A post mortem exam at Greenwich Mortuary showed both died from wounds to the head, neck and chest before the fire took hold.
Both victims were biochemistry students in their third year of a master's degree at Polytech Clermont-Ferrand university in France, who were on a three-month DNA research project exchange programme at Imperial College London.
[1][2][3] It was established that the victims' bank cards and two Sony PSP handheld game consoles were missing, and it was believed they were stolen by the killers.
[5] On 6 July 2008 police issued an image of the murders' main suspect, based on the descriptions of witnesses who had seen him running away from Sterling Gardens just after 22:00 BST.
[11] The thin 33-year-old man whose face and hands were badly burned had walked into Lewisham Police Station, apparently to confess to being the killer.
[12][13] A Greenwich Magistrates' Court's judge, on the afternoon of 8 July, granted the police's request for an extension of the investigation, by issuing a 36 hours "warrant of further detention."
[14][15][16] On 10 July, Nigel Edward Farmer, unemployed and without fixed address, was charged with both murders, arson and attempting to pervert the course of justice when he appeared before Greenwich Magistrates' Court.
[20] Armed police arrested Daniel "Dano" Sonnex, 23, in Peckham, south-east London, after Scotland Yard issued an alert to trace him.
Sonnex's brother, Bernard, 35, and a woman, aged 25, had been released on bail, to return in July and August, respectively, pending further investigation.
David Scott, the chief officer of London Probation, resigned in March 2009 after an investigation began into why Sonnex had not been recalled to prison.