About the Author

Carol Anne Davis was born in Dundee, moved to Edinburgh in her twenties and now lives in south-west England. She left school at 15 and was everything from an artist’s model to an editorial assistant before going to university. Her Master of the Arts degree included criminology and was followed by a postgraduate diploma in Adult and Community Education.

A full-time writer since graduating, her crime novels Kiss it Away, Noise Abatement, Safe as Houses and Shrouded have been described as chillingly realistic for their portrayals of dangerous sex and death.

She is also the author of the true crime books Couples Who Kill: Profiles of Deviant Duos, Children Who Kill: Profiles of Preteen and Teenage Killers and Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers.

Carol’s website is located at www.carolannedavis.co.uk.

Acknowledgements

I’m grateful to Dr Bob Johnson for providing me with information about his work with sadistic killers. During his years as a consultant psychiatrist at Parkhurst Prison – and as Head of Therapy at Ashworth Maximum Security Hospital – he treated numerous violent men.

And I’m deeply indebted to Lynn Paula Russell for giving what must be one of the most honest and detailed interviews on consensual sadomasochism ever to appear in a mainstream publication. As the artist behind The Illustrated Book of Corporal Punishment and numerous similar works, she brings courage and humour to a subject that is frequently misunderstood.

Many thanks to Mark Ramsden for sharing his insight into the psychological forces driving many sadomasochists. Mark wrote the text for the photographic book Radical Desire and is also author of several novels including The Dungeonmaster’s Apprentice and The Sacred Blood.

I’m grateful to the publishers of Master Detective magazine for providing me with additional information about the largely forgotten murder of British teenager Suzanne Capper. I’d also like to acknowledge the Home Office for clarifying the legal position on sadomasochism and for suggesting other sources worthy of research.

 

 

 

 

For Ian

INTRODUCTION

‘Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge,’ wrote the artist Paul Gauguin in the nineteenth century. It’s a sentiment echoed by many sadistic killers. Most are working class males in their twenties and thirties, but the chapter on female sadists explores murders committed by women as young as 19.

Sadistic killers differ from most murderers in that they love to control their victims and make them suffer – witnessing such pain and fear brings the sadist immense sexual satisfaction. They also want to prolong this controlling phase for as long as possible. This is in stark contrast to the man or woman who kills for profit, to eliminate a love rival or during a domestic argument. Such non-sadistic killers try to annihilate the other party as quickly as possible, often stabbing them through the heart or bludgeoning them about the head. Similarly, the murderous parent hurriedly smothers their baby’s cries and the necrophile kills swiftly in order to have access to dead flesh.

To the sadist, this shoot-to-kill approach is a complete anathema, as it leaves him (or, less commonly, her) with a dead body. In contrast, he needs a live, sentient victim who will respond to his commands. If he can transport his victims to his home or to a hotel, as Robert Rhoades and Richard Cottingham did respectively, then he can train them to satisfy his every desire. But if a sadist inadvertently kills his victim too quickly, he will often try to hurt or humiliate the corpse, extensively mutilating the flesh in his desire for revenge. His rage, which has invariably built for years during his unhappy childhood, has to go somewhere so he attacks the cadaver.

Details of what the sadist did to his victim (and, in some instances, how the victim responded) have often come from the sadist himself as he confided in close friends, a tape recorder or a diary. In other instances, this information comes from pathologist, police or psychiatric reports.

The British sadists profiled in this book were often on low incomes so lacked a safe house to take their victims to. Consequently they killed in hotels, hostels or the victim’s own home. In contrast, the American sadists had customised vans in which to transport their victims and one of the sadists even owned a small plane. Similarly, the Australian sadists often utilised the great outdoors, attacking their victims on secluded beaches or taking them deep into the woods. I chose these cases from the many available because of their variety: every type of sadist, from a teenage boy scout to a wealthy building contractor to an unemployed cross-dresser, is portrayed in detail here.

Sadism isn’t new, but it was once the province of the comparatively rich – as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs delineates, you have to be well fed and comfortably housed before you can begin to feel sexual. But in our industrialised society, even the unemployed sadist has his basic requirements taken care of and can find the energy to lure victim after victim to a secluded forest, safe house or modified van.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of sadists – the sadistic killer, the sadistic criminal and the consensual sadist. The profiles in this book obviously concentrate on the killers, with the majority of them killing serially. But it also covers the second category by default as almost all of the killers were sadistic criminals earlier in their offending careers. That is, they abducted and harmed various victims but did not kill them, either because they came to their senses or their quarry escaped.

