Sunday 16 January 2011

MARK MARTIN

                                                          Martin             Ashley             Carr

He was one of three men found guilty of murdering homeless women in Nottingham between December 2004 and January 2005. Mark Martin aged 26, was jailed for life at Nottingham Crown Court for strangling Zoe Pennick, 26, Ellen Frith, 25 and Katie Baxter, 18. Martin, who took the lead in the killings with two other men, had said he had wanted to become the city's first serial killer. Dean Carr was found guilty of murdering Ms Frith, as was John Ashley who was also convicted of killing Ms Baxter. Ashley aged 34, who was known as "Cockney John", was ordered to serve a minimum of 25 years in prison for his part in the murders. He was cleared of murdering Zoe Pennick. The bodies of Miss Pennick and Miss Baxter, who went missing within days of each other between Christmas and New Year of 2004, they were found six days apart in the same warehouse in Nottingham, Martin had partially buried them under building rubble. Miss Frith's badly burned body was discovered by a fire crew in a flat in Marple Square, in the St Ann's area of Nottingham, on 24th January 2005. Martin had strangled her following an argument about drug money. He then set fire to the building. Martin did not give evidence in court and made no reaction as the jury returned guilty verdicts.

Passing sentence, Mr. Justice Butterfield told the 26-year-old: "The facts of these crimes are so horrific and the level of offending is so serious, you must be kept in prison for the rest of your life. These matters were committed by you because you positively enjoyed killing, taking the wholly innocent lives of these three young women for your own perverted gratification. You have not shown a moment of remorse. You have revelled in what you did, glorifying the macabre details of these senseless, brutal and callous killings."

Saturday 15 January 2011

PAUL GLEN

He had been employed as a hitman in 2004, to murder Vincent Smart. So travelled from Liverpool to Mr Smart's home in Farcet, Cambs, armed with a knife. But, by mistake, he stabbed and killed Mr Robert Bogle, who shared a house with Mr Smart. Jurors at Norwich Crown Court were told that Glen was a "professional killer" who had a previous conviction for murder. 

Sentencing Glen, deputy high court judge Sir John Blofeld said: "As a result of your actions a young man who had a future before him lost his life in circumstances which were terrible." He ordered that Glen remain in jail for the rest of his natural life.

Thursday 13 January 2011

ANDREZEJ KUNOWSKI

A polish murder and “dubbed the beast”. He was jailed for nine years in May 2003 and charged two months later on the 29th July with the murder of a 12 year-old Macedonian girl, Katerina Koneva, in West London in 1997. After a trial at the Old Bailey in 2004, he was convicted of murder and jailed for life. The Common Sergeant of London, Judge Peter Beaumont QC ordered that Kunowski should die behind bars. 'I must ensure you spend the rest of your life in prison,' the judge said. The officer leading the investigation, DCI David Little, said: 'I would suggest he is probably the most dangerous sexual offender I have come across. He is certainly the most prolific.' Kunowski only spent five years behind bars before dying of heart failure at HM Prison Frankland, Durham, on the 23nd September 2009. He is now suspected of involvement in the disappearances of 19-year-old student Elizabeth Chau in 1999 and Lola Shenkoya, a 27-year-old who vanished on her way home from work in 2000.

HAROLD SHIPMAN

Former GP who was convicted of killing 15 of his patients, all female, at his surgery in Hyde, Greater Manchester, in the 1990s, giving them lethal doses of morphine. Suspicion was raised when the daughter of his last victim found that Shipman had crudely forged her mother's will. Shipman was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2000, with the trial judge recommending that he should never be released, and two years later the Home Secretary agreed. An official inquiry in July 2002 concluded that there was enough evidence to decide that Shipman had killed 215 of his patients, making him Britain's most prolific serial killer. Some reports claimed that he may have committed around 460 murders. Shipman, who never accepted responsibility for his actions, hanged himself in his prison cell on 13 January 2004, the day before what would have been his 58th birthday, and the full extent of his crimes will probably be never known as a consequence.

