Monstrous British Serial Killers E-Book

Jon Buchanan

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 189

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Monstrous British Serial Killers features eighteen strange and morbidly fascinating British serial killer true crime cases. This volume will examine, among others, Sharon Carr - a vicious teenage killer who became known as The Devil's Daughter. We will also take a deep dive into the harrowing case of Dennis Nilsen and take a look at the frightening story of James Fairweather - a teenage boy who decided he wanted to be a famous serial killer. Other cases to fall under scrutiny in this book include Stephen Port, Neville Heath, and Daniel Gonzalez. All this and more awaits in Monstrous British Serial Killers.

Leseprobe

Monstrous British Serial Killers

Jon Buchanan© Copyright 2023 Jon Buchanan

ContentsAnthony ArkwrightPeter BryanAlbert BurrowsSharon CarrKenneth ErskineJames FairweatherDaniel GonzalezAllan GrimsonNeville HeathMark HobsonColin IrelandThe Manchester Canal PusherDennis NilsenStephen PortJohn StraffenThe Thames MysteryThe Trunk MurdersSteve WrightANTHONY ARKWRIGHT Anthony Arkwright was born in Wath upon Dearne, West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1967. He was more of a spree killer than a serial killer but his crimes were brutal and terrifying and there is no doubt he would have killed many more times if he hadn't been caught. Arkwright was pretty disturbed from a young age. He had a lot of convictions for petty crime and was very anti-social. He wasn't someone you'd want to live next door to. When it comes to crazy killers, Arkwright was straight out of central casting. He had mad sinister eyes and jagged teeth. He looked completely insane. According to people who knew him, Arkwright had always boasted that he would be a famous killer one day. He wanted to be like Jack the Ripper or Peter Sutcliffe. The horror began on Friday the 26th of August 1988. Arkwright was fired from his job at a local scrapyard and went to a pub to drown his sorrows. Arkwright decided he was going to kill his grandfather Stanislav Puidokas - whom he'd always hated. Arkwright tracked down Puidokas to his allotment in the afternoon and stabbed him in the neck. He then smashed the old man's head in with a hammer after dragging the body to a shed. He then killed his grandfather's 73-year-old housekeeper Elsa Kronadaite by hitting her in the head with an axe. He robbed the house of money and valuables before he left. The next day, in the early hours, Arkwright entered the house of his neighbour Raymond Ford wearing nothing but a devil mask. Ford was an ex-teacher who Arkwright loathed. Arkwright had made life a misery for Ford by stealing from him. Arkwright stabbed Raymond Ford around 250 times. There were stab wounds on every part of his body. Anthony Arkwright then disembowelled Ford and left his internal organs and entrails draped around the room. Amazingly, Arkwright was then visited by the police (after he'd washed the blood off obviously) in relation to robbing Raymond Ford earlier in the week. The police obviously had no idea that Arkwright had just killed Ford. Arkwright was told he had to appear in court next week and then let go. In the early hours of Sunday, Arkwright decided to kill again. This time the victim was a 25 year-old neighbour named Marcus Law. Law was in a wheelchair at the time because of a motorbike accident. Arkwright was angry at Law because Law had borrowed some cigarettes off him but never returned the favour. Arkwright stabbed Law hundreds of times and gouged his eyes out. The following morning, Arkwright bumped into Law's mother and laughed as he said that Marcus had killed himself. Law's mother then made the awful discovery when she went in the house. Anthony Arkwright was swiftly arrested on suspicion of murdering Marcus Law. After questioning Arkwright the police went to the home of Raymond Ford and found a crime scene so gruesome that even veteran detectives were shocked and shaken. Arkwright claimed he had killed five people but the fifth murder was fictitious. It was simply something he made up to add more to his tally. Anthony Arkwright was deemed insane at first but then the authorities decided he was acting and he was judged fit to stand trial. In 1989 he plead guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. Anthony Arkwright seemed to relish his crimes and was delighted to think that he was now an infamous killer who would be as famous as Peter Sutcliffe or Dennis Nilsen. On that front though he was to be disappointed. Although he was one of the most brutal and gruesome killers ever to come from Britain he never really became that famous. In fact, a lot of people today have probably never heard of Anthony Arkwright. Detective Inspector Bob Meek of South Yorkshire Police said of