Couple killed by intruder

A couple have been found murdered by an intruder in their London home.

The retired consultant and his wife, both in their sixties, were found by a painter and decorator at around 8am today. The workman disturbed the killer at the £850,000 home in Highgate and chased him.

A massive police search was launched for the man who was spotted naked and bloodstained leaping over a back fence of the couple's garden.

The double killing takes the number of murders in London to five in the past 24 hours.

In Hackney a 16-year-old boy was knifed to death when he tried to save his friend during a fight. Meanwhile in Croydon a man died after he was attacked with a screwdriver. During the early hours a man in his twenties was found stabbed to death in a Tottenham street.

Neighbours of the Highgate couple, who lived in Makepeace Avenue, were told to check their gardens and keep their doors locked. A police
helicopter scoured Hampstead Heath a few hundred yards from the murder scene. Police described the suspect as white and in his twenties. They refused to say how the couple died.

Neighbours said the victims were Derek and Jean Robinson, a retired consultant community paediatrician and his wife who moved to the road three years ago. They lived alone at the address and are believed to have two daughters.

A neighbour said: "This is terrible. They were well liked in the area. I only saw him in the street yesterday."

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "We were called to a house in Highgate at 8am where we discovered two people who were dead. Their deaths are being treated as murder but we have no clear motive at present."

Detectives from the Met's Serious Crime Directorate were at the scene as

forensic experts examined the house for clues. The street and a neighbouring road was cordoned off along much of its length and uniformed officers stood guard.

The area is mixed, with some council flats and other houses costing as much as £2 million. The couple's timberfronted, pre-war house is part of a large private estate. It comprises mainly detached and semidetached houses on broad, treelined streets and stands between Highgate Hill and Hampstead Heath. Outside many of the houses four-wheel drive cars, BMWs and Saabs are parked.

There was shock today that such a violent crime could have happened on the estate. "Things like this just don't happen here. I have lived on the estate for 67 years and in this street for 49 years," said an elderly neighbour.