A 28-year-old man charged with murdering a ‘beloved’ 76-year-old church leader at her £500,000 home, is set to appear in court Monday.

Grandmother Nelly Akomah, 76, was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in her home near Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park stadium in south London on 21 June.

Hugo Da Silva Pires, 28, and Catia Feliciano, 31, were arrested together at Stansted Airport last Friday and taken into custody.

Da Silva Pires, of Thornton Heath, south London, was charged with murder, burglary and fraud.

Feliciano, of the same address, was charged with fraud and perverting the course of justice.

The pair will both appear at Bromley Magistrates’ Court on Monday as police investigations continue.

Heartbroken friends described Mrs Akomah as a ‘lovely’ person, while fellow churchgoers said she was as an ‘understanding’ leader of the Croydon group of the Upper Tooting Methodist Church in south London.

Paying tribute to the mother-of-two, the president of Ms Akomah’s Nigeria Methodist Mission UK, Dame Susan Solanke, said: ‘Sister Nelly, only last week we were all at a weekend retreat, full of life.

‘You were such a valuable member of the mission who will be sorely missed. My heart is broken with this cruel, mindless and senseless attack.

‘I pray God brings the culprits to book as soon as possible.’

A post-mortem examination carried out on Thursday June 22 was inconclusive, police said, amid further tests taking place to establish a cause of death.

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