The third category, that of the consensual sadist, should ideally be outside of a study of criminality, but law enforcement agencies and the general public don’t always make the distinction and, as a result, the man who whips his consenting sexuallysubmissive girlfriend is confused with a genuine abuser and may even be charged with actual bodily harm. Yet many of our most lauded literary figures and artists have been recreational sadists – and ten per cent of the general population has an interest in sadomasochistic exchanges – a subject explored in the penultimate chapter on consensual erotic punishment.

The final chapter explores how we can prevent sadistic killers being formed and how we can potentially treat those who already exist. It’s followed by a Useful Addresses section for anyone who wants to know more about sexual power play, child protection and criminal violence.

Doubtless the occasional Pollyanna figure will dismiss this book as gratuitous, but, as former FBI agent John Douglas pointed out, it’s only by studying a man’s actions that we can know what kind of person he truly is. More importantly, without this knowledge we can never change anything.

 

 

 

 

PART ONE


NOWHERE TO GO: BRITISH SADISTS

CHAPTER ONE

NEVILLE GEORGE CLEVELY HEATH

Formative influences

Neville was born on 6 June 1917 to Bessie and William Heath, a housewife and barber. Bessie was described as much more domineering than her significantly older spouse. The family lived in Ilford but soon moved to Wimbledon where Bessie gave birth to a second son. Neville was always much closer to his mother and brother than to his father.

When Neville was five, his parents enrolled him at a mixed gender convent school which was just down the road. Unfortunately the school believed in caning children and – like many other English schoolboys – Neville became terrified of receiving a painful beating. However, watching other children being caned, he began to fantasise about flogging them himself. At six years old, he grabbed one of his female contemporaries in the classroom and wildly applied the rod to her until a passing teacher intervened. The little girl was so upset that she had to be sent home.

It’s likely that he was expelled for this incident – leastways he now moved to Rutlish public school which only catered for boys. But the damage had already been done and his sexuality was now sadomasochistic to the core.

By his early teens he’d developed a fetish for handkerchiefs, probably because they featured in his fantasies about tying girls’ wrists, and began to steal them from the neighbourhood women. It was the start of an escalating pattern of sexual offending that is still prevalent in today’s criminals: many young men graduate from stealing knickers from washing lines to peeping through windows to indecent exposure and even rape.

At 15, Heath was at a party playing a parlour game called ‘Murder’ and, alongside another boy, locked a teenage girl in a room and began to kiss her. The girl became upset and the other boy backed off but Neville grabbed her by the throat to hold her head in place, his fingers leaving deep red marks on her neck. He only let go when she became hysterical and he feared that other partygoers would intervene. Her father was concerned at the level of aggression that the teenager had shown but decided that it was merely horseplay which had gone too far and let Heath off with a warning not to do it again.

Sadly, this failure to recognise early criminal sadism is all too common, with onlookers dismissing a child’s cruelty towards younger children, or even to animals, as just a phase. Granted, at this stage, juvenile sadism can fade if the child is removed from the influence of a brutal parent or sadistic schoolteacher; but, without such intervention, his inhumane tendencies will invariably increase.

Early thefts

Neville left school at age 17, became an office boy and soon found out that he hated mundane work. Desperate for instant gratification, he joined the Territorial Army, which offered status and physical exercise, both important to the teenager. Soon he enlisted in the air force cadets and was variously posted to Cambridgeshire, Sussex and London, his male comrades finding him a superficially nice young man. Young women also liked him and he went to bed with lots of them, but none offered the sadomasochistic experiences he craved.

However, in London he found prostitutes who would allow him to whip them if the price was right – and it was rumoured that he whipped some of the girls so hard that he actually drew blood. (Most consensual sadomasochistic encounters involve a great deal of ritual and stop far short of bloodshed or lasting damage, but Neville Heath was intent on causing maximum pain.)

Desperate for cash to fund his prostitution costs, he soon began to steal and was questioned by the army authorities. Facing arrest, he made one of his very rare visits home to his mother – this was technically desertion – and was subsequently discharged.

By now he’d matured into a handsome and well-built young man with wavy fair hair, bright blue eyes and a propensity for laughter. Only the sometimes cruel set of his mouth belied his underlying pathology. He continued his life of crime, often reinventing himself and forging cheques to fund his club- and pub-based lifestyle. Again, the authorities caught up with him and he was soon facing jail. But his good looks and good family name worked in his favour so that he was given probation instead.

