Peter Tobin guilty of Dinah McNicol murder
• Serial killer abducted girl, 18, in 1991 and buried her in garden
• Life in jail for third murder conviction, with more victims feared
Esther Addley
guardian.co.uk,
16 December 2009
Peter Tobin, the convicted child rapist and killer already serving life sentences for the murders of two young women, was found guilty today of killing a third, amid fears that more victims could emerge. A jury at Chelmsford crown court took just 13 minutes – believed to be one of the shortest deliberations ever in a trial of this nature – to find Tobin, 63, guilty of kidnapping, drugging and murdering 18-year-old Dinah McNicol, who disappeared in August 1991 as she hitchhiked home from a music festival.
Yesterday police released images of women's jewellery found in Tobin's possession which they believe he might have kept as trophies from unknown victims. Forces across Britain will now begin pursuing 1,400 separate outstanding lines of inquiry to try to piece together his movements since the 1960s. Among the 37 items recovered are watches, necklaces with religious pendants, diamond rings and a black leather purse carrying the word Lourdes.
More than a dozen unsolved murders are thought to have been examined again for possible links to Tobin, though officers have stressed there is no immediate evidence linking him at this stage. Robin Merrett, assistant chief constable of Sussex police, who, under the codename Operation Anagram, is leading the national trawl for any further victims, appealed to the public to help identify the jewellery, which was in Tobin's possession in 1991 and 2006.
Police describe Tobin as 'pure evil' Link to this video
David Swindle, Detective Superintendent at Strathclyde police, said: "Peter Tobin has now been found guilty of the brutal murders of three young women. Who knows if he has killed others? We will continue to actively scrutinise his movements throughout his lifetime. No stone will be left unturned. If this takes years then so be it. If Peter Tobin dies, it will not mean that the investigation ends."
McNicol's body was discovered in November 2007, tightly bound and gagged, wrapped in 16 heavy-duty refuse bags and buried under concrete in the garden of Tobin's former home in Margate, Kent. A few metres away, cut in two and also wrapped in bin bags, was the corpse of Vicky Hamilton, 15, whom Tobin had abducted, raped and murdered in Bathgate, West Lothian, in February 1991.
Tobin has already been convicted of killing Hamilton, and has also been convicted of the murder of Angelika Kluk, 23, a Polish student whom he raped, bludgeoned and stabbed to death in September 2006, dumping her body under the floor of a Glasgow church. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 1994, of which he served 10, for raping and buggering a 14-year-old girl and indecently assaulting another. Already serving life with a minimum of 30 years, he was sentenced by Justice Calvert-Smith to a full life term.
McNicol's father Ian, 70, sat in court throughout the two-and-a-half-day trial with Dinah's brother and two sisters, who held hands as the verdict was announced, before kissing each other in silence. Michael Hamilton, Vicky's father, arrived from his home in Scotland for the verdict, and touched McNicol on the shoulder and shook his hand as it was delivered.
Tobin, dressed in dark trousers and the same lilac jumper and shirt he wore for his previous murder trials, sat impassively as he was sentenced. Two jury members wept as details of his other crimes were disclosed in court after the verdict. "After all these years, we at last know the truth and justice has prevailed," Sara Tizard, Dinah's half-sister, said outside court. "We'd like to put the trial behind us and remember Dinah as the unique and inspiring daughter and sister she was."
Detective Superintendent Tim Wills, of Essex police, described the killer as "pure evil" and paid tribute to McNicol's family, saying: "I can't imagine what 18 years of not knowing what happened to Dinah must have been like for them. The strength they have shown throughout that has been remarkable."
The jury of three women and nine men had heard that Tobin murdered McNicol, from Tillingham, Essex, after picking her up in his car, drugging her with the sedative amitriptyline, which he was prescribed at the time, and almost certainly raping her. The body of the teenager was found buried in the garden of 50 Irvine Drive, Margate, where Tobin had lived.
After murdering McNicol, Tobin used her cash card to take more than £2,000 from her account via cash machines along the south coast, money she had received as compensation for the death of her mother in a car accident when she was six. It was Kluk's murder in 2006, shortly after which Tobin was arrested, and the discovery that he had moved around the country using alibis, that prompted all police forces to re-examine cold cases.
The discovery that he had lived in Bathgate at the time that Hamilton disappeared there led to a search of his house, where a knife holding traces of her skin was found. Essex police then began excavating the garden of Tobin's former home in Margate looking for McNicol, where they found the bodies of two young women.
Google is not your friend. I just searched and cannot find it. I distinctly remember a Private Eye cartoon from the '70s with a Weetabix with a knife through the heart.
US serial killer Rodney Alcala could be 'new Ted Bundy' US detectives fear "genius" serial killer Rodney Alcala, who butchered a schoolgirl and four women, may be a "new Ted Bundy" who is responsible for up to 30 more murders.
By Nick Allen in Los Angeles
26 Feb 2010
Alcala, 66, known as the "Dating Game Killer" because he once appeared on the US version of Blind Date, was found guilty of carrying out some of the most disturbing killings ever seen in Los Angeles.
Alcala, a photographer with an IQ of more than 160, murdered Robin Samsoe, 12, in California in 1979, as well as four women whose deaths had gone unsolved for decades. But police believe Alcala, who has been in custody since 1979 and has twice overturned previous convictions, is responsible for dozens more deaths in New York and Los Angeles in the 1970s.