Arkwright - "From the day we brought him in for the Marcus Law murder to the day he was jailed, Arkwright seemed genuinely proud of what he had done. He expected everyone to revere him, to be fascinated by him. He was a messed up kid, desperate for attention. In his defected mind he chose murder to get the attention he craved. He’s the most dangerous person I ever met in 25 years on the job – he should never get out."PETER BRYANAs for British cannibal killers, the most notorious example (at least in modern times) is probably a man named Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan was a killer who murdered three people in England from 1993 to 2004. When he was captured by the police in 2004, Bryan was cooking parts of a victim's brain in a frying pan. "I ate his brains with butter," Bryan told the police. "It was really nice." Bryan was completely insane. He was sent to Broadmoor Hospital - where he later killed another inmate because he said he wanted to eat more human flesh. The frightening thing about Peter Bryan (and there were obviously MANY frightening things about this man) is that Bryan had the ability to make people think that he was completely rehabilitated and posed no threat. Friends of Bryan and staff who treated him didn't seem to detect any danger about him at all - which turned out to be a very big and tragic miscalculation. When it comes to serial killers this is sometimes called the Mask of Sanity.Bryan was born in London in 1969. He was the youngest of seven children. He attended Shaftesbury Junior School in Forest Gate, before attending Trinity Secondary School in Canning Town. Bryan is believed to have left school when he was about fifteen. He had various casual jobs including a stint working on a clothes stall at a market. It is believed he also worked in a soup kitchen for a brief period. The warning signs about Bryan first became apparent when he was eighteen years-old and was involved in a fracas after trying to throw another resident in his London tower block out of a sixth floor window. Thankfully, Bryan was not successful in this and the resident managed to avoid what almost certainly would have been a fatal fall. Though the police were called out for this incident they took no action against Bryan and he seemed to escape with not much more than a slap on the wrist and a warning to behave himself in the future and not attempt to throw any more neighbours out of his tower block. The victim who had narrowly avoided being throw from the sixth floor said the attack on him by Bryan was completely unprovoked. Hindsight is obviously a wonderful thing but from what later transpired it is obvious that the authorities should have kept a closer watch on Peter Bryan. He was plainly a dangerous and disturbed young man with the capacity to cause someone serious harm. Peter Bryan committed his first murder in 1993 when he was 23 years-old. At this time Bryan had recently (and briefly) worked in clothes shop on the Kings Road but lost his job when he was caught stealing some clothes. Bryan had apparently become infatuated with Nisha Sheth - though this infatuation ultimately manifested itself in the most tragic way imaginable. Nisha was the twenty year-old daughter of the owners of the clothes shop that Bryan had worked in. Because he had lost his job, Bryan decided he would get revenge on the owners of the shop by killing Nisha. He struck the unsuspecting Nisha over the head with a claw hammer while she was speaking to someone on the telephone and she was dead in matter of minutes. The murder was especially distressing and shocking because Bryan killed Nisha in full view of her younger brother Bobby. Bobby was twelve years-old and  knocked to the floor by Bryan before the murder took place.Bryan was a powerful looking and intimidating man. In some of his photographs he looks a bit like the late British heavyweight boxer Gary Mason - only much more sullen. After the murder of Nisha Sheth, Bryan then jumped from a balcony in what was obviously a suicide attempt. He was said to be high on cannabis when he murdered poor Nisha and was patently still in a confused and addled stare. The suicide attempt was unsuccessful and Bryan was arrested when the police arrived on the scene. He confessed to the murder of Nisha Sheth and was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Peter Bryan's next port of call was Rampton maximum security psychiatric unit. Despite the severity of his crime though, Peter Bryan did not appear to strike those who cared for him as dangerous or insane. In time they seemed to come to the conclusion that Peter Bryan was somehow cured - or at the very least no longer an immediate danger. In fact, in 2001 he was transferred to the John Howard Centre from Rampton and was now in the care of a social worker and psychiatrist. The staff who had treated Bryan said he had