Not one to learn from experience, the 21-year-old robbed a friend’s flat, purchased clothes by forging a banker’s order and attempted to obtain a car by false pretences. This time he was sent to borstal where the staff found him condescending and sly.

£50 whippings

Released from borstal in October 1939 to help in the war effort, Neville Heath was drafted into the army. Like many psychopaths he did well there, being completely fearless. He also found numerous females willing to go to bed with him. But one girl sarcastically refused him and he immediately pulled her hair back and began to beat her about the face until she broke away.

He was posted to Cairo and soon discovered the Amazon Room available in most of the brothels, where a customer could whip reluctant young girls for £50 a night. (At the time, a visit to a ‘vanilla’ – straight sex – prostitute in London only cost a pound.) He paid handsomely to thrash a pair of 15- and 16-year-old sisters, using a cat-o’-nine-tails. He later told an acquaintance that he liked to leave a minute between each stroke of the whip for the full pain to be realised, and for the hellish anticipation to build again. He also found that several female sadists from the upper classes had paid large sums to whip and cane the girls.

On other occasions he lashed a 20-year-old female sex worker with a slender leather switch and on yet other occasions used a whip on an 18-year-old female. He told his fellow officers that he liked to hang a girl upside down from the brothel’s pulley system before choosing the whip which he would use on her for an extended period of time.

Heath also paid to watch one young girl whip another in his favourite Cairo brothel. Later he joined in, bending one of the teenagers over a wooden bar and binding her wrists together with handkerchiefs before tying her hands above her head to a ceiling post – handkerchiefs formed part of his fetish so he often introduced them to a sadomasochistic encounter. The brothel keeper encouraged him to whip the girl as hard as he wanted, providing he didn’t draw blood.

When the young officer couldn’t afford another session he would go to bed and have regular sex with someone he’d picked up at a bar, but whatever he did it failed to rid him of his demons and he began drinking heavily. He would later tell a friend that he once got so drunk and out of control that he feared he’d beaten a belly dancer to death – and there would later be conjecture that he’d stabbed another girl to death whilst posted abroad.

Spending beyond his means on whipping prostitutes, the young lieutenant soon got hopelessly into debt and once again began to pass bad cheques and forge more. Drummed out of the army for these offences, he fled to South Africa and joined the air force under the pseudonym James Robert Cadogan Armstrong. He became a pilot instructor and was valiant when facing death.

Marriage and fatherhood

Whilst in Johannesburg, the 25-year-old introduced himself as Bruce Lockhart to Elizabeth Pitt-Rivers, an 18-year-old from a good family. He was so eloquent and well read that she soon fell madly in love with him. But her parents discovered that Bruce Lockhart was not his real name and demanded an explanation. He then said that his birth name was James Robert Cadogan Armstrong but that the Armstrong family had died and it was too emotionally painful for him to use his own name.

Unsurprisingly, the Pitt-Rivers raised an eyebrow or two but young Elizabeth was determined to stand by her man and promptly eloped with him. Seven months after their marriage she was proud to bear his son.

The next two years were the most stable in Neville Heath’s life. He was promoted to the rank of captain in the South African Air Force and also proved to be a charming husband (and doting father to little Robert) who made no unusual sexual demands on his wife.

But, sent to the RAF in Britain for a few months, he returned to his criminal ways, making money by getting engaged to girls from wealthy backgrounds then selling the engagement presents. Moved to Belgium, he quickly sought out brothels where he could whip female teenagers for a price.

Returning to South Africa and his doting wife, he started to write bad cheques, some of which were honoured by his embarrassed father-in-law. Eventually Heath was arrested for fraud. More and more evidence of his criminal ways came to light and his wife reluctantly began divorce proceedings, unusual in those till-death-us-do-part conventional times. He agreed to the divorce, which seems to have involved his unfortunate father-in-law paying off more of his debts, and it became final in October 1945.

Deported from South Africa, the newly single captain arrived back in England on 5 February 1946. He immediately borrowed money from his father, saying it was to take flying lessons (in reality, he was already a proficient pilot), but instead moved to London and began to drink and socialise in the capital’s hotels.