A court in Orange County, California heard two of the victim's bodies were posed nude and possibly photographed after their deaths. One victim was attacked with a claw hammer and others repeatedly strangled and resuscitated during their deaths to prolong their agony.
Alcala, who is likely to be sentenced to death on each of the five counts, represented himself in a bizarre court performance in which he posed questions and then answered them himself. During the six week trial he insisted on showing the jury a video of his appearance on an episode of The Dating Game in 1978. He was successful in being picked by a woman for a date.
Police claimed Robin Samsoe's gold earrings had been found in his possession but Alcala claimed they were his. He claimed the video showed him wearing the earrings on the dating show which was filmed a year before the girl's death. Recent DNA advances also helped link him to the killings of nurse Georgia Wixted, 27, legal secretary Charlotte Lamb, 32, computer programmer Jill Parenteau, 21, and Jill Barcomb, 18.
Prosecutor Matt Murphy said he hunted women like prey, even keeping binoculars in his car. "He gets off on the infliction of pain on other people," Mr Murphy told the court. "He committed unspeakable acts of horror."
Detectives in New York are now investigating unsolved murders of women there that occurred while Alcala was living in the city between 1968 and 1971, and again in 1977. The potential victims include an air stewardess and a nightclub heiress. Steve Hodel, a retired Los Angeles police detective who interviewed Alcala, said: "This could easily be another Ted Bundy. It could be 20, 30 victims. the acts he committed, you've got this monster inside of him."
Los Angeles Police Detective Cliff Shepard said: "He's right up somewhere just below Hitler and right around Ted Bundy. We know he's been cross-country a couple of times. We believe there's more out there." Bundy bludgeoned, raped and strangled dozens of victims in the United Statesin the 1970s.
Alcala had graduated with a fine art degree from the University of California and is believed to have studied film in New York under Roman Polanksi before working as a typesetter at the Los Angeles Times newspaper. He used the alias John Berger, the name of a British Booker Prize winning author. He also deployed his skills as a photographer to lure victims to their deaths, taking pictures of women in bikinis on the beach for "photo contests."
Canadian commander accused of murders and sex attacks One of Canada's most senior military figures has been accused of being a sexual predator responsible for up to ten murders.
Nick Allen
14 May 2010
telegraph.co.uk
In a case that has shocked and transfixed the nation, British-born Colonel Russell Williams has been charged with two killings but police think they may be more. Detectives are re-examining up to eight unsolved murders and dozens of sex crimes across Canada stretching back three decades.
His arrest marked a fall from grace for the elite Canadian Air Force commander who once flew the Queen across the Atlantic. Col Williams, 47, was the commander in charge of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, near Toronto, which is the country's largest military airbase and provides support for its operations in Afghanistan and Haiti. The married father of four, has been relieved of duty and is being kept in jail ahead of a civilian trial.
The colonel was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, and his parents both attended Birmingham University. His family emigrated to Canada when he was four and he later embarked on a highly decorated 23-year military career, spending a decade at the controls of VIP flights carrying the Prime Minister and Governor General. In 2005, he picked up the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in the UK and flew them to Canada to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta.
He is charged with the first-degree murder of Corporal Marie Comeau, 38, who was a flight attendant under his command on VIP military flights. She was found dead at her home near the Trenton base in November. He is also alleged to have murdered Jessica Lloyd, 27, a civilian who worked for a bus company. Her body was found by a roadside near the base in February. Both women were strangled.
The two sexual assault victims are alleged to have been attacked in their homes in September last year. They were both bound with duct tape, blindfolded with pillow cases and tied to chairs by a masked intruder, alleged to have been Col Williams, who took photographs of them. The colonel was an avid amateur photographer and police are examining his computer.
Another of his alleged victims has already lodged a £1.6 million civil suit against him, claiming she was sexually assaulted for two hours while her young daughter slept upstairs. He also faces 82 charges of repeated break-ins at 47 homes in the capital Ottawa and Tweed, Ontario, a small town near the base where the colonel had a cottage.
Some of the break-ins were on Cosy Cove Lane, the road where he lived, and mostly took place on Friday and Saturday nights. He is alleged to have broken into one property nine times. Victims said their underwear drawers were rifled and lingerie stolen.
Col Williams was arrested after being stopped during a random police roadblock and police found the tyres of his Nissan Pathfinder matched a distinctive track in the snow near one of the murder scenes.
Among the previously unsolved killings now being reinvestigated is the 2001 rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman at the Trenton base. They are also investigating unsolved crimes near Col Williams' previous postings. Since his arrest Col Williams, who has yet to enter a plea, has tried to commit suicide in prison by jamming a cardboard lavatory roll tube down his throat. He also began a hunger strike.
The charges against him have left Canada's military in a state of shock. He had been described by one superior as a "shining bright star." General Walter Natynczyk, Canada's chief of defence staff, said: "Emotionally it's very difficult to deal with. We go forward, and we are proud to wear our uniform."
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Imagine someone in the military being a murderous freak (allegedly)? But he's a HERO because he puts the uniform on, no matter what!
Serial killer found murdered in Andhra
May 17th, 2010
indiatalkies.com
Hyderabad, May 16 – A convicted serial killer was found murdered in Andhra Pradesh’s Krishna district only a few days after he escaped from jail, police said Sunday. The body of Tatiparthi Rama Rao, convicted for seven murders, was found near Agiripalli police station Saturday night. The body was identified by Rama Rao’s sister Nagamani Sunday.