ROSEMARY PAULINE WEST

Convicted in 1995 for the murder of ten women and girls at her home in Gloucester, including one of her daughters and a stepdaughter. Her husband, Frederick West, committed suicide in jail before standing trial for a total of 12 murders. Myra Hindley's death left West as the only confirmed female prisoner on the whole life tariff register.

ROBERT BLACK

 A paedophile who abducted, raped and killed three schoolgirls in the 1980s before dumping all three at roadsides hundreds of miles from their homes. He was already serving a life sentence for an attempted abduction when he was convicted of three murders (and one further abduction of a girl who survived) in 1994, and the trial judge recommended a minimum term of 35 years - which would make him ineligible for release until 2029 and the age of 82. He was later given a whole life tariff by the home secretary, although the November 2002 law lords' ruling means that he could still receive early release. Black has been long suspected of involvement in the disappearances of numerous other children in the 1970s and 1980s but questioning of him has proved inconclusive, no bodies have ever been found in these cases and the files remain open.

Wednesday 12 January 2011

COLIN IRELAND


The Gay Slayer, who set about achieving a New Year's resolution to become a serial killer by targeting patrons of a public house frequented by gay men. Ireland pretended to be homosexual in order to be taken to each of his victims' homes, where he took advantage of their desire for S&M activity to truss, torture and murder them, often then robbing them to cover his travelling expenses as he was unemployed. He was able to continue as police found initial difficulty in linking the killings to one perpetrator, and was caught when, having visited police to explain away his sighting on closed-circuit TV with his final victim, his fingerprint was subsequently matched to one found at the man's flat. He confessed to the other murders while in custody and in 1993 pleaded guilty to all charges in court. His original recommended tariff was never publicised.

ANTHONY ARKWRIGHT

MARCUS Law was a big man but, wheelchair-bound after a motorcycle accident, he was no match for his deranged neighbour, Anthony Arkwright. In the early hours of Sunday, August 28, 1988, Arkwright, an evil fantasist who had boasted to friends that one day he would be as infamous as Jack the Ripper, broke into Mr Law’s specially-adapted bungalow in Denman Road, Wath, and stabbed him 70 times. In what he would later describe as punishment for all the cigarettes Mr Law, 25, had scrounged over recent months, Arkwright, 22, then attempted to gut his victim. He also gouged out his eyeballs and placed unlit cigarettes in the sockets, in his ears, up his nostril and in his mouth. The horrific murder continued to haunt Mr Law’s father, retired engineer Anthony Law, and an inquest heard that 14 years later he killed himself in a fit of depression. He was tormented with the thought that somehow he could have prevented the brutal death of his youngest son, Marcus. But Arkwright’s thirst for notoriety was growing by the minute. His next step was to express his grief about the suicide of “poor old Marcus” to the victim’s mother, who found her son dead 30 minutes later. Police were swift to earmark Arkwright as a suspect, and hauled him to the station for questioning. At that point they were unaware he had already committed two other gruesome murders – and that he had spent 12 hours in police custody on suspicion of burglary between executing his second victim and Mr Law. In the weeks before the 56-hour murder spree Arkwright was working in a Mexborough scrapyard. He sometimes stayed at his father’s flat in Denman Road or bedded down in hideouts he had constructed by the railway tracks, casting himself in the role of an SAS-style survivalist, with a knife tucked down his boots.His behaviour was growing increasingly bizarre. He had become obsessed with the mistaken belief that he had been born out of an incestuous relationship between his mother and her father, his grandfather, Stasys Puidokis. When he was sacked from his job on Friday, August 26, for his atrocious attendance record, Arkwright got drunk and the nightmare began. At around 4.30pm that day he went to his grandfather’s allotment, near his home in Ruskin Drive, Mexborough, and stabbed the 68-year-old in the neck, cutting through a nerve and paralysing him, before striking him with an axe and then smashing his head with a 14lb lump hammer. That night he toured the nightspots of Mexborough and dropped hints of his horrendous crime, demonstrating again his lust for public recognition. By 3am on the Saturday he was back in Wath, and had entered the flat of his next door neighbour, Raymond Ford, 45, a depressed teacher who spent his days drinking cheap cider and completing Guardian crosswords. Earlier that week Arkwright had burgled Mr Ford’s flat, stealing a microwave oven and a clock. He had returned to cover his tracks. Naked, with a Prince of Darkness devil-mask covering his face, he stabbed his second victim 500 times, plunging his knife deep into every part of Mr Ford’s body. He gutted and disembowled the corpse with a surgical precision which criminologists said was remarkably similar to the technique used by Jack the Ripper. An experienced police officer later described the violence as: “the most brutal act of slaughter I have ever seen. It is all the more chilling when you realise he must have spent at least half an hour inflicting these terrible wounds.” Four hours later Arkwright was arrested on suspicion of burglary at Mr Ford’s house, and was kept in custody before being released to appear at court the following weekend. But at around midnight the next day it was Marcus Law’s turn to suffer. It later emerged that when police arrested Arkwright as one of a number of suspects in the Law murder investigation, they were alerted to his killings during a bizarre card game. As Arkwright and officers sat at the interview table, Arkwright picked up a four of hearts card and told police: “This is the master card. It means you have four bodies and a madman on the loose.” Arkwright eventually admitted killing his grandfather, Mr Ford and Mr Law. A fourth charge of murdering his grandfather’s housekeeper, Elsa Konradite, 72, was ordered to lie on court files after Arkwright had pleaded not guilty. The killer, who had suffered a deprived and disturbed childhood, was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years. In mitigation James Chadwin QC, told Sheffield Crown Court that his client was a young man suffering from severe personality damage and disorder. “He has shown signs of disturbance from the time his mother left him at the age of four.”

