Ivan Griffin, 24, plunged a kitchen knife through Sabrina Mullings’ heart and liver while her daughter Hayleigh slept in their flat in Upper Norwood, south London
A bloodthirsty murderer who stabbed his fiancée to death after telling her to drink his blood has been jailed for life today.
Ivan Griffin, 24, seemed to be ‘possessed by evil’ when he knifed Sabrina Mullings at her flat in Upper Norwood, south London.
The killer cut his own chest open before he stabbed the 38-year-old victim to death and placed her naked corpse on a pink dressing gown in her kitchen.
Ms Mullings’s daughter Hayleigh and her boyfriend Chaise Gore were woken up by the savage attack, where they found Griffin yelling how he was ‘releasing demons’ during the incident at 5.30am on March 13.
Griffin had got engaged to Ms Mullings hours before the attack.
He was convicted of murder and today sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 16-and-a-half years after a trial at the Old Bailey.
Griffin claimed he had been possessed when he stabbed his fiancée and told jurors he had been a ‘spectator in my own body’ during the brutal attack.
Griffin, who had been dating Ms Mullings since September last year, told Ms Mullings to ‘drink his blood because it would cleanse her soul’ and cut himself so he could ‘join their blood together’.
Hayleigh told jurors Griffin sounded ‘possessed by evil’, describing the incident as ‘something you would get from a horror film’.
Giving evidence she said: ‘He told her to drink his blood because it would cleanse her soul.
‘I heard my mum trying to talk and she was saying that he was hurting her.
‘She said “Hayleigh, if you love me you will get an ambulance because he’s stabbed himself.”
‘I could make out what she was saying but it was very, very strained, you could hear she was in pain.’
After murdering Sabrina Mullings (pictured), Griffin fled the scene in Upper Norwood, south London and was arrested in Camberwell later that day
Griffin fled ‘in a panic’ and asked Hayleigh ‘you know I loved her, right?’, before fleeing the house when he saw Mr Gore pick up a screwdriver.
‘He pulled up his shirt and told me he had stabbed himself and showed me his wound,’ said Hayleigh.
After Griffin fled the scene, Hayleigh rushed to help her naked mother, whose body was ‘very neatly placed’ on a dressing gown.
She was pronounced dead at the scene after suffering from stab wounds inflicted with ‘severe force’ – one which fractured her ribcage and delved into her heart, with the other tearing through her abdomen and liver.
Griffin had got engaged to Ms Mullings (pictured) hours before the attack
Griffin was found wandering the streets by officers, where he claimed he had been involved in a scuffle with friends.
After noticing blood beneath his jacket, they tried to apprehend him where he began ranting that he was the son of God.
He aggressively tried to pull the handcuffs out of the officer’s grip.
He was then detained under the Mental Health Act.
Griffin was deemed to have been trying to pass off his crimes and convince jurors he was not fully in control of his actions, but it was ruled by psychiatrists that there was no evidence of mental illness.
The court also heard he had previously been convicted of attacking his then pregnant girlfriend, Micah Coggins, in May 2014 after she told police he had an ‘aggressive and controlling side to his personality.’
Ms Mullings had been feeling ‘really well’ and ‘positive about her life’ in the weeks before she was brutally murdered, according to her mother Marian.
She told the court: ‘We cannot understand how someone could claim to love Sabrina, get engaged to her and then only a few hours later stab her twice with a knife and then leave her alone, naked and to die in pain and leave her own daughter to deal with the situation.’
She said she had bought her daughter the green-handled kitchen knife that killed her as a gift.
She said she has nightmares about her daughter ‘lying on the floor wounded and naked surrounded by blood with the green knife beside her’.
‘This is something I don’t feel I will ever get over,’ she said.
‘I don’t think I will ever get these images out of my mind.’