Police suspect that the local people might have hacked Rama Rao to death. They were questioning a villager Chalapati Rao, who had caught and handed over Rama Rao to police five years ago. After he escaped from a jail last month, Rama Rao had reportedly been threatening Chalapati.
The criminal, a native of Krishna district, escaped from a jail in Srikakulam district April 9 and since then police had been on the lookout for him. The 35-year-old criminal, involved in killing of seven people at Rudrakshapalli village in Khammam district in 2005, had earlier escaped from jail thrice.
Rama Rao, a life convict also involved in several cases of rape, loot and theft, had escaped from Nuzvid jail in Krishna district in 2007 along with co-accused Gunja Yesobu. He was re-arrested by police in Srikakulam district Oct 4 last year. Last month, he again escaped from Pedapadu sub-jail in Srikakulam district by scaling the 21-foot high wall.
Police said Rama Rao was a terror in villages bordering Khammam and Krishna districts. He along with a few associates had killed seven people, including a woman, after chasing them in Rudrakshapalli village in 2005 to take revenge for the murder of his brother.
Serial killers make episodes in news and entertainment Why do some serial killers become notorious while some are forgotten? Criminologist David Wilson tries to find out
David Wilson
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
tribunemagazine.co.uk
The Iceni Project, the small, independent Ipswich-based drugs charity which was founded in 1998 to provide care, support and treatment to those whose lives have been affected by drugs, reported this month that it has seen a surge in donations since the broadcast of the BBC’s Five Daughters.
This three-part drama chronicled the lives of the five women – all of whom were drug addicts and involved in the sex industry – who were murdered by the serial killer Steve Wright in Ipswich in 2006. Brian Tobin, the director and founder of Iceni, said that he had been moved by donations of more than £10,000 from members of the public since the drama was aired in April.
I, too, have been a beneficiary of the drama. My co-written book, Hunting Evil: Inside the Ipswich Serial Murders, which was published in 2008, moved rapidly to the top of the Amazon bestselling true crime chart and I found myself outselling such classics as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (which invented “new journalism”) and Kate Summerscale’s bestseller The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.
Frankly, I wasn’t quite certain what to make of this, even if I was delighted to be selling more books. I was even less certain what to make of the letter that awaited me in my office at Birmingham City University and a subsequent telephone call from Jon Clements at the Daily Mirror.
The letter came from Trevor Hardy, currently a prisoner at HMP Wakefield, who was convicted of murdering three young women in Manchester between 1974-1976 and was sentenced to a “whole life tariff” for these crimes. I had written in a Daily Mirror article that Hardy was interesting as these crimes – killing three or more people in a period greater than 30 days – meant that he was a “serial killer”, even if no one has ever heard of him. What was it, I wondered more generally, that allowed some serial killers to emerge into public consciousness while others all but disappear? Hardy wrote to protest that I had chosen to label him in this way and was considering not allowing me to visit him.
In the same article for the Daily Mirror, I had produced a table of British serial killers – based on this academic definition of three or more victims in a period greater than 30 days. Jon Clements rang and said that he had just taken a call from the mother of a boy who had been murdered by Steven Grieveson and she wondered why he had not been included in my table. “Steven who?” I asked Jon.
Grieveson was convicted in 1996 for the murder of three boys in Sunderland between November 1993 and February 1994, but Northumbria Police had initially suggested that each of the boys had died as a result of sniffing glue and this suggestion clearly influenced how the case was reported at the time. In fact, the three boys – Thomas Kelly, David Hanson and David Grief – had all been strangled. The mother of one of the boys contacted the Daily Mirror so as to have the label “serial killer” applied to her son’s killer. I’m happy to oblige, as Grieveson is clearly that: a serial killer.
But that still leaves my question of why some serial killers emerge into public consciousness – such as Myra Hindley, Harold Shipman, Peter Sutcliffe and Fred and Rose West – while others like Hardy and Grieveson disappear. Is it something to do with how newspapers report crime or a southern bias in the news? Perhaps the role of the police in shaping and defining how journalists should think about a crime allows some serial killers to disappear? In Grieveson’s case, the police denied that there had been murders committed at all. With Hardy, the Greater Manchester Police denied that the three murders of his victims were actually linked. How many other “serial killers” have been ignored in this way?
Whatever the cause, there can be no doubt that serial killers remain a staple of our news and entertainment industries. Perhaps the biggest question of all is to work out how to harness our fascination with this phenomenon so that more Iceni projects benefit and fewer people fall victim to this particular type of offender.
It's got a lot of info about the case and the influential background of at least one of the killers. And if anyone's tempted, I'd still be very cautious of seeking out the video...
Suspected serial killer questioned over murder of three prostitutes in Bradford A suspected serial killer is being questioned over the murder of three prostitutes in Bradford after body parts were discovered in a river.
By Paul Stokes and Richard Edwards
26 May 2010
telegraph.co.uk
Police sources have disclosed that a 40-year-old local man, who has not been named, is being interviewed by detectives about three women who have gone missing in the past year. Susan Rushworth, 43, disappeared last June, while Shelley Armitage, 31, and Suzanne Blamires, 36, both went missing in the past month. All three women worked regularly in Bradford’s red light district. The developments evoked chilling memories of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper who was convicted in 1981 of 13 murders and seven attempted murders of woman, mainly prostitutes working in West Yorkshire. He lived in Bradford and killed three of his victims in the city.