JOHN FRANCIS DUFFY

The Railway Killer, who attacked numerous women in the south of England, raping all of them and murdering three, before revolutionary psychological profiling helped police to catch him, although they got no nearer the accomplice they knew Duffy worked with. He was given a 30 year tariff for two murders and seven rapes which, after the law lords' ruling, was re-activated, meaning that he could be considered for release in 2018. After 12 years in prison, Duffy went on a conscience-clearing exercise, admitting to a third killing of which he'd been originally acquitted, and implicating schoolfriend David Mulcahy as his accomplice. He also revealed his part in countless other rapes, for which he received a further 12 years. After Duffy gave evidence against him, Mulcahy was given life sentences for three murders and seven rapes in 2001 but was not subjected to a whole life tariff because of the timing of his case in relation with the review.

ANTHONY ENTWISTLE

He murdered 16-year-old Michelle Calvy at Blackburn in 1987, within weeks of his release from a seven-year prison sentence imposed for sexually assaulting two women. He was found guilty of Michelle's murder at Preston Crown Court in 1988, sentenced to life imprisonment and is still behind bars after 20 years.

JEREMY NEVILL BAMBER

Shot dead his adoptive parents, sister and six year old twin nephews at the family farmhouse in Essex in order to claim a six-figure inheritance while also laying evidence to suggest his sister, a schizophrenic, had committed the murders before killing herself. In 1986, his trial judge said in sentencing him that he found the idea of ever seeing Bamber free again "difficult to foresee", and advised that he should serve at least 25 years behind bars before release could even be considered. Bamber has nonetheless spent his sentence continuously protesting his innocence, asking for support via a website he runs from prison and seeking new evidence to launch fresh appeals. Support for his case is increasing, including backing from his MP. He is the only whole life tariff prisoner who has not accepted guilt or culpability and was also the youngest such prisoner when the original list was published. Despite the law lords' ruling in November 2002, Bamber has been told by the Home Secretary that he will never be released.

ARTHUR HUTCHINSON

A fugitive who gatecrashed a wedding reception at a house in Sheffield shortly after the bride and groom had left and stabbed to death the bride's father, mother and brother, before raping her sister at knifepoint. Police quickly labelled him as the killer after identifying a handprint on a champagne bottle and a bitemark in a piece of cheese. He was already on the run from answering a charge of violent rape and had previous convictions for offences of violence, indecent assault and dishonesty. Now a pensioner, his trial judge recommended an 18-year tariff which expired in 2002 but he remains in prison, although he could be released any time now if the parole board decides he is no longer a danger to the public.