now tamed his attitude and anger issues and had made tremendous progress. Bryan's transfer from Rampton was only after the result of a six month trial period - which he evidently passed with flying colours. The Mask of Sanity worn by Peter Bryan was still firmly in place. In 2002, Bryan was moved to a hostel in north London where he now had relative freedom. There were even plans to secure him independent accommodation. It seems rather bizarre that a man who murdered a young woman with a claw hammer now (only nine years later) essentially had a foothold back in society and was barely a prisoner at all anymore. Those who had looked after Bryan during his incarceration seemed to believe that the demons which drove him to murder had been banished. In this assumption they were to be proved completely wrong - with tragic and disturbing consequences. The authorities were clearly paving the way for Peter Bryan to perhaps even be completely released. To all intents and purposes, Bryan was practically like a free person already. At the start of 2004, Bryan was sent to an open psychiatric ward at Newham General Hospital after being caught 'blowing raspberries' on the stomach of a sixteen year-old girl. In February 2004, Bryan then killed for the second time when he murdered 43 year-old Brian Cherry. Cherry was actually a friend of Bryan - not that it did him much good. The murder happened a mere three hours after Bryan had been discharged from his medical unit at the hospital. The murder took place at Cherry's flat in Walthamstow, east London. A woman named Nicola Newman arrived at the flat and was told by a blood splattered Peter Bryan that Cherry was dead. Brian Cherry had been struck in the head 24 times with a hammer. One of his arms had been cut off and a leg had been severed. His head was partially sawed off and Peter Bryan was cooking brain and flesh from the head on a stove with some butter. The flesh he was cooking was matted with Cherry's hair. This was literally the most disturbing and horrific crime scene anyone could imagine. It later transpired that the staff supposed to be looking after Bryan had reduced the dosage of the medication he was taking after he complained. This was obviously not a terribly sensible thing to do and may have contributed to his tragic 'lapse'. Peter Bryan was sent to Belmarsh Prison after the murder of Brian Cherry. He proved to be a volatile and unpredictable prisoner. He punched a prison officer and even constructed a noose in his cell in what was presumably a thought to suicide (though it could be that the noose was intended for another prisoner). In the end Bryan was sent to Broadmoor. Amazingly though, he was then transferred to a medium risk area. Believe it or not, despite hacking his friend to pieces and eating part of his brain, the authorities still didn't quite seem to understand how dangerous Bryan was! In April, 2004, Bryan killed a fellow inmate named Richard Loudwell. The 59 year-old Loudwell was killed in the dining room. He had been strangled with a trouser cord and had his head smashed against the floor. The attack lasted for several minutes until the staff were alerted to the commotion and intervened. Bryan said he would have eaten Loudwell's brain if he hadn't been interrupted. Peter Bryan believed that killing and eating people made him stronger. He said he wanted to kill eight people so he could be a famous serial killer. Bryan, who was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, was so detached from reality that he still thought he was going to be released. On the 15th of March 2005, Bryan pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to two manslaughters on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The tragic case of Peter Bryan led to much criticism of the way he had been given enough freedom to murder Brian Cherry. Social workers and care authorities simply hadn't kept a close enough watch on him. There were even criticisms from politicians - who understandably thought it was outrageous that a convicted murderer had basically been left to his own devices to go and kill again. Thankfully, Peter Bryan is now highly unlikely to ever be given any degree of freedom again. Bryan is, for obvious reasons, sometimes called The Real Hannibal Lecter in true crime circles.ALBERT BURROWS Albert Edward Burrows was born in Cheadle Hulme in 1871. He was ostensibly a labourer but had a storied background. His convictions included horse stealing, larceny, and assault. Oh, and one more thing. Burrows was also a bigamist. This got him into trouble with the law more than once too. During the First World War, Burrows got a good job in a munitions factory and started a romance with the much younger Hannah Calladine. Hannah already was the mother of a young daughter but she and Burrows then had a son together. Burrows decided they should get