THE jury in the case of two murdered French students has been urged not to be swayed by sympathy for the dead men's families.

Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez were tied up and stabbed 244 times at Mr Bonomo's bedsit in Sterling Gardens, New Cross, on June 29 last year.

Prosecution counsel Crispin Aylett gave his closing speech today at the Old Bailey, where Dano Sonnex and Nigel Farmer are accused of the murders.

Mr Aylett urged the jury to put aside any “perfectly understandable feeling of sympathy” for the parents of the French students, who have been at court throughout the trial.

He said: “You cannot but be moved by the quiet dignity of the parents of Laurent Bonomo and Garbiel Ferez as they have sat through day after day of the evidence.”

Mr Aylett said throughout the trial there had been tales of drug use and violence, featuring no one who “seems to earn an honest living.”

He told the jury: “You've been shown in the last few weeks a slice of London life that I hope is relatively unfamiliar to you and which, no doubt, you might well have wished had remained so.”

The prosecution claims Farmer and Sonnex had gone out “on the prowl” looking for places to burgle, and ended up at Sterling Gardens at around 5.40am.

Farmer says he was at home at the time of the killings. Sonnex admits going into the flat to tie up the two students with Farmer, having previously claimed he only went in after they were dead.

Mr Aylett said the defendants' evidence had given the students' families “tit-bits” about the boys' ordeal in a way which was “contemptible”.

And he told the jury that, despite the defendants' differing accounts, the whole crime, from the burglary to when the flat was set fire to, was a joint venture.

He said: “When two murderers fall out there's nothing that they won't say or do about each other as each tries to save his own skin.”

This was a burglary that went “horribly wrong”, with events that “spiraled quickly out of control”, he said.

Mr Aylett claimed the pair had broken in, knowing Sonnex had a knife, something the defendant denies, and tied up the students.

Sonnex then stashed phones and PSPs from the flat and went to a cash machine with Mr Bonomo's cash card to withdraw £360 while Farmer stayed behind as “jailer”.

Returning to the flat, Sonnex took Mr Ferez's bank card back to the same cashpoint but this was swallowed by the machine.

Mr Aylett said the defendant returned angrily to the scene at around 7.35am.

During the next half an hour, it is claimed, the students were killed by both men and Sonnex cleaned himself in the bathroom.

Later that day, CCTV footage seemed to show Farmer flicking through a wad of banknotes while in a Londis store in Evelyn Street, Deptford, Mr Aylett said.

And he claimed that one of the two men went back later that morning to sprinkle petrol around the flat and turn on an iron, in a failed attempt to ignite the fumes.

Farmer admits going to the bedsit later that night at around 10pm to set it alight, but says he did so because the Sonnex family were threatening his twin sons' lives.

The court heard how Farmer and Sonnex's brother had made 25 calls to one another's phones in the run-up to the fire.

And the court was told that even after the murders, Sonnex tried and failed once again to use Mr Bonomo's bank card for one last “windfall” at a cashpoint in Woolwich on June 30.

Sonnex, aged 23, of Etta Street, Deptford, and Farmer, aged 34, of no fixed address, deny murder, arson and false imprisonment.

Farmer denies burglary but Sonnex admits the charge.

The trial continues.