The 39-year-old Heathrow employee was stabbed to demise by her housemate after he grew to become obsessed together with her and spied on her
Glenda Hansen, mom of WhatsApp homicide sufferer Stephanie Hansen (Picture: Courtesy ITV/Title Function)
It is the devastating telephone name each father or mother dreads. And when police telephoned Glenda Hansen to say her stunning daughter Stephanie had been discovered lifeless, her first thought was she’d had an accident or been attacked by a burglar. Her second was to marvel if the flatmate of Steph, as she was recognized to all, was okay. However as Glenda tried to make sense of what had occurred, Sheldon Rodrigues, Steph’s apparently mild-mannered buddy and colleague, was truly being investigated by police.
Inside days it grew to become clear that the 30-year-old had brutally murdered Steph – stabbing her greater than 60 occasions earlier than battering her lifeless physique with a hairdryer and a tower fan. He’d develop into obsessive about the pleasant, animal-loving younger girls he’d met at work, stalking her on social media and by way of secret cameras he’d put in in the home they shared – bombarding her with 1000’s of WhatsApp messages, begging her to like him and threatening her and her boyfriend.
Tragically, Steph, 39, hadn’t instructed anybody about his more and more deranged behaviour – believing she may cope with it herself. Now her mum, talking for the primary time concerning the tragedy, is warning others to study from her household’s ache and be alert to cyber-stalking and harmful behaviour.
Tragic Steph, 39, did not inform anybody about Rodrigues’ more and more deranged behaviour (Picture: Courtesy ITV/Title Function)
As Glenda, 67, says: “He would have been the final particular person I’d have thought able to doing what he did. However whenever you take a look at the messages he despatched her that each one modifications. The final three months of her life will need to have been absolute hell – however she stored it to herself, she thought she may deal with it.
“If you learn the messages, he was changing into more and more obsessed. He was googling ‘what can I do to make somebody love me?’ ‘How can I’ve cosmetic surgery to make somebody love me?’ He truly mentioned, ‘I’ll go to jail for you’. She was getting 80 WhatsApp messages a day from him, demanding she reply him. He’d put in cameras in each room of the home – so he was watching her on a regular basis with out her realizing.”
Glenda, who lives within the Midlands, provides: “If this occurs to you please inform somebody and recognise that is stalking. Search for the patterns. Is that this getting worse and worse? Discuss to any individual: get their opinion. Recognise that this may be very harmful behaviour. We will’t change what occurred to Steph but when something good comes from this, it will likely be that we’ve helped another person. It’s nonetheless exhausting for us to imagine that Sheldon did this.”
As Glenda says, when Steph first launched Rodrigues to her household it was as a quiet, lonely workmate. They labored collectively within the Cargo division at Heathrow Airport.
Steph was form and outgoing, she made pals simply, so it didn’t shock anybody when she took Rodrigues underneath her wing. He’d tag alongside to household meet-ups or days out and when he urged renting a home collectively in Hayes, west London – near work – Steph jumped on the likelihood to share the payments and have a backyard.
“She was at all times the one to select up waifs and strays,” Glenda says. “If anybody had something going incorrect of their life she’d be there to attempt to make it higher. Rodrigues was a kind of.
Glenda Hansen, mom of WhatsApp homicide sufferer Stephanie (Picture: Courtesy ITV/Title Function)
“They each labored shifts and he’d come alongside after we met generally and simply sit within the background. We didn’t assume something of it. She was so enthusiastic about getting a backyard.”
They’d recognized one another for 13 years. However over the following 9 months Rodrigues’ behaviour grew to become more and more unusual. Regardless of Steph making it clear she wasn’t fascinated with courting him he spiralled into obsession – sending her 1000’s of messages and spying on her and her new boyfriend.
When she met her mum for the final time on Christmas Eve 2022 she didn’t point out the stalking – telling her how joyful she was together with her new associate and sharing her hopes of possibly beginning a household of her personal.
Even when he continued to ship her message after message, she performed down the scenario and mentioned she was planning to maneuver out. “Her telephone didn’t cease pinging,” Glenda explains. “I mentioned, ‘Who on earth is that?’ and he or she mentioned, ‘It’s simply him, ignore him’. She mentioned, ‘I’m getting fed up with him, I’m pondering of shifting out.”
Steph was working over Christmas however she stored in contact together with her mum by telephone. However on New Yr’s Eve, Glenda acquired the telephone name that modified every part.
“I’m mendacity in mattress and I get a telephone name from the police to inform me my daughter’s been murdered,” she says. “I used to be by myself. I used to be screaming, operating spherical the home. I used to be saying, ‘what do you imply she’s lifeless?’ I used to be pondering, ‘has she choked?’ In my head I assumed it’s a stroke or she’s choked.
In March 2024 Sheldon Rodrigues was discovered responsible of homicide and sentenced to a minimal of 25 years (Picture: Police handout)
“I used to be making an attempt to get to London, phoning everybody I knew however it was New Yr’s Eve, everybody had had a drink. Once I obtained there, that’s after they instructed us she’d been murdered. And the very first thing I mentioned was, ‘what about Sheldon? Is Sheldon alright?’ I used to be pondering somebody’s damaged in.”
Whereas Glenda scrambled to make sense of what she was listening to, the police had been taking a look at Rodrigues as a suspect. He’d known as 999 saying he’d discovered Steph lifeless – and even urged her boyfriend could have killed her.
However a deep minimize on his handcrafted them suspicious. He instructed them he’d damage himself carving a hen for himself and Steph on Christmas Day however work CCTV confirmed his hand was fantastic on Boxing Day, contradicting his story. Inside days he’d been arrested on suspicion of homicide. He pleaded not responsible to subjecting Steph’s household to a gruelling, seven-week trial. It was then they realised the extent of his behaviour – and what Steph had been via.
Glenda hopes the programme will function one other likelihood to have fun her daughter’s life (Picture: Courtesy ITV/Title Function)
“She’d gone to hell and again with him,” says Glenda sadly. “The issues that he was doing: following her round, following the boyfriend round, spying on her. He was listening in to them, to their conversations, he actually had a digital camera and a listening system in practically each room in the home and he spiralled. All she ever wished was to be married and have a child.
“I believe she spoke to the boyfriend about all this however Rodrigues was listening in, pondering, ‘I’m shedding her now’. And that’s the place all of it spiralled from. It was solely when one of many detectives mentioned ‘he’d been stalking her’ that I considered it like that.
“You assume stalking is somebody bodily following you round however it isn’t at all times that. It’s tough, we have to identify it, to say, ‘that is stalking and recognise it’. We have to replace what stalking is and to get throughout that it will possibly occur with somebody you reside with.”
Rodrigues was discovered responsible of Steph’s homicide in March 2024 and sentenced to a minimal of 25 years. The case is highlighted in a brand new ITV documentary ‘WhatsApp Obsession – the Homicide of Stephanie Hansen’ that airs Tuesday (March 24). Glenda hopes the programme will function one other likelihood to have fun the lifetime of her fantastic daughter.
This week can be her forty third birthday – one of many many events they mark with pleasure.
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“She was a daughter and a sister and a buddy, she’s a lot greater than only a sufferer of crime,” provides the previous PA. “All of us have our recollections. We get collectively for a gathering at her backyard, we flip up, go to the pub, have a drink, speak about her.
“At Christmas time we hold Christmas ornaments on her tree and in the summertime now we have a celebration within the park – now we have a bench there, now we have Prosecco and a picnic. I usually get texts from her pals, saying they had been fascinated by her and that by no means stops.”
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