married. What he didn't tell Hannah though was that he was already married. Burrows told Hannah he was a widower and had a child from his past marriage living with relatives. Albert Edward Burrows ended up in a big muddle because he had two families but not enough money to support them. It didn't help that he seemed to be in and out of prison. The debts racked up and he became a desperate man. Hannah grew tired of his disappearing acts and inability to support her so she decided she was going to take the two children and go and live with him. She literally just turned up on his doorstep. You can imagine how the wife (or should that be wife number one?) of Burrows took this. She was absolutely furious. Despite this, Albert Edward Burrows allowed Hannah and the children to stay. His wife packed her bags and left in a huff before shortly after sending Burrows a huge bill for maintenance. Albert Edward Burrow decided that this state of affairs could not go on. He could not financially support two families. Weighing up his options, Burrows decided that he'd rather be with his original wife than Hannah so he made a chilling decision. Burrows took Hannah and the two children out for a walk and then murdered them. He then threw the bodies down one of the many mine pits that dotted the Derbyshire countryside. A few days later, the wife of Burrows returned and was happy to see that Hannah and the kids were gone. Burrows said he had chosen her over Hannah and arranged for Hannah and the children to live somewhere else. He promised his wife the affair was now over. In order to further cover his tracks, Burrows also wrote to Hannah's mother on a regular basis and pretended that Hannah was still alive. Three years later a four year-old boy named Tommy Wood went missing in the area. This was a worrying case and a big police investigation was soon underway. The police soon gathered some eyewitness statements that the boy had been seen walking with Albert Edward Burrows not long before he vanished. When they brought Burrows in for questioning they found him to be exceptionally skitterish and suspicious. It felt as if he was hiding something. After tracing the missing boy's movements, the police eventually narrowed the search to an old mineshaft and had to go down a hundred feet to search the bottom. Spectators had gathered in the fields to watch developments at the pit and one very interested spectator was none other than Albert Edward Burrows. The police later said that Burrows had been very suspicious in hindsight because he seemed to be suggesting they search in another spot. Tragically, the body of Tommy Wood was found at the bottom of the pit. Burrows tried to run when he heard of this but members of the public tackled him and held him down. They probably would have lynched him if the police hadn't intervened. It transpired that Tommy had been sexually assaulted and murdered. It was Burrows of course who had killed the boy - taking his victim tally to four. When the police questioned Burrows they inquired about Hannah Calladine and asked how she was getting on. Burrows told them that Hannah was fine and even gave an elaborate story about where she was living and where she was working. The police checked this story out and found it was all a tissue of lies. No one had any idea where Hannah was. No one had seen her for years. The police even contacted Hannah's family but they said apart from a few letters and cards they hadn't seen her in the flesh since she went to live with Burrows. The police now decided that it might be a good idea to do a more thorough search of the pit where the body of Tommy Wood was found. At the bottom of the pit they found the skeletal remains of Hannah and the two children. It is impossible to overstate how despised Burrows was by the public when his crimes came to light. When the police transported him to prison or court baying mobs surrounded the carriage and shouted abuse. The trial of Albert Edward Burrows for murder was held at the Derbyshire Assizes in July, 1923. It took a jury only fifteen minutes to find him guilty. Albert Edward Burrows was hung at Bagthorpe Gaol in Nottingham on the 8th of August 1923. SHARON CARRSharon Carr was born in Belize and moved to Surrey with her family when she was about five. Carr would become Britain's youngest female murderer (Mary Bell was younger than Carr when she killed but Bell was convicted for manslaughter) in 1992 when she stabbed to death 18 year-old Katie Rackliff in Camberley. Katie Rackliff was a hairdresser who was walking home from a nightclub. Carr picked her out at random and stabbed Rackliff over 30 times. It was a sickening attack with the victim stabbed, among other places, in the private parts and backside. The victim also had knife wounds to the heart and ribs. Sharon Carr was somewhat like a much younger version of Joanna