Watch Out

Mr Bonomo’s fiancee, Mary Bertez, has vowed to avenge his death.

She wrote on a social networking site: “I will never stop thinking about you for a second. I had 10 months of a happiness I had never experienced until then.

“I will give all the required information to the investigation, my dear, so you can be avenged.”

Mr Ferez’s grandmother reported that the students were finding life in London tough and had described the harshness of life in the capital days earlier.

“Gabriel was an angel, a brave boy. He was e-mailing me right up until Sunday and made it clear that he was finding life in London tough,” Réjane Ferez said. Mr Ferez is understood to have been particularly close to his paternal grandmother after his parents’ recent divorce.

“It was not an easy place for him and Laurent to live. It was a harsh place. Laurent had to organise his life while spending up to 11 hours a day at college. Combined with all the other pressures of life in such a city, it was not easy. Gabriel loved travelling and had recently spent time in Mexico, but nothing had prepared him for London.”

Speaking from her house in the family’s hometown of Amiens, northern France — where the student’s father, Olivier, and sister, Helène, also live — Mrs Ferez added: “Life in London could also be very lonely. Both Gabriel and Laurent were missing their close friends and family. They were greatly looking forward to getting back home.”

Neighbours had put a notice asking for “Respect” outside the modest cottage with green shutters and rosebushes where Mr Ferez’s mother has lived with a companion for the past four years.

The director of the French university attended by Mr Bonomo and Mr Ferez spoke of the “brilliant professional future” the murdered men have been denied.

Claude-Gilles Dussap, head of the Polytech Clermont-Ferrand in central France, also said that a silent procession would be held on campus to commemorate the murdered men.

In a statement, Mr Dussap said:“Like all the staff and students at the school, I was deeply shocked to learn of their death on the evening of June 29 in particularly tragic circumstances.

“Our thoughts first and foremost go to their families and those close to them.

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• All that glitters is not sold in Wright’s world
• Believe it or not, Big Brother is your friend