The girlfriend of a man beaten to death 20 years ago has revealed the trauma of watching her son grow up without his father, as his killer was finally jailed for life.
Mane Driza, aka Sokol Drenova, was locked up for a minimum of 20 years at the Old Bailey yesterday for the murder of Stefan Bledar Mone in June 1999.
The serial killer was extradited from Italy for the trial. He was in prison there for a double murder and an attempted murder, and has also killed two more people in his native Albania.
Stefan was stabbed and beaten to death by Driza, who inflicted 120 wounds on his body and slit his throat, leaving him virtually unrecognisable. They were friends who had fallen out over the theft of Driza’s ring.
In a victim impact statement, Stefan’s girlfriend Zoe Blay described finding his body on June 23, 1999, when she was six-moths pregnant.
She said: “I cannot put into words or begin to explain that day. It has traumatised me to this day, I suffer with flashbacks and nightmares. No one would want to see their loved one laying there like that.
“I was extremely scared after that; I moved from the city I had called home my whole life to a city where I only knew two people just to feel safe. I may have felt safe but it added to my depression and stress levels, not good when you are six months pregnant.
“I so wanted Stefan there when I gave birth to our son, to be proud of me, you stole that from me.
“Christopher our loving, kind and beautiful son grew up asking about his father from a very young age, I always told him Daddy is in heaven. When Christopher was about four years old his goldfish died, we said a few words and then flushed the goldfish down the toilet so he could go to heaven. A few days later I found Christopher on the bathroom floor talking to his daddy in the toilet. He thought this was where heaven was, this was truly heart-breaking to watch.
“When Christopher was 14 I told him what happened to his father, I gave him newspaper articles that I had kept.
“Stefan’s family, yes they have a grandson but they will never see their son again. They will never see him on his wedding day, the day he would have brought his son into the world. Stefan was cruelly robbed of this and we as a family have also been robbed.”
Driza will now return to Italy to complete his sentence, before returning to England in 2026 to begin his next one.
The trial heard he thought the theft of his ring was an attack on his manhood and told friends at work he was going to kill Stefan.
He asked his colleague for a lift to the station and asked to stop at a shop to buy a knife, repeatedly claiming he was going to kill Stefan. He went to his house in Fernbank Avenue, Wembley. Stefan and his pregnant girlfriend Zoe Blay had been at an ante-natal appointment that day. Stefan had given her a gold wedding ring before he went.
A cheese knife, lock knife and a bloody pick axe handle were found in the room with Stefan’s body.
While Zoe was discovering her boyfriend’s body, Driza was getting on a plane to Milan.
After claiming self defence in a police interview in Sicily in 2000, a lengthy battle ensued for his extradition. He was finally brought back to England and charged in May.
Det Insp Garry Moncrieff said upon conviction: “Driza has proven himself to be an extremely violent individual who has no hesitation in dealing with any issue or problem he encounters in life by killing. He has freely admitted all the murders he has committed but never shown remorse.”
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