SA KILLER RENT BOY JAILED

A South African man, described by the British media as a rent boy, has been send to prison for the murder of a 62-year-old gay man in the UK.

Ricardo Pisano (36) was sentenced to 18 years in jail for killing Michael Polding last year. The older man’s decomposing body was discovered in his Brighton flat on 16 July 2012.

A court found that Pisano killed Polding, who died from ‘blunt force trauma’ to the chest, two months earlier.

The two men had been in a relationship and prosecutors claimed that Pisano lived off Polding’s finances before killing him.

It is believed that two first met in 2009 when Polding paid the younger man for sex.

According to the Daily Mail, Prosecutor Philip Katz QC told the jury: “…this defendant and other friends of his effectively bled Mr Polding dry financially and this defendant, while in this period, pretended to act as his carer and even godson.

“In fact, we say he abused and assaulted Mr Polding, resulting in a serious assault. We say that he eventually killed him, and having killed him, left him to rot.”

Pisano evaded arrest for a year but, following an international manhunt, was finally arrested in May.

Pisano, also known as Ricky, Ree, and Brandon Victor Pillay, had previously passed himself off as a New Zealander, an Aboriginal Australian and an Italian.

Described by The Star newspaper as ‘SA’s Artful Dodger’, Pillay gained notoriety twelve years ago when he walked out of a New Zealand prison while serving a 15-month sentence for extortion.

Pillay was also dubbed “New Zealand’s greatest prison escaper” as the only prisoner who had never been recaptured after escaping from a prison in the Waikato region. He then appears to have made his way to the UK.