A crack cocaine addict faces a life means life sentence today after being convicted of battering three wealthy sisters with a claw hammer as they slept in a West End hotel.

After his arrest Philip Spence boasted to police “there ain’t no blood on the hammer, I licked it all off, it went down my mouth.”

For the first time it can be revealed that barely 12 months earlier Spence had been cleared by an Old Bailey jury of attempting to murder a heavily pregnant woman.

This followed a murder charge when Spence was just 18 which was dropped shortly before another Old Bailey trial.

In the intervening years Spence, 32, has been found guilty twice for assault, twice for affray, five times for burglary and once for theft, among other offences.

He attacked his landlord with a hammer and assaulted a female council office worker, care home staff and passers-by on the street, and threatened to kill a man he had met on an online dating site.

Now Spence has been convicted of three charges of attempted murder and will be sentenced on November 17 by Judge Anthony Leonard at Southwark Crown Court.

The judge told the court Spence was so dangerous that he was considering “a full life term”.

His victims had come to London to see the sights but within hours of arriving their heads were smashed and their skulls splintered in front of their children.

Astonishingly they survived the horrifying attack but all three have been left traumatised and one of the sisters lost part of her brain in the blood-soaked scene.

Lawyers are now considering possible legal action against the Cumberland hotel near Marble Arch over how Spence was able to get in and out of the hotel.

The court heard that Spence was previously caught on CCTV sauntering through the hotel lobby before touring the corridors looking for valuables to fund his drug habit in the early hours of a morning in April.

Earlier the family from the United Arab Emirates had visited Buckingham Palace and the London Aquarium and retired to bed on the seventh floor.

The three victims were Ohoud, 34, Khulood, 36, and Fatima Al-Najjar, 31. A half-sister Sheika Al-Mheiri was also with them but had popped out to buy some chocolate and see her brother fatefully leaving the hotel door on the latch.

She returned to see a scene of devastation with three bodies lying in pools of blood and two children cowering and screaming.

Spence had left his victims for dead, fled with a suitcase of valuables - including a white Cartier diamond encrusted watch worth £12,000 and Louis Vuitton jewellery - and within an hour £5,000 had been withdrawn using one of their stolen bankcards.

He later claimed he had taken £50,000 worth of jewellery, designer handbags, BlackBerrys, iPods and perfume from the sisters.

Spence had been given the hammer by accomplice, Thomas Efremi, 57 of Islington, who was not present during the attack.

He has pleaded guilty to fraud and was found guilty by the jury of conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary.

In the witness box he had denied there had been a “plot” to burgle the hotel and insisted he had not known that night that Spence was carrying his hammer.

Emma Moss, whose brother James, of Stroud Green, has admitted handling Spence’s stolen goods, described the thug’s lifestyle of drugs and violence.

She said he is homeless because of his crack and heroin addiction and regularly prowls around hotel corridors armed with a hammer.

In a statement read out in court, Ms Moss said: “Philip doesn't have a home and stays with different people. The last address he was at was in south-east London.

"I know him to be a criminal who commits burglaries and robberies and he has told me he has stolen from hotels before. He is also someone who exaggerates and tells lies."

After the attack Spence turned up at her home, acting "hyperactive". She said: "Philip always carries a hammer with him.

"He told me that he had left the hammer there (at the hotel). He was crying but I believe this was about himself, not the women."

Spence told the jury he had been “high” when he attacked the sisters but had only wanted to make them “pass out” so he could make a getaway.

In April last year Spence walked free from the Old Bailey after a heavily pregnant woman had been battered with a chair leg then stabbed and poured boiling water over her as she cowered in a bath.

Tracey Hughes, 28, suffered a collapsed lung, stab wounds to her head and back, a broken wrist and finger and bruising all over her body.

However her unborn child was unharmed and she gave birth three months later.

Spence was found not guilty after he claimed he had acted in self-defence when fellow drug user Miss Hughes tried to rob him.

She said she had been smoking crack cocaine with Spence and another man at a flat in Clapton shortly before they clashed in October 2012.

Among his previous convictions, in November 2007 Spence had threatened his landlord in Walthamstow over rent when he chased him and tried to smash down a door with a hammer.

He also threatened to stab to death a man he had met on an online dating site and burgled his house when he refused to meet the addict.

In April 2007 he was sentenced for punching a female employee unconscious at Islington Borough Council offices and was violent towards care home staff.

In April 2011, he was convicted of kicking a box at a man then spitting and punching him and biting his shoulder as he walking along Conway Road in north London.