The 40-year-old suspect was arrested on Monday in connection to the case of Miss Blamires, who had been reported missing two days earlier. Yesterday, a member of the public discovered human body parts in the River Aire, in nearby Shipley. They are "a significant discovery" but officers are yet to identify the victim. West Yorkshire police initially denied any links had been made but sources said that the man is now being quizzed over his alleged involvement in the disappearance of all three women. Scenes of crime officers and police divers continue to search the stretch of river where the body parts were found.
Miss Blamires went missing on Friday. She was friends with, and lived only a few streets away from Miss Armitage in the Allerton district of Bradford. Separate searches for both missing women had been ongoing throughout the Bradford district. A sniffer dog and members of the underwater search unit went into a drainage culvert at the end of a cobbled side street off Thornton Road, close to the city centre. Other members of the team searched Bradford Beck on the opposite side of Thornton Road, close to Bradford College, while another police dog investigated undergrowth. Forensic officers in white suits and masks were seen checking black bin bags taken from rubbish skips behind halls of residence at Laistridge Lane.
Assistant Chief Constable Jawaid Akhtar said police had been granted extra time to question the 40-year-old man. He said the body parts appeared to be the remains of one woman who had not yet been identified. "It is a very thorough and painstaking inquiry into three missing women, all of them sex workers, with all the necessary resources and expertise devoted to it." He said the families of the three women were all being supported by police family liaison officers.
They're only investigating and already the Daily Mail are posting up full and revealing details of the suspect? That's got to affect the trial if there is one...
Bradford murder accused appears in court PhD student Stephen Griffiths, accused of murdering three sex workers, identifies himself in court as 'Crossbow Cannibal'
Helen Carter
guardian.co.uk,
28 May 2010
A man accused of murdering three sex workers in Bradford identified himself in court today as "Crossbow Cannibal". Stephen Griffiths, 40, is accused of killing Suzanne Blamires, Shelley Armitage and Susan Rushworth, who all went missing in Bradford over the last 10 months.
When asked for his name in a five-minute appearance before magistrates, he replied clearly: "Crossbow Cannibal." The clerk at Bradford magistrates court, Amarjit Soor, asked Griffiths for his address. "Here, I guess," he replied. Asked to confirm his date of birth, 24 December 1969, he said: "Yeah."
Griffiths, who was unshaven with short dark hair, was handcuffed in the glass-fronted dock and accompanied by three security guards. Wearing a black shirt over a white T-shirt and dark blue jeans, he kept his head bowed throughout the hearing and fidgeted and picked at his hands. No pleas were entered.
The charges are that he murdered Blamires, 36, between May 20 and 25 this year; Rushworth, 43, who has been missing since June 2009; and Armitage, 31, who disappeared in April. Several of the victims' family members were in court, accompanied by police family liaison officers, and some of them stared intently at Griffiths throughout the hearing. The Blamires family chose not to attend. The case is being fast-tracked and Griffiths was remanded in custody to appear before Bradford crown court at 2.15pm today.
Last night, Blamires' mother, Nicky, 55, described her daughter as bright and articulate. She had attended college and wanted to be a nurse. Unfortunately her daughter "went down the wrong path and did not have the life she was meant to have", she said.
Griffiths lived in a third-floor flat in Thornton Road, in the heart of Bradford's red-light district. He attended the private Queen Elizabeth Grammar school in Wakefield and had recently been studying for a PhD in criminology at Bradford University. Officers beleive the body parts found earlier this week in the River Aire, at Shipley, all belong to Blamires. They are continuing to search for the bodies of Rushworth and Armitage.
Dozens of police teams were at work today at a range of locations across Bradford. Much of the activity is focused on the city's red-light district. Many alleyways and streets in the Sunbridge Road area remained sealed off as officers conducted fingertip searches. Sniffer dogs were being used in a number of locations, and officers have been seen taking away a large number of objects in plastic bags.
Ex girlfriend of Crossbow Killer murder suspect tells of 10-year torture 'He gave me pills and smiled 'You're dying'
By Keith Gladdis & Lucy Panton,
30/05/2010
newsoftheworld.co.uk
THE ex girlfriend of the man who calls himself The Crossbow Cannibal today reveals she has been living in fear of him for ten years. Kathy Hancock told the News of the World how Stephen Griffiths - accused of murdering three prostitutes - battered and abused her and kept her a virtual prisoner as he controlled every aspect of her life.
The former jail officer, 37, said she repeatedly fled from Griffiths, who she calls "Psycho Steve"... but he always tracked her down. Kathy shuddered: "I was completely brainwashed by him. My personality had gone and I no longer knew who I was. It was ten years of mental torture and abuse. I just couldn't get away from him."
Kathy first met Griffiths in February 2000 through a friend who lived in the same apartment block as him in Bradford. She felt sorry for the man she thought was a loner and enjoyed talking with him about psychology, which he has a degree in.
She said: "He was a lot slimmer then and he came across as very shy. I got suckered in. We started dating straight away." She later found out that one of the attractions to Griffiths was that she had worked as a prison officer at HMP Full Sutton. Kathy said: "He told me that because I was a prison officer he was attracted to me because I was a figure of authority. He said his ideal would have been police officer."