He found a club where he could pay to watch prostitutes being bent over naked and caned before an audience. At first he took a group of friends along but it was obvious to them that he was obsessed by the spectacle and this made him poor company. Soon he returned to the club alone. Interestingly he paid to watch women whipping men, suggesting he may have had a masochistic side as well. He also bought a whip from the club – one of four whips he owned – which would later be used on his first confirmed murder victim. But prior to this he’d use it on sexually-submissive girls…

Flagellation

On 23 February 1946, Heath took one of his acquaintances to a hotel for what was initially a consensual sadomasochistic experience. The woman – who was married – stripped and lay face down on the mattress, allowing Heath to spreadeagle her and tie her wrists and ankles to the posts of the bed.

He began to cane her at the level they’d agreed, but soon increased the severity of the strokes till she began screaming. Someone in the corridor overheard her pleading with Heath to stop and the assistant manager was summoned and unlocked the door. They found Heath standing over his partner and wielding the cane, her buttocks a scarlet testament to the degree of punishment he’d applied.

Embarrassed, the woman refused to press charges and quickly left the hotel. Despite this close call, three months later Heath did the exact same thing with another woman, who again understandably declined to involve the police. That same month – May 1946 – he met 32-year-old Margery Aimee Brownell Gardner and was clearly impressed with her, enjoying a consensual sadomasochistic session and telling a friend that she was ‘a little scout’.

Margery, who had film star good looks, had tried to make her living as a freelance artist, but like most freelancers she had financial problems. She sometimes made extra money by working as a film extra and was happy to accept meals and gifts from various bohemian friends including known criminals and pimps. Margery was sexually submissive so the couple were superficially a perfect match.

They enjoyed several dinners together and probably an equal number of sadomasochistic sessions throughout that month, but during one encounter Heath whipped her so hard that her screams persuaded the hotel staff to intervene.

The first murder

On 16 June 1946, Heath spent the day in a pub frequented by Fleet Street journalists, offering to fly them abroad in a private plane. One hack gave him 30 pounds for a proposed trip to Copenhagen and the con man left the pub while he was ahead of the game. By now he had been drinking for 12 hours and may have had up to 28 beers, a dangerous amount for a psychopath who already has lowered inhibitions. Flush with cash, he met up with Margery Gardner in West London and asked her to accompany him to the Pembridge Court Hotel.

At first, the punishment was excitingly consensual. Heath gagged Margery and tightly bound her wrists and ankles as she lay naked on her stomach. He began to whip her with his dogwhip (used so often that the tip had worn away, exposing the metal underneath), its diamond-mesh pattern leaving its telltale marks on her naked flesh.

But he began to whip much too hard and when Margery flipped herself over to protest, he whipped at her face, the strokes cutting her eyelids. He whipped her an unknown number of times, 17 of the strokes leaving clear weals on her alabaster flesh as she screamed into her gag.

His cruel lust building, the 29-year-old bit into his lover’s nipples, almost severing them. He also pushed an object – possibly the handle of the whip – into her with such force that it caused internal injuries. At some stage during this assault he pushed Margery’s face into the pillow, suffocating her.

Psychologists would later speculate that the amount of alcohol he’d drunk made it impossible for him to get or maintain an erection and that the humiliation of this had caused him to go temporarily mad with rage. Heath was a superficially pleasant man from a non-criminal family so they explained the crime by blaming alcohol rather than exploring the sadism which had emanated from his school days and which now formed the core of his sexuality.

When Heath recovered, he moved Margery’s lifeless body to the other bed and washed her face, perhaps hoping to revive her. Realising that this was impossible, he left the hotel. He had entered the room with Margery shortly before midnight – and by 1.30 a.m. he had fled.

An unlikely alibi

Neville Heath now travelled to Worthing where he had a recent girlfriend called Yvonne who strongly resembled a younger version of Margery Gardner. When he was relaxed in her company, he told her a bizarre story, saying that he’d lent his hotel room in London to a friend, and that his friend must have killed Margery. He said that she’d died by having a poker stuck up her. In reality, the young woman had sustained horrible internal injuries but there wasn’t a poker in the room and no one had ever seen Heath with a poker. It’s much more likely that he violated her with the whip handle but that his sexual fantasies included hurting women with pokers so he substituted this in his imagination and in telling the tale. The girl was shocked and asked what kind of man would do such a thing and Heath airily replied ‘A sex maniac.’ Yvonne, being young and naïve, believed his story and, when he proposed, still agreed to marry him.

When the maid entered the west London hotel room five days later, she found Margery’s naked body tucked up in bed, blood still smeared over her face, body and vagina. Heath had booked the room in his own name – and Margery had told several of her like-minded friends that they were going to enjoy a flagellation session with his dogwhip – so he immediately became a wanted man.

