The police received a 999 call from the Peabody Estate in Southwark. Neighbors had been complaining about a horrific stench coming from one of the flats for days, and the smell had only gotten worse. When officers knocked on the door of 49-year-old Stefano Brizzi, he opened it wearing pink Speedos and aviator sunglasses. He didn’t wait for them to ask questions.
“I killed a man last week,” he said. “I spoke to Satan, and he kept telling me to kill, kill, kill. I told him I would at the next opportunity. ”
He was arrested and taken to Lewisham police station.
The flat was cordoned off, and a full homicide investigation team was dispatched. Nothing could have prepared them for what they found inside. Six days earlier, on April 1st, 2016, 59-year-old Gordon Semple had woken up in the home he shared with his partner of 25 years, Gary. Gordon was a Metropolitan Police officer with nearly 30 years of service, close to retirement.
He was known as a kind, caring man—the kind of old-school British bobby his family compared to Dixon of Dock Green. He ran marathons, raised money for charity, and was active in his community. To everyone who knew him, he was a gentle, respectable man who loved his family and was deeply loved in return. What many didn’t know was that Gordon and Gary had an open relationship.
They were devoted to each other, but Gordon was free to explore sexual encounters with other men. He met these partners through online dating apps, particularly Grindr, where he could arrange casual hookups quickly and discreetly. Gary knew about the arrangement in principle, but on that particular Friday, Gordon didn’t mention any plans to meet anyone. Gordon left for work that morning and attended a meeting at the Shangri-La restaurant in the Shard building near London Bridge.
He finished around 12:30 p. m. and was seen on CCTV leaving the building. Shortly after, he arranged to meet a man he’d been messaging on Grindr.
That man was Stefano Brizzi. Brizzi had invited Gordon to his flat on the Peabody Estate for what he described as a chemsex party—sexual activity enhanced by drugs. He had also invited two other men to join them later. Gordon didn’t know Brizzi’s real name or anything about his actual life.
He was walking into a stranger’s home completely unaware of the danger. At some point before the others arrived, Gordon and Brizzi engaged in sexual activity. Brizzi later claimed that Gordon had asked him to choke him during sex—a practice known as erotic asphyxiation. Whatever happened in that flat, Gordon ended up dead.
At 7:00 p. m. , one of the invited men arrived at the flat. He knocked on the door, but no one answered at first.
Then he heard a voice from inside telling him that someone had fallen ill and the party was off, and that he should just go away. The man thought the voice sounded stressed but not panicked. He thought he heard someone being sick in the background, but he didn’t think much of it. He left and went home.
Meanwhile, Gary was trying to reach Gordon. He’d called him multiple times with no response. Gordon always communicated with him, especially after work, and it was completely out of character for him to go silent. That evening, Gary reported Gordon missing to the police.
Because Gordon was a police officer and his disappearance was so out of character, the case was treated as high-risk from the start. His family launched social media campaigns, and a Facebook group set up by his niece quickly gained thousands of members, all sharing his photo and begging for information. The more days that passed without any sign of him, the more everyone feared the worst. The case was eventually handed over to the homicide and major crime command unit.
Using CCTV and cell phone triangulation, police tracked Gordon’s last known movements to the area around Southwark. They also began to receive reports from residents of the Peabody Estate about a terrible smell coming from one of the flats. The caretaker had been the first to notice it. He alerted Martin Harris, the resident who lived directly above Brizzi.
The two men went to the door and agreed that the smell was awful—the caretaker was convinced it was the smell of a dead body. Martin was so freaked out that he went back to his own balcony to have a cigarette. As he stood there smoking, he looked down and saw Brizzi on his balcony below. “Mate, there’s a very strange smell coming from your room,” Martin called down.
“What’s going on? ”
Brizzi made an excuse, saying he was cooking for a friend. The next day, when the smell hadn’t gone away, Martin returned to confront him. Brizzi came to the door still wearing aviators and pink Speedos.