But within days Kathy began having serious doubts about her new lover and one bizarre incident confirmed her suspicions. She explained: "When we went out he was always holding my hand. There was one afternoon I saw a friend. He came over, hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. Stephen didn't show any emotion at the time but later that night he took me to his ex girlfriend and made me watch as he kissed her on the cheek. He called it 'balancing it out'."
Within two weeks his controlling behaviour had begun. Kathy said: "It was very slow control. He wants control of everything but he does it in such a passive way. He would make me think how I came across to other people. He would make you doubt the way you are."
Kathy accused Griffiths of hatching an incredible plot to make her move out of her home in Wakefield and into his Bradford flat 20 miles away. It involved getting rid of her two beloved dogs, a Rhodesian Ridgeback cross called Yoshi and a cross ginger collie called Taz. Kathy was at his flat when Griffiths offered her the anti-depressant drug dothiepin. She was already on another anti-depressant and mixing the two was dangerous.
Kathy recalled: "As I started to feel ill he just sat there laughing at me saying, 'You're dying.' He said, 'You can't mix those tablets' and just kept laughing. I was very hazy but I drove myself to Bradford A&E because he would not let me ring an ambulance. But I was too scared to stay in hospital. In the morning I just left. I knew I was in for hell. When I got back home to my flat he said I had been burgled. Nothing was taken but the dogs were gone.
"I was horrified. I love animals and I loved my dogs Yoshi and Taz. Then my neighbour told me that at 3.30am Stephen had arrived and taken them. He later admitted he had. He said Yoshi had taken a dislike to him and growled at him when he had pushed him. He said Taz had then reacted too. He said he had taken them to a gypsy camp near Sheffield and given them away.
He knew I could never return to that flat. I couldn't bear to see those two empty dog bowls. It meant from then on I was stuck in Bradford with him in his flat. Any independence I had was gone. I was crushed." Griffiths later bought a Staffordshire Bull Terrier called Kaiser to make up for getting rid of Kathy's other dogs. Kathy moved into Griffiths' dingy housing association flat in March, just a month after meeting him and soon found herself cut off from family and friends.
Griffiths would not let her go out without him and when they were out together she would be terrified of looking at other people in case he reacted. She said: "The friend who introduced us went from seeing me all the time to never seeing me. She called the police. So did my parents. But when the police came round to ask if I was okay Stephen was there holding my hand. His flat was like a prison. I couldn't go out without him.
"He would only go to certain shops together and he was always with me holding my had with a tight grip. I was scared to go out because of his reaction if something happened that he didn't like." Griffiths soon started to behave violently towards Kathy especially when she talked to other people. She remembers one occasion when they visited his brother.
Kathy said: "His brother had a friend there. Everything seemed to be okay but later I was in trouble because I had walked up the stairs when his brother's friend was walking down. Stephen said, 'You must have said something to him.' I couldn't look at anyone."
On another occasion Griffiths punched and headbutted her in the car after she had gone out with his sister. Kathy recalled: "We'd been visiting his family and his sister said she was going out dancing and he said I could go with her for an hour. I love dancing and I was out for longer than I said I would be. When I got back he didn't react or show any anger in front of his family. But in the car home he punched me on the nose." Kathy snapped and fought back. She said: "I was riot trained when I was a prison officer so I punched him back. Then he headbutted me."
Another time Kathy was left unconscious by an ultra-violent assault. She said: "We were in his flat when he punched me and bust my lip over nothing at all. As he punched me a glass bottle broke and my leg was cut. I was out cold. He took my clothes off and put me to bed. He went in the lounge, calmed down and watched the telly. I came round and went mad and laid into him. One of the reasons he liked me, he said, was I fought back and he loved that thrill."
By the Spring of 2001 Kathy's family were becoming increasingly worried about her. She had begun to speak to the authorities about the abuse but her plans to leave Griffiths were scuppered when she decided to leave him. She had a fit and banged her head as she cleared her belongings from his flat. It was while at hospital having a CT scan that doctors told her she was pregnant.
Kathy said: "I just couldn't believe it. When I told my friend she just burst into tears. Stephen has always wanted children. After hospital I went back to him and we even got a house in the Low Moor area of Bradford." But within months of moving Kathy discovered her pregancy was ectopic, outside her womb, and she lost the baby. She says: "Stephen knew I was having problems but refused to come with me to the hospital.
"I wasn't too upset. It was very early in the pregnancy and to me it was not yet a baby. But Stephen's reaction was very strange. He took the positive pregnancy test stick which we had kept and he made a coffin for it."
They moved back into Griffiths' flat where his behaviour was growing ever more violent and abusive. By now Kathy realised she needed to break away from him. The ex girlfriend Kathy had watched Griffiths kiss was one of the few people he trusted her to have contact with. The pair became friends and between them hatched an escape plan for Kathy.
Griffiths had arranged a weekend away for them in Belgium and while they were there Kathy's new pal would clear her belongings from his flat. When they returned from Belgium they first headed to Batley to collect pet dog Kaiser from Griffiths' father. Kathy said: "I took the opportunity to run. I was in the garden so I grabbed Kaiser, jumped in the car and fled."