The second murder

Heath now fled to Bournemouth and booked into a hotel under the pseudonym Group-Captain Rupert Brooke. He loved Rupert Brooke’s poetry and had copied some of his verses into his notebooks and diaries.

At first he contemplated suicide and asked to be moved to a room with a gas fire as he planned to gas himself. He also wrote to his parents saying ‘life doesn’t mean a thing’, but he didn’t post the note. As the days passed without police interference, he realised that he might literally get away with murder, and his spirits revived.

Whilst out for a stroll, he met a girl he knew and was introduced to her friend, Doreen Marshall. Doreen had been ill so her parents had sent her to Bournemouth to enjoy the sea air. Her doting father had bought her a return train ticket. Sadly the return portion would never be required.

Heath invited the 19-year-old out to tea and they met up again that evening, dining at his hotel then sitting in the lounge bar with Heath hastily downing numerous beers, gins and brandies. It was evident to others in the lounge that Doreen was increasingly wary of him and at 11.20 p.m. she asked the porter to order her a taxi home.

Moments later Heath cancelled the taxi and insisted that he’d walk her back to her hotel. He told the porter that he’d be back in 30 minutes but Doreen corrected, ‘He’ll be back in fifteen.’

When they reached the comparatively sheltered area of Branscombe Chine, Heath turned on the luckless young woman, punching her in the face and knocking her to the ground.

Whilst she lay there semi-conscious, he tied her hands in front of her with a handkerchief, kneeling on her so hard in the process that he broke one of her ribs. He removed his own clothes and stripped hers off, ripping her underwear from her struggling body, then attempted to rape her. When he failed, he took his large pocket knife and sliced at her throat. He also cut from one breast to the other and threw himself across her, biting her nipples savagely. Then the stabbing continued – marks on her bound hands showed where she’d tried to defend herself from the agonies inflicted by his slashing blade. But another stab wound to her throat, which partially severed her vertebral column, provided the fatal blow.

When she was dead, Heath fell on her again with his knife, slashing one of her thighs then pulling the blade upwards to cut deeply into her pubis, stomach and breasts. When he was happy with his handiwork, he took Doreen’s ring and watch from her still-warm corpse and untied the bloodstained handkerchief from her wrists to keep as a souvenir. He dragged her body by the feet to some nearby rhododendron bushes, cutting further branches from nearby scrub to cover it up.

Rifling through her bag, he removed her money, return rail ticket and a small penknife, before throwing the bag behind a bathing hut. Realising that he was covered in blood, he washed himself in the sea, disposing of the murder weapon there, before dressing and walking back to his hotel.

A hastily created alibi

Heath didn’t have a viable explanation for what he’d been doing for the past few hours, so rather than go past the reception desk, he fetched a ladder from the hotel yard and used it to climb into his window. When the porter, unsure if he’d returned or not, peaked into his room at 4 a.m. he was fast asleep. Waking the following morning, the sadist found scratches on his neck and covered them with a silk scarf. He also pawned Doreen’s watch and ring, having pocketed her cash.

Meanwhile the manager of the Norfolk Hotel became alarmed that Doreen Marshall had not returned. Knowing that she’d planned to have tea at the Tollard Royal Hotel with Group-Captain Rupert Brooke, he phoned and asked what had happened. Heath denied knowing Doreen and said that he’d meet her anguished parents at the police station to confirm this. The newspapers at the time saw this as Heath surrendering to the authorities – but in likelihood the young sociopath thought that he could talk his way out of it and pretend to aid in the search.

But his fingerprints had already been found in the hotel room where Margery Gardner died and police were looking for him throughout Britain. And when he saw what he thought was Doreen’s ghost (it was her older sister who bore a remarkable resemblance to the murdered woman) he went white and began to shake.

Arrested, he eventually admitted to being Neville Heath. A ticket in his coat led them to a left luggage locker which contained the bloodstained scarf which had tied Margery Gardner’s hands and the other which had muffled her screams. The locker also contained the steel-cored whip which had so cruelly lacerated her flesh. Moreover, a pearl found in his pocket had been torn from a necklace around Doreen Marshall’s throat. His guilt a foregone conclusion, he was remanded in custody in Brixton prison.

Body discovered

On 8 July, a girl out walking her dog found Doreen Marshall’s body hidden under some cut branches and bushes on Branscombe Chine. She was naked apart from one shoe, though her clothes had been piled on top of her body. Her throat had been cut to a three quarter inch depth.