DENNIS NILSEN

An ex-policeman who dismembered and murdered 13 men at his home in North London, storing the body parts inside and around the flat, and was arrested after workmen investigating a blocked and odorous drain found human flesh. In 1983 Nilsen's trial judge originally recommended a 25-year minimum sentence, but successive Home Secretaries decided that he should never be released from prison. The November 2002 law lords' ruling meant that Nilsen could have been released from prison as early as 2008, however this has not transpired. Nilsen has also been denied the right to publish his autobiography and some music and poetry from prison.

PETER WILLIAM SUTCLIFFE

The Yorkshire Ripper, who murdered 13 women and attacked seven others between 1975 and 1980 across West Yorkshire, plus two in Greater Manchester. He was caught by chance while sitting in his car with a prostitute and potential victim in Sheffield, and made a full confession to each attack to the police, even though they'd only arrested him for having false number plates. At trial he pleaded guilty to manslaughter but was convicted of 13 murders and was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years. Following the November 2002 law lords' ruling, Sutcliffe could potentially have been released from custody in 2011 if a parole board had decided he no longer presented a risk to the public. However, in 2010, it was announced Sutcliffe was to be given a whole life tariff by the government and is now in a high security mental hospital after being declared criminally insane. Sutcliffe remains a hate figure within the Press, with much criticism of the Home Office in 2005 when it emerged he had been allowed to visit the site where his late father's ashes had been scattered.

ARCHIBALD THOMSON HALL

The Killer Butler or Monster Butler, so named as he committed his murders while working in service to members of the British aristocracy as a butler. Hall, also known as Roy Fontaine, was a Glaswegian thief and confidence trickster with numerous convictions and prison sentences by the time he committed his first murder, of an ex-cellmate, whom he shot and buried after an argument over some jewellery stolen from Hall's employer. Hall moved to London and began serving an elderly ex-MP and his wife, and with accomplice Michael Kitto, he killed and buried them both after late-night plans to rob them were disturbed. They then killed a female acquaintance and dumped her body in a barn after she refused to destroy a fur coat which was potentially incriminating evidence, and lastly Hall murdered his half-brother, a convicted child molester who was asking too many questions, before beginning a journey to Scotland with the intention of again burying the body. Having stopped at a hotel for the night when the weather became too hazardous for driving, Hall and Kitto were caught when the hotelier, concerned that two suspicious-looking guests may not pay their bill, called the police. They found the body in Hall's car boot, and Hall later showed them the three gruesome burial sites. After trials in London and Edinburgh, Hall received four life sentences and Kitto three, with one judge recommending that Hall should never be freed. This recommendation was upheld when the list of confirmed whole life tariff prisoners was published, and Hall was the eldest prisoner on the list. He publicly requested the right to die in 1995, and did so of a stroke in 2002, while still in prison. He was 78. Three years earlier, he had published his autobiography.

TREVOR JOSEPH HARDY

He murdered three girls between December 1974 and March 1976. Janet Lesley Stewart, 15, was murdered on New Year's Eve 1974 and buried in a shallow grave in Newton Heath, North Manchester. She had been stabbed. Wanda Skala, 17, was murdered in July 1975 on Lightbowne Road, Moston. She was hit over the head with a paving stone and sexually assaulted. Sharon Mosoph, 17, was murdered in March 1976, and dumped in the Rochdale Canal at Failsworth, Oldham. She had been strangled and mutilated after walking by when Hardy was attempting to burgle a shopping centre at night. He was suspected of committing other murders. At the height of the hunt for the serial killer, 23,000 people were stopped and searched. The case is not widely known and only one independent publication exists which covers the case. Trevor Hardy was arrested for the murders of Wanda Skala and Sharon Mosoph during 1976 and in August 1976. He confessed to the murders and to that of Janet Lesley Stewart - who until then had been a missing person. Despite the alibis provided by his girlfriend Sheilagh Farrow, Hardy was found guilty of the murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.