She went to Morecambe for the weekend then variously stayed with friends in Wakefield and Manchester before moving back in with her parents in Stamford Bridge near York. But wherever she went, Griffiths always tracked her down. Kathy said: "From that point on in 2001 I was in hiding. But he kept finding me. On one occasion he drove all the way from Bradford to my parents' house and stabbed all four tyres on my car. One the way back from that he smashed his car into a tree and had the cheek to ring me for help. He asked me to take him back to Bradford saying, 'By the way, you can't use your car. I've slashed the tyres'."
TAUNTS OF A MONSTER: Two of the threatening texts Griffiths sent to Kathy
Eventually Kathy gave up running and decided to stay in Wakefield where there began nine years of harassment before he was arrested this week over the killings of three vice girls. Kathy said: "He kept turning up at the house. He kept trying to contact me. There were threats by voicemail, text message and email. I went for non-molestations orders but they didn't work. In the end I thought it best just to keep in touch with it and keep control over the situation."
On one occasion Griffiths called her to say he had botched an attempt to dock a puppy's tail. She said: "This was another part of him trying to control me again. He knows my weakest point is animals. He rang to say, 'Don't shout but I've done something stupid'. He said he got a puppy from a pet shop and had got off his head on Valium then chopped its tail off. I begged him to let me take the puppy and he did. That was one of the reasons I stayed in touch with him. I thought if he started abusing any more animals at least I could help them."
After Kathy had moved out Griffiths began to keep animals at his flat. He started with two snakes which soon died then moved on to large monitor lizards, keeping live rats to feed the reptiles. He boasted how he fed live rats to snakes...I was appalled." Kathy recalled: "He had his rat farm. There were hundreds of them. They stank. All you could smell was rat urine. He boasted how he'd fed live rats to the snakes. I was appalled. When the snakes died he moved onto the lizards. They were three feet long and he walked them on a lead around town. He even took them into a nightclub in his backpack. He used the animals to get people to talk to him."
In 2008 Kathy took an extended holiday in Turkey and it was while she was there that she finally decided to end all contact with Griffiths. But when she stopped responding to his texts he grew increasingly frustrated. In one text he called her a "fat ugly slapper" and in another taunted he would kill her cats. Kathy said: "I already had cats then befriended a couple of feral ones I called Flash and Smudge. While I was in Turkey they were being looked after by a friend.
"When I stopped responding to Stephen's texts I got one saying, 'Your cats are dead'. I got my dad to phone the friend who was looking after my cats who said they were fine. But then he texted again, saying, 'Not your inside cats, your outside cats'. I never saw them again."
When Kathy returned from Turkey she found all her windows daubed with yellow paint and the word "slag" on the outside wall. After that she suffered a blizzard of harassment from Griffiths. She said: "I called him Psycho Steve to everyone I spoke to though obviously not to him."
She also told how he had a tattoo on his arm saying "Diane Lost War", referring to a legal battle with a previous girlfriend. But despite the court orders and twice being put in protective custody, Griffiths continued to hound Kathy. In June last year one order ended at midnight. Three and a half hours late he called her and laughed maniacally down the phone. Kathy said: "It was evil laughter. He was taking the mickey that the injunction had run out. I rang the police and they said they couldn't do much with just a laugh."
Kathy said Griffiths told her four years ago he was starting to take Class A drugs as an "experiment". She recalled: "Until then he had never really drunk alcohol, never smoked or taken drugs. He told me he was going to do an experiment with every drug. Heroin and cocaine. He was getting it off prostitutes and doing it at his flat. He was a psychology student and said he was taking the drugs to see if he could control them."
Kathy also revealed Griffiths had a foot fetish. She said: "He would see girls going up the escalator in the shopping centre in open shoes and get sexually excited. I didn't mind because it meant he left me alone."
About Griffiths' court appearance on Friday, Kathy said: "He is loving this. He is going to milk this. When he gave his name as The Crossbow Cannibal it made me very sad. All I could think about was the parents who have lost their daughters."
Philip Onyancha during an interview in Nyeri Police Station on Wednesday. He claims to to have killed 17 victims in various parts of the country where he worked as a security guard. Photo/FREDRICK ONYANGO ‘I still have 83 more women to kill’
Wainaina wa Ndung’u,
Fred Mukinda,
Patrick Nzioka,
Joy Wanja
and Mutuma Mathiu
June 9 2010
nation.co.ke
In the morning he took police officers, with the media in tow, to the Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company offices at the Karen Shopping Centre, up an iron ladder and through a window into a small space between the flat, concrete roof and iron sheets.
There, in that small space, was a grinning skull, believed to be of a girl his own age from Bomet District. Draped on her skeleton is a red pullover and a black skirt. A dark stain of putrefied goo is all that remains of her flesh, her life and vitality. Riverside Drive is the buffer between the blistering pace of the inner city and the languid quiet, leafy Lavington where the rich live. Riverside is itself not poor, in its upper reaches are still to be found embassies and ambassadorial residences.
Number 115 Riverside Drive, next door to the embassy of Germany, is one such residence, whose iron gates and uniformed sentry stand guard over acres of green gardens and a stone mansion with a red roof. On Wednesday, as part of his busy schedule, Mr Onyancha led homicide detectives to this home, where he had worked as a guard in 2007.
