GUILTY: Jury convict Leeds man of brutal murder of sex-worker at his flat and raping a second
Jan 2025
A violent man has been convicted of the brutal murder of a Leeds sex worker at his flat, and the rape of another years before.
Steven Francis inflicted more than 100 injuries, stripped and strangled 43-year-old Louisa Hall at the tower-block flat in Little London in October, 2023.
A jury at Leeds Crown Court today deliberated for just over three hours today before unanimously finding him guilty of her murder.
They also found him guilty of raping a second sex worker at the same flat almost a decade ago. She too was stripped, beaten and imprisoned by Francis which has striking similarities to Ms Hall’s death.
For the murder, the 59-year-old thug claimed he had simply left Ms Hall at his flat and went out for an hour, returning to find her badly-beaten body.
Francis, who was also convicted of rape three decades ago, will now be sentenced tomorrow, Thursday, February 23. He was remanded back into custody.
During the trial, prosecutor Stephen Wood KC described Francis’ account as “fanciful”, saying he continually lied about how Ms Hall had come to be in his flat.
Francis had made a 999 at 5.15pm on October 25, 2023, claiming to have come home to Oatland Court to find 43-year-old Ms Hall laid naked in his flat.
Arriving paramedics found her covered in bruises, running from her head to her legs. Despite attempts to resuscitate her, she was pronounced dead at 5.47pm.
A pathologist found 117 fresh blunt-force trauma injuries to her head, chest, abdomen legs and arms. Of those, 45 injuries were found to have come from an unknown weapon.
An injury to her neck was also “compatible with forceful strangulation by hands or a ligature”, Mr Wood added.
The pathologist said the head injuries were so serious they could have been fatal in their own right.
Francis was arrested on suspicion of murder and interivewed, where he claimed to have not known the woman, had bumped into her Leeds city centre that day and she had followed him to his flat.
He then claimed he left her there while he caught a bus to visit a friend whom he had recently bumped into. But Francis claimed the friend was not home and so returned by bus to find Ms Hall unconscious.
But Mr Wood highlighted Francis’ lies throughout.
CCTV showed Francis with Ms Hall in Beeston in the early hours of October 25 – hours before he claimed to have seen her in the city centre and long before she was murdered.
The friend he claimed to have been visiting, later told police he had not seen Francis for around 13 years.
Footage from the flats failed to show Francis leaving the block in the hours he claimed to have been visiting the friend.
The bus pass Francis said he scanned while travelling to visit his friend was never used that day.
He claimed he did not take drugs, but urine and blood samples found a high concentration of crack cocaine in his system.
Francis’ DNA was recovered from Ms Hall’s neck.
Mr Wood said: “It was a series of lies to distance himself from the death of this woman in his own flat.”
He asked the jury: “Does there come a point that fanciful theories are overtaken by the blindingly-obvious truth?”
Francis was also found guilty of two counts of rape, false imprisonment, ABH and robbery of another sex worker in the same flat years prior.
He had taken her back to the flat where they smoked crack. But Francis then turned on her, attacking her and robbing her money.
He beat and raped her, and then refused to let her leave. It was only when she promised him money that he frogmarched her to a Post Office, but she was able to flee.