He said he’d been cooking for his friends and had lit scented candles outside to cover the smell. The neighbor wasn’t convinced. When police officers arrived at the flat, they weren’t homicide detectives—just ordinary beat cops. Nothing could have prepared them for what they walked into.
The flat was covered in chemicals and filth. There were bones and fragments of flesh everywhere. The bathtub was filled with a blue-green caustic substance with globs of fat floating in it. Officers found parts of a skull in the bathroom, bin bags full of bones, and traces of DNA on kitchen utensils, including a blender and the oven.
Brizzi had tried desperately to dispose of Gordon’s body. He’d attempted to dissolve it in the bathtub using various chemicals and bleaches, but it hadn’t worked. So he tried cooking parts of the body—fat was splattered all over the windows and the floors. He attempted to grate parts of the body into smaller pieces, and when a small cheese grater wasn’t enough, he went to a local store and bought larger grills to do the job.
He flushed pieces down the toilet, so a team was called in to check the drains, where they found body flesh. Some parts of the body, including a leg or foot, were thrown into the River Thames nearby, where a mudlarker later found them. Evidence found in the flat showed bite marks on some of the bones, leading to speculation that Brizzi may have consumed parts of the body in his desperation to get rid of it. It took nearly two weeks for the crime scene team to fully process the flat.
They found a copy of The Satanic Bible, with personal notes written by Brizzi in the corners. Brizzi had grown up in a devout Catholic household in Tuscany, Italy. He realized he was gay early on but kept it a secret for a long time, fearing rejection from his family and community. When he did come out, his family rejected him, and he carried that shame with him.
He moved to London in 2012 and got a well-paying job as a computer programmer at Morgan Stanley, an investment bank in the City. On the surface, he was living a successful life. But he was diagnosed with hepatitis C and HIV, and he saw those diagnoses as punishment from God for his homosexuality. He struggled with substance abuse and became addicted to crystal meth, losing his job because of it in 2015.
That sent him into a downward spiral. He became increasingly interested in the darker corners of the online world, bondage, and eventually Satanism—the antithesis of the values he was raised with. By the time he met Gordon on Grindr, he was deep into the chemsex scene, using dating apps to organize parties and find validation that only lasted a few hours before he needed another fix. When police first spoke to Brizzi, he confessed, saying Satan had told him to do it.
But when interviewed under caution in a police interview room, he changed his story. He claimed that Gordon’s death was an accident—that it happened during a consensual sex game involving erotic asphyxiation that went too far. He admitted to dismembering and disposing of the body but denied any intention to kill. The prosecution argued that even if the choking started as consensual, Brizzi continued long after Gordon lost consciousness.
They pointed out that a person typically passes out within 20 to 30 seconds of being choked, but death takes much longer. Continuing with that level of violence after the victim was unconscious meant Brizzi intended harm. The court also heard that Brizzi’s actions were inspired by the TV show Breaking Bad, from which he took the idea of using chemicals to dissolve a body. The Grindr chat logs were a crucial piece of evidence, showing the connection between the two men and the timeline of their meeting.
The defense argued that Brizzi was suffering from meth-induced psychosis. But the prosecution countered that when the other invited man showed up at 7:00 p. m. , Brizzi was calm and coherent enough to send him away with an excuse about someone being ill.
That didn’t sound like a man having a complete breakdown. In October 2016, Brizzi pleaded not guilty to murder, insisting the death was accidental. The jury and judge rejected his claim. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 24 years.
He was sent to Belmarsh prison in London. In February 2017, he was found dead in his cell. A coroner’s court concluded that he had taken his own life. Gordon Semple was described by his family as a much-loved brother, partner, uncle, and cousin.
He was a man who would do anything for anyone—kind, considerate, and always there to help others. His murder shocked the police force and the wider community. The same technology that brought the killer and his victim together also helped bring him to justice. But it didn’t bring Gordon back.
The online world can be a force for good, but it can also be used for very bad things. In this case, a respected police officer who was just looking for a casual encounter walked into a stranger’s flat and never came out.
