Second man charged in London stabbings

updated 10:01 a.m. ET July 13, 2008

LONDON - Police said they charged a second man Saturday in the brutal stabbing deaths of two French students.

Daniel Sonnex, 23, of London, is to appear in court on Monday on two counts of murder, police said.

Sonnex is the second man charged in the deaths of Gabriel Ferez and Laurent Bonomo, both 23.

Bonomo was found with 200 stab wounds and Ferez with 50 wounds at Bonomo's London apartment on June 29. Their bodies had been doused in fuel and set on fire, police said.

The attack was so ferocious the press dubbed the killings the "Tarantino murders" because its senseless brutality is reminiscent of movies by the American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.

The students were in the second year of a three-year Master's degree in bioengineering in France and had been selected to take part in a three-month research project into DNA at London's Imperial College. They were within weeks of returning home.

Bonomo and Ferez studied at the Clermont-Ferrand Polytechnical School in southern France.

Nigel Farmer, a 33-year-old unemployed man, has also been charged with two counts of murder over the deaths.

Farmer turned himself in to a London police station. He has been also been charged with arson and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

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