Dennehy. Sharon Carr was just twelve years-old when she committed this dreadful murder. She was with two boys at the time. Some accounts of this case say that Katie Rackliff had argued with her boyfriend that night and accepted a lift from the boys and that it was Carr who lured her into the car. However, the boys had nothing to do with the murder and were much later eliminated from police inquiries. They were certainly not present during the murder and had no idea that Carr planned to kill Katie.Because of the ferocity of the attack and the mutilation of the sexual organs the police assumed that the killer was an adult male serial killer and that this was a sexually motivated crime. Never in a million years could they have guessed that the depraved killer in this case was a twelve year-old girl. The severity of the wounds had indicated that only someone with adult strength could have done this but that obviously wasn't the case. For this reason Sharon Carr seemed to get away with the crime - for a time at least. It beggared belief that a girl of twelve could summon forth the savagery and heartlessness to do something like this. Carr's home life, you probably won't be surprised to hear, was no bed of roses. She came from what you might call a broken home and her family had little money. Carr was a deeply disturbed child with serious mental health problems. There was soon more evidence for this two years later when Carr stabbed a fellow pupil at Collingwood College Comprehensive School. The pupil was stabbed in the lung and barely survived. The attack was random and took place in the toilets. Carr was taken into custody and sent to a medical assessment centre - where she tried to throttle two members of staff. It would be something of an understatement to say that Sharon Carr was not the full shilling. She was violent and highly dangerous but thankfully now out of society. Carr was eventually sent to HM Prison Bullwood Hall in Essex. This facility was closed in 2013 but at the time it was a prison for women and young offenders. Bullwood Prison had a population of about 184 women prisoners and had workshops, training and education facilities. At this time the authorities still had no idea that Carr had murdered Katie Rackliff. That crime was still unsolved. It was only during her time in prison that Sharon Carr's murder of Katie Rackliff came to light. Carr was apparently overheard boasting about this murder to family and friends and even to prison staff. That was certainly a strange thing to boast about. Carr's mental capacity was illustrated by the fact that she was basically shooting her own foot off by talking of this murder. It could be that she just didn't care or simply didn't have the mental capacity to realise what she was doing. While some boasts of those in prison turn out to be delusions or even hot air the authorities had a duty to investigate the possibility that Carr was telling the truth. The police managed to seize Carr's diaries and found entries where Carr wrote about Rackliff's murder and talked about her desire to kill. "I was born to be a murderer. Killing for me is a mass turn-on and it just makes me so high I never want to come down. Every night I see the Devil in my dreams - sometimes even in my mirror, but I realise it was just me." Sharon Carr confessed all to the police and the identity of Katie Rackliff's killer was finally solved. Nothing would ever bring Katie back but at least her family now had a sense of closure and justice. Sharon Carr was most likely never going to get out of prison now. It was a place she was sadly always destined to end up from a preposterously young age. The police and medical experts who spoke to Carr found her highly disturbing. She had no remorse and no compassion or sense of guilt. She was simply a deeply sick and troubled person. Sharon Carr was the most dangerous type of killer imaginable because she was killed at random with no motive. Had she not been taken into custody for the school attack there is no doubt that she would eventually have killed again. The girl she attacked at school was very fortunate to survive what was clearly an attempted murder. Carr was found guilty of murder at her trial and given a minimum sentence of 14 years. She eventually ended up at Broadmoor Hospital after being sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Carr was later transferred to HM Prison Low Newton. She has lately been held in HMP Bronzfield in south-west London. Carr has continued to attack staff and other inmates while incarcerated. She is now 42 years-old but the chances of her ever being released are slim to say the least - despite her appeals. Would you want to live next door to Sharon Carr? No, me neither. Carr tends to be known as The Devil's Daughter in true crime. She was one of the most dangerous teenagers in British criminal history.