Monsters who will die behind bars revealed after gunman Louis de Zoysa caged for life for killing hero cop in cold blood
CRAZED gun killer Louis de Zoysa was today handed a whole life order for the murder of Met police Sergeant Matt Ratana.
The 25-year-old was still handcuffed when he pulled out a hidden antique revolver and fired four shots.
Sergeant Matt Ratana, 54, was blasted twice during the horror at Croydon Custody Centre on September 25, 2020.
The dad later died from his wounds in hospital.
Being handed a whole life order means the killer will die behind bars – joining a depraved club of Britain’s most twisted offenders.
Among them are Sarah Everard’s killer cop Wayne Couzens, quadruple-murderer Daniel Bendall and serial killer Rose West.
Others serving whole-life orders include Milly Dowler killer Levi Bellfield, ‘Morgue Monster’ David Fuller and Thomas Mair, who shot dead Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016.
Louis de Zoysa
The gunman had been stopped by police in Norbury, South London, at 1.30am on September 25, 2020.
Officers arrested him after finding cannabis and several bullets but the gun was not discovered during the stop-and-search.
The revolver was likely concealed in a holster “under one of his armpits”, the court was told.
Shocking CCTV footage from inside Croydon Custody Centre showed the moment de Zoysa unloaded shots – two hitting Matt Ratana.
The third bullet struck a wall and the fourth hit de Zoysa in the face causing brain damage – he now uses a wheelchair and a whiteboard to communicate.
Bodycam footage later showed how cops tried to grapple with the killer as they attempted to Taser him after
The uni dropout was convicted of murder last month after just over five hours of deliberation.
Sgt Ratana’s partner Su Busby, who wept as the sentence was handed down, read an emotional victim impact statement to the court.
De Zoysa will never be released, meeting the same fate as some of Britain’s most twisted offenders.
Wayne Couzens
Ex-cop Wayne Couzens kidnapped, raped and murdered marketing executive Sarah Everard in March 2021.
He lured her to his car during a fake arrest in South London before driving her 80 miles to Kent while she was handcuffed.
Couzens raped then strangled Sarah using his police-issue belt.
His whole-life order was the first time tariff had been imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in the course of a terror attack.
Damien Bendall
Bendall murdered four people with a claw hammer during a sleepover in September 2021.
His victims were his pregnant partner Terri Harris, 35, her 11-year-old daughter Lacey Bennett, her son John Paul Bennett, 13, and Lacey’s friend Connie Gent, 11.
The monster also pleaded guilty to raping Lacey at their home in Killamarsh, Derbyshire, before killing her.
Prosecutor Louis Mably KC described the attacks, carried out with a claw hammer, as “brutal, vicious and cruel”.
The 23-year-old was sentenced to life in prison on December 21, 2022.
Rose West
Rose West, alongside husband Fred, killed at least a dozen young women over a 20-year killing spree.
The pair, who were serial paedophiles abusing their own children, would torture victims in the basement of their Gloucester home before killing them.
Rose is currently an inmate at HM Prison New Hall in West Yorkshire after being convicted of ten murders in 1995.
West’s daughter fears her parents may have up to 30 more victims
Levi Bellfield
Levi Bellfield, is serving two whole-life orders.
They are for the murder of Milly Dowler, Marsha McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange, as well as the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy.
He kidnapped and killed Milly, 13, while she was walking home from school in 2002.
Bellfield later murdered gap-year student Marsha, 19, in 2003, and 22-year-old French student Amelie in 2004.
Kate, 18, was deliberately run over in 2004 and escaped with multiple injuries.
He was caged in 2008.
David Fuller
Necrophiliac David Fuller murdered two women and sexually assaulting hundreds of corpses in hospital mortuaries.
Known as the ‘Morgue Monster’, he beat and strangled Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, to death before sexually assaulting them in two separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987.
Fuller, now 68, a hospital electrician, was caught 33 years after the attacks when a DNA breakthrough linked him to the barbaric murders.
Thomas Mair
Sawn-off gun killer Thomas Mair murdered Labour MP and mum-of-two Jo Cox in 2016.
He carried out the “planned and pre-mediated” attack just minutes before Jo was due to hold a constituency surgery, and days before the EU referendum.
The “white supremacist”, who had viewed Nazi material before the killing, was given a whole-life sentence at the Old Bailey due to the “exceptional seriousness” of his crimes.
Jo suffered knife wounds to her heart, lungs, stomach and liver before being blasted three times through her hands with a sawn-off firearm.