In the sewer in this compound were the remains of a woman. The police had pulled out her purse and it sat open on the manhole, a pitiful reminder of an unmourned victim of violent murder. This woman was randomly picked, a conversation struck up with her, she was lured into the compound and viciously attacked, the man’s supine body wrapped around her, strangling her, his strong teeth clamped on her throat.
At Thika Police Station on Uhuru Street, Mr Onyacha sat quietly in the boot of an unmarked police station wagon, his hands secured with handcuffs behind his back. At no time are the cuffs ever removed, the officers lead him around with a rope on his manacled hands. The officers are not being cruel and insensitive; they just can’t afford to take any risks.
Mr Onyancha’s high cheekbones and deep set eyes give his face the triangular look of a fox. There is something in the emotions that play on his face as he goes through the business at hand that chills the blood, a confused blend of shyness, cunning, fear and a sly menace.
At the back of Mr Onyancha’s head is a tumour the size of an orange. When he was alone, the Nation saw Mr Onyancha raise his face, his mouth agape and mumble to himself.
Hidden bodies
The former G4S watchman is a moral and legal hazard. He has claimed to the police that he is responsible for 17 murders and he has been conducting officers around the country, showing hidden bodies. By Wednesday, his confession is all the police had. But a confession to the police or the media has no standing in law, only a confession to a magistrate counts as evidence.
On Kwame Nkrumah Street in Thika at Suitable Lodging, Mr Onyancha showed officers to a cramped, dirty room where he claimed to have committed the second of two murders in the town.
In Nyeri, the last stop in his busy day, Mr Onyancha took a few questions from the Daily Nation. “My target was to kill 100 women. I managed 17 and there were 83 to go,” he said. The whole business of killing started when he was recruited into a cult by one of his teachers in 1996. Police are looking for her. He was given the target by the woman, he claimed, whose name he can now not recall.
“After agreeing to join the cult, I graduated automatically. From then on spirits would send me to go and kill. In the cult, it was like in a stage. And to go to the next level, I had to kill a lot of people and also meet the leader of the cult,” he added.
In 2007, Mr Onyancha said, he travelled from Nairobi to Nyeri after, he claimed, the spirits directed him to go and kill. He claimed the same spirits gave him special powers to subdue his victims. He did admit that he only killed women, because they are more vulnerable. “When the urge comes, they are the easiest victims,” he said. "When I meet my target, even if she tries to resist she can’t. I only need to greet her, shake her hand and she becomes confused, kind of.
“One time in Nairobi, I managed to make a lady follow me only by talking to her, but because I did not greet her, she survived,” he said. He strangled all his victims, he claimed, and did not sexually abuse them.
In an emotionless explanation of why he claimed to senselessly take lives, Mr Onyacha said he felt a “powerful and unstoppable” urge to kill and derived pleasure and satisfaction from strangling his victims and drinking their blood. The urge became more and more powerful as time went on, he said.
All the bodies so far found are decomposed and police do not know how the victims died.
Normal senses
“After killing someone, I feel okay though I regret when I come to my normal senses,” he told journalists on Tuesday in Naivasha. His emotions swing between regret and contentment after taking a life, he said. Asking why he was now confessing, he said he could no longer hide his actions. “I want to get it out of me,” he said.
Catherine Chelengat, whose pile of bones were found in Karen, went missing on November 2, 2008, according to relatives. At the time of her disappearance, Mr Onyancha was a G4S guard and stationed at the Water company’s office in Karen. Catherine finished college at Kabete Technical Institute in Nairobi earlier in 2008, and had a nine-year-old daughter.
“We heard nothing from her captors for the next three months. They called us on phone and demanded Sh30,000. We pleaded for time as we did not have the money. We reported to police at Karen,” said Mr Wesley Rotich, a relative. The family raised Sh15,000 and sent it to the kidnappers using M-Pesa, just as they had demanded. Mr Rotich was the last relative to see her alive. “It was on a Sunday. She left my house around 9pm, saying she was going to spend the night at her brother’s house. She stayed at my place,” he said.
Mr Rotich’s house is less than 50 metres from the Water company’s Karen office. On Riverside Drive, Mr Onyancha said he had thrown a woman’s body into a 10-metre sewage tank. “She was just walking along the road. I just shook her hand and she followed me,” he said.
In Thika, at Rwambogo Lodging Room 20 and Suitable Hotel Room 5, he claimed to have strangled two prostitutes. At Kenyatta High School, Mahiga, which he joined in 1995, Mr Onyancha was remembered vividly as a bright and promising student. “He was an eloquent, bright young student who spoke with a lot of authority and excelled in his studies,” said Ms Mercy Thirimo who taught him English.
Records at the school in Othaya show Mr Onyancha, who was born in 1978, was admitted to Form One on February 7, 1995. He was among 120 boys who joined the African Independent Pentecostal Church of East Africa (AIPCA) sponsored school that year. His admission No. was 4567. Kenyatta High School, Mahiga, stands on a picturesque hill. You go down a crest on an earth road and up the hill. At the end of the road stands the imposing school opened on June 30, 1969 by State Minister for Foreign Affairs Mbiyu Koinange.
Besides a cement artwork of a father nudging his child to a book, the school motto: “Dream your tomorrow. Leave your Today. Live your dream. Meet men of Substance.” It was here that Philip had been brought to school by his father, Mr Samuel Onyancha, in February 1995. Mr Onyancha indicated in the school records that he was a farmer and gave his address as C/O Nyamagena Mabariri Primary School of P.O. Box 49 Etago, Kisii. His mother is named as Esther Moragwa Onyancha of the same address and her occupation is given as businesswoman.
