Married to a serial killer, lost two lovers to murder, then cleared of blackmailing a judge

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By Chris Summers 8 August 2024

It’s quite an under-statement for a woman who lost two lovers to murder, had a serial killer for a husband, and was accused of stealing sex videos from a judge during a steamy affair.

Roselane, who is now 55, is now back in Brazil but for a decade she lived in London.

And it was a very eventful decade.

But Roselane’s story begins deep in the Brazilian heartland.

She grew up Roselane Roberto Nonato in a small town called Redenção, in the state of Para.

Her first boyfriend was Jose, who she met when she was 17.

They got engaged but then someone spread a false rumour that she was having an affair.

“He kidnapped me from work and put a gun to my head,” she recalled, “He said I cheated on him. He started to cry. He said ‘I love you, but you went with another guy.’ But I told him I was still a virgin,” she told me recently in an interview over the phone from Brazil.

Eventually she persuaded Jose to take her to a doctor, who confirmed she was still a virgin.

“Jose said ‘forgive me’ and tried to get back with me but he was a psychopath,” Roselane said.

“My family told me to dump him. Then he tried to kill himself,” she recalled.

The next man in her life was called Ronaldo, but he was not a world-famous footballer.

“He loved me. I loved him. But he drank too much. He died of alcohol,” said Roselane matter-of-factly.

Then, in 1995, a young and pretty Roselane was dating Paulo Jorge Souza, 47, an investigator who worked for the Brazilian police in the north of the country.

“He wanted to marry me but he was drinking a lot. I don’t do drink or drugs. I was very serious. I like a quiet life, I’m no trouble,” she told me.

Shortly after they broke up Jorge was killed when two gangsters carried out a machine gun attack on a police station in Ananindeua, a town near the city of Belem.

Terrified by the random, often drug-fuelled violence in Brazil she decided to come to England to study.

“I wanted to learn English but it was very expensive to learn in Brazil so I came to England,” she said.

In February 1998, Roselane travelled to London on a 12-month student visa.

She overstayed her visa and in April 1999 married Mane Driza, a handsome, charming and mysterious Albanian.

“He messed up my life,” she said.

I asked her why she fell for him and she said: “He was very polite and kind and charming. Albanians don’t break up with their women. I love Albanian men. I didn’t know Mane was trouble,” Roselane told me.

It only later emerged years later that Driza had come to Britain claiming to be Sokol Drenova, a teenage refugee from the conflict in Kosovo.

She married him after a whirlwind romance but within days of the wedding he began acting strange, staying out all night with his friends and snubbing her.

Roselane split up with Mane and by December 1999 he had fled to Italy after murdering a man in London.

In January 2000 she began a relationship with Florian Ndoja (pictured, with her, below), who sometimes used the surname Delia.

But in November 2000 tragedy struck again.

Florian was stabbed to death at a house in Ilford, east London by several fellow Albanians who were supposed to be his friends.

Roselane said: “I was with Florian for nine months and we were very, very happy. He had asked me to marry him. And then he was killed.”

Two brothers – Pjerin Cefa and his brother Taulant – fled the country as detectives sought to piece together what had happened.

Roselane told me Florian was an illegal immigrant and was therefore unable to open a bank account in Britain.

He entrusted his money to the Cefa brothers and they stole it and then killed him when he demanded it back.

Eventually, in March 2002, Pjerin Cefa, then aged 28, pleaded guilty to murdering Florian at a court in the Albanian city of Shkoder but was assessed as not responsible for his actions and was sent to a psychiatric institution for treatment.

He is believed to have since been released.

His brother Taulant was never charged with the crime and is believed to be still living in Albania.

Roselane tried to mend her broken heart and moved on.

She met a third Albanian at a London nightclub but he was later deported after being caught by a random immigration check at a train station.

In 2005 Roselane was still living in London but her student visa had run out and she was working as a cleaner.

One of her customers was Judge Ilyas Khan, a 60-year-old immigration judge, and the pair eventually became unlikely lovers.

“He wanted to marry me and adopt children,” recalls Roselane.

But then fate intervened.

The full circumstances cannot be revealed for legal reasons but suddenly Roselane was charged with the theft of a number of sex videos from Judge Khan and of blackmailing a female judge.

The case naturally hit the media in London and was a sensation, with lurid headlines in the press and coverage on national television news.

Journalists salivated over details like the emails sent by Judge Khan to his young lover, in which he referred to her as “chilli hot stuff”.

Roselane was convicted of blackmail and theft, but later cleared on appeal.

Judge Khan died in 2009 and Roselane made serious allegations about him which I have decided not to publish, mainly because he is not alive to defend himself.

Her immigration status came to light during her trial and she was later removed from the country and sent back to Brazil.

“I was removed, not deported,” she highlights, proud of the distinction.

Her name and face were largely forgotten in Britain, until 2019 when her ex-husband, Mane Driza (pictured below), was extradited back to London from Italy to face trial for the murder of Stefan Bledar Mone, another Albanian, in Sudbury, north-west London, in June 1999.

He killed Bledar Mone after a row over accusing him of stealing his wedding ring.

But at the trial Mane tried to claim Bledar Mone was friends with a man he had killed in Albania two years before and was trying to avenge that murder.

In total Mane Driza has killed five men, making him technically a serial killer, although his crimes were committed largely as a by-product of his criminal career rather than as a result of some psychopathic urge.

Mane, who was nicknamed Tony Montana after Al Pacino’s character in Scarface, had killed two men in Albania before he even came to the UK in the 1990s and then, after killing Bledar Mone, he killed another pair of Albanians in a bar in Sicily in 2000.

After he was found guilty by a jury at the Old Bailey in London in April 2019 a judge sentenced the 41-year-old to life in prison with a minimum of 20 years, but said he would be sent back to Italy to complete a term of imprisonment there, before being brought back to England in 2026 to serve out his sentence.

In 2019, Detective Inspector Garry Moncrieff, of Scotland Yard, said: “Driza has proven himself to be an extremely violent individual who has no hesitation in dealing with any issue or problem he encounters in life by killing. He has freely admitted all the murders he has committed but never shown remorse.”

Summing up her time in London, she said: “It was a crazy life. Very hard. There was one problem after another. I’d find a lover and then something happened.”

Roselane rebuilt her life in Brazil, where she lives in the capital, Brasilia.

She told me she invented a gizmo for car doors, which was used by Citroen in the C4 Cactus, but she claims she was never paid and is taking legal action against the French company.

Roselane also worked as a freelance TV journalist and volunteered in healthcare before concentrating on a catering business, which is currently on pause.

She told me: “I haven’t had a boyfriend since I returned to Brazil. I can’t trust men any more. But I got 120 letters from guys in London.”

“If I find someone it’s OK but I just want a quiet life,” she added.

Roselane is on X (Twitter) and is keen to her from people who knew her in London – @Roselane70097