perfect vantage point.”

Mr Dennis said Muhammadi and his alleged accomplices “committed the act in secret” adding: “You do not take passengers. You do not drive from Coventry to Kent with your girlfriend who is not involved.”

Smith’s “hatred of Melissa and obsession with him is all too apparent,” Mr Dennis said. “She was revelling in the end of his ties with Melissa.”

Mahmud, meanwhile, asked for “blood money” for the act then refused to give evidence to deny it in court, Mr Dennis said.

“It’s no small wonder,” he said, “[that] Mr Mahmud has been unable to cross the floor to come up with an explanation.”

He added: “This was not a case of one man… idly standing in the street admiring the stars, not knowing what his friend was doing.”

When they were arrested, he said, “they should have been falling over themselves to assist the police” – but they did the opposite.

Muhammadi, Smith, of Barley Lea, Coventry, and Mahmud, of Fernhill Road, Maidstone, deny three counts of murder and two of attempted murder.

Mr Dennis urged the jury to use “pure common sense” and find the trio guilty.
He said: “The trial process can’t leave you with every I dotted and T crossed. You can’t open up the mind of an individual and see what makes someone tick.”

The trial continues.