DONALD NEILSON


The Black Panther, so-called for his penchant for wearing a black balaclava, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1976 for the murder of Lesley Whittle, two sub-postmasters and the husband of a sub postmistress. He was found not guilty of the attempted murders of sub postmistress Margaret "Peggy" Grayland and PC Tony White but guilty of the lesser alternative charges of inflicting grievous bodily harm on Mrs Grayland and possessing a shotgun with the intent of endangering life at Mansfield. A charge of attempting to murder a security guard named Gerald Smith who he shot six times while checking the Whittle ransom trail was left on file because of legal complications due to fact that Mr Smith died more than a year and a day after being shot. The trial judge recommended that Neilson receive a whole life tariff. After the verdicts, his counsel, Gilbert Gray QC, visited him in the cells below the court. He found his client in the corner of his cell curled up in a pre-natal position, totally broken and dejected, filled with immense remorse for Lesley Whittle and her family. He has since been confirmed on the Home Office's list of prisoners issued with whole life tariffs, as a succession of Home Secretaries have ruled that life should mean life for Neilson. The European Court of Human Rights legislation saw politicians lose that power in November 2002.
In 2008, Neilson applied to the High Court to have his minimum term reverted to 30 years. On 12 June 2008, however, Neilson's appeal was rejected, and he was told by the court that he will have to spend the rest of his life in prison. Now in his seventies, Neilson continues to serve his sentence at HM Prison Norwich  and remains one of Britain's longest-serving prisoners.

MYRA HINDLEY

The other of the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady's girlfriend and accomplice who was involved in all five murders with Brady, with two murder convictions and one as an accessory, as well as later admitting the murder of two more children later, only one of whom was subsequently found on the Moor. Hindley was given a 25-year minimum term by the trial judge, which was endorsed in 1982 by the Lord Chief Justice. Reports suggested that Hindley was rehabilitating in prison and had found religion and rejected Brady and her past, but nevertheless a strong sense of public feeling - plus the admission of the two further murders, one of which has yet to result in the discovery of a body - helped prompt her tariff to be increased to 30 years in 1988 and, finally, to a whole life tariff two years later. Hindley subsequently made three appeals against the whole life tariff and launched a further bid for freedom in 1996 when she had served 30 years, but all her efforts were rejected and she died in jail at the age of 60 in November 2002, less than two weeks before a law lords' ruling would probably have secured her freedom. Her case prompted more debate than that of any other prisoner of notoriety, with some high profile backing from the House of Lords, but vitriol from the Press and the public, as well as the families of her victims. Her death left only Rosemary West as a confirmed female prisoner serving a whole life tariff.

IAN BRADY

One of the Moors Murderers who was convicted in May 1966 of murdering three children. With accomplice Myra Hindley, he buried the children in shallow graves on Saddleworth Moor. Two decades later, they admitted abducting and killing two more children, and Brady was taken back to the Moor to try to locate the graves, only one of which was found. Since 1985 he has been held in a mental hospital and although the November 2002 law lords' ruling means he could have been released by now (his tariff expired in October 2005), Brady has made it clear that he never wants to be released. If in the extremely unlikely event of Brady being released however, he would almost certainly be arrested, charged and convicted of the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. In 1966 he was jailed for three murders. Brady has been on long-term hunger strike in hospital, which has led to his being force-fed via a tube, and has had a book published on serial killing. The body of one of his victims, a 12 year old boy, remains undiscovered on the Moor, despite Brady and Hindley's own heavily-guarded efforts to locate the remains themselves. In 2006, Brady wrote to the missing child's mother to claim he remembered enough to be taken to within 20 yards of the grave but was not permitted to do so.

JOHN THOMAS STRAFFEN

Britain's longest serving prisoner who was convicted of murdering two pre-teen girls in 1951. The following year, he escaped for a four-hour period and murdered another girl during this short spell at large, although he has long proclaimed his innocence, and has had his case examined by justice campaigners who also believe his conviction is unsafe. Straffen was reprieved from a death sentence due to learning difficulties, and spent 55 continuous years in custody. Straffen died, having never been released, at HM Prison Frankland in November 2007. From 2002 until his death, he was the oldest prisoner known to be serving a whole life tariff, following the death of Archibald Hall.