He scored 498 marks out of a possible 700 at KCPE which he had sat at Changoi Primary School in Kericho. “A well behaved boy whose ability is above average,” the headmaster of Changoi Primary had indicated in the Kenyatta High School admission form that required to be filled by his primary school.
“When he arrived here, he was a very dedicated student who led his class for several terms. But when he got to Form Two, he appears to have lost his marbles after he was suspended for bullying Form One students,” said Mr Onesmus Mwangi the school deputy head teacher who was a mathematics teacher at the time.
School authorities said the school board of governors readmitted him after a two-week suspension because accusations against him could not be proved. “He returned to the school but he had lost his lustre,” remembers Ms Thirimo. “This formerly energetic boy who participated actively in ball games and athletics was never the same again. We watched him spiral into a pale shadow of himself,” said Biology teacher Joseph Mwaura who doubled up as the games master.
Teachers admitted that at the time he was their student, the school had experienced problems linked to devil worship. By the time he sat his KCSE in 1998, he was no longer the bright boy he once was and scored a grade C-. He never collected his certificate. “All we can say for now is that Philip is not a very good example of Kenyatta Mahiga High School,” headmaster Edward Keritai said.
G4S sacked Mr Onyancha this March for absconding work on several occasions. Communication manager Dan Okoth said the man did not display any strange behaviour during the time he worked at G4S.
Did Tobin kill nine more women? Police piece together murderer's horrific past
Jim Mcbeth and Chris Brooke
19th June 2010
Serial killer Peter Tobin will soon be formally linked to the deaths of up to nine more women, it emerged yesterday. Detectives are only weeks away from naming new victims of the evil 63-year-old, who is currently serving life sentences for the murders of three young women.
A long-running investigation by a team of detectives spanning the country has made major breakthroughs in the attempt to discover the full extent of Tobin's appalling history. Sufficient evidence may have emerged to link him formally to the deaths or disappearance of as many as nine women in the South and South-East of England from 1970 onwards. He is long believed to have murdered many more than his three proven victims: Angelika Kluk, 23, Vicky Hamilton, 15, and Dinah McNicol, 18. It has been suggested he killed 20 women, predominantly during the 1970s and 1980s when he travelled the country, living in Kent and Hampshire and working in Essex and Sussex.
Detective Superintendent David Swindle of Strathclyde Police, who is co-ordinating the inquiry, codenamed Operation Anagram, said: 'We hope to answer a lot of questions about what Tobin has - or hasn't - done within three months.' The detective would not be drawn on details, but he said that 'the pieces of the puzzle' were being put together. He added: 'We don't know how many victims there are.'
Since Anagram was launched in 2006, detectives in eight UK forces have analysed Tobin's life. They have interviewed 19,000 people and generated 6,000 lines of inquiry. But several months ago, they located three vital new witnesses, who helped them to fill in 'gaps' in Tobin's life when he was 'off the radar'. And it is understood the breakthrough allowed detectives to focus on a cluster of cases. It is also understood they established Tobin was part of a paedophile ring in Hampshire in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Last December Tobin was found guilty of murdering hitch-hiker Dinah McNicol, whom he strangled and buried in his garden in Margate, Kent. Dinah had just finished her A-levels in 1991 and was hitching with a man she had befriended at a music festival. Thrice-married Tobin, a father of two, had been visiting his son in Portsmouth and picked them up. He dropped the man off near the M25 and no one saw Dinah again. Her body was found bound and gagged in a rubbish sack a few feet from another teenage victim, Vicky Hamilton, who had been snatched in Bathgate, Lothian, as she headed home, also in 1991. Vicky's body had been cut in half.
Until the body of Polish student Angelika Kluk was found in 2006, under the floorboards of a Glasgow church where Tobin worked as a handyman, his most serious offence was believed to have been the 1994 rape of two young girls, for which he received a 14-year jail term. After his arrest for Angelika's murder, police began probing Tobin's earlier life and found the bodies of Vicky and Dinah in a shallow grave in his former home. He has been given life terms for all three murders in separate trials.
Mr Swindle said the continuing investigation to link him to other unsolved murders over a 40-year period will have no impact on his prison term, as he will never be released. He added: 'He's going to die there anyway, but we owe it to the public to find out what else he has done.'
The investigation has traced bank records which place Tobin in 'certain towns at certain times' and identified the cars he owned. It is now known that from the 1970s, Tobin owned 120 different cars at different times, which he regularly drove up and down the motorway network, giving him the opportunity to pick up hitch-hikers.
Two potential victims, aged 18 and 24, were found murdered in 1970 near the M6 in Cheshire and the M1 in Derbyshire. Another possible victim is Louise Kay, 18, who vanished in 1988 from Eastbourne, while Tobin was workingin a Sussex hotel. She disappeared after leaving a nightclub. Other potential victims are law student Pamela Exall, 22, who vanished in 1974 while holidaying in Norfolk, and art student Jessica Earl, 22, from London, who was murdered six years later after going missing from Eastbourne. The body of London solicitor Janice Weston, 36, was found near the A1 in Cambridgeshire, another area associated with Tobin.
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