The police now began to investigate Neville Heath’s past, going through the six hundred names in his address books. Understandably, given the ignorance about consensual sadomasochism which existed at the time, few of his lovers told the truth. For example, the married woman who had screamed when caned too hard told the authorities that she’d only gone to Heath’s room for a friendly drink and that he’d grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back, telling her that he hated women. She further lied that when she refused to strip for him, he threw her against the wall so violently that she passed out.

When she regained consciousness, she told police, she found that she was naked and that he had tied her hands behind her back with a handkerchief. Beating her with his fists, he knocked her out again. In reality, Heath’s biographer Francis Selwyn would later note that they’d had a consensual caning session but he’d probably caned her harder than they’d agreed upon. Nevertheless, she’d voluntarily left the hotel with him rather than ask the manager to order her a taxi to take her home.

A crowd puller

Heath had cheerfully admitted both murders to the police but his counsel urged him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity for the sake of his family. Shrugging, he entered a not guilty plea.

Questioned by a psychiatrist, he would only say that whipping a girl gave him the kind of sexual release that sexual intercourse gave to most men. He subsequently suggested that he’d recovered from a blackout to find Margery Gardner lying dead next to him. He was so indifferent to the suffering which he’d caused, and so fearless regarding his own imminent fate, that it was evident to the psychiatrist that he was a psychopath.

Newspaper accounts of his flagellation fetish made the case the most talked about of its day, and women flocked to Neville Heath’s trial, coming to blows outside the courtroom in their desperation to reach the public gallery. Some had queued for 14 hours, his sadism clearly having strong appeal. That said, there was no suggestion in the newspapers at this stage that Margery Gardner and previous partners had consented to being tied up and chastened, so the public’s impression was of a man who had forced all of his partners to submit to the whip.

There had, of course, been British sadists before Neville Heath, but they lacked the clear sadistic symbolism of the whip and handcuffs. Jack the Ripper, for example, evidenced sadism in his slashing and cutting gestures and especially in excising the breasts and uterus of some of his victims. The true identity of Jack the Ripper remains unknown: he may have been the gentleman James Maybury or the mentally ill scavenger Aaron Kosminski beset by voices. He may even have been a medical student called John Sanders who went insane and was shipped off to a sanatorium in Weston-super-Mare. Coincidentally, the bracing seaside town also featured in Neville Heath’s life story for he borrowed a large amount of money from an aunt who lived there and never paid it back.

But, whoever Jack the Ripper was, he lacked Neville Heath’s controlled cruelty, for as mentioned earlier Heath would wait for one minute after lashing a prostitute, enjoying her anguished writhing to the full before applying the next merciless stroke.

Now the public wanted to know exactly what he had done to his two victims. Many female members of that public also wanted to attract his attention, dressing in their most fashionable clothes and self-consciously combing their hair as they sat in the Old Bailey’s gallery.

A psychopath

The trial opened at the Old Bailey on 24 September 1946. Heath pleaded not guilty to murdering Margery Gardner. The prosecution gave the impression that she’d been tied and whipped against her will and the defence tried to suggest that she was promiscuous – but, even if she had been, it hardly excused violating her with a whip handle and suffocating her to death. The girlfriend who Heath had proposed to in Worthing took the stand and described him as a gentle and considerate lover then the prosecution detailed the injuries he’d inflicted on his naked victim. Another doctor testified to the injuries received by Doreen Marshall. The trial lasted for three days.

Unsurprisingly, it took the jury only an hour to find him guilty of Margery Gardner’s murder. Asked if he had anything to say, he replied ‘Nothing’ and was duly sentenced to death. The authorities decided there was no point in having a separate trial for Doreen Marshall’s murder as her killer was already condemned to die.

Afterwards the popular press gave the impression that men enjoying sadomasochism today would become murderers tomorrow. But, as Heath’s biographer Francis Selwyn perceptively noted: ‘… no one had suggested that the teachers and workhouse masters who flogged their way through generations of the young were likely to die on the gallows.’

The hanged man

Awaiting execution, Heath let his mother visit him once then he refused to see her or the rest of his family and friends as he felt ashamed of the prison uniform. He wrote to his mother saying, ‘My only regret at leaving the world is that I have been so damned unworthy of you both.’ He wrote again the following day, hours before he was to be hanged, to tell her that he would stay awake to see the dawn for the last time, adding ‘Well, it wasn’t really a bad life while it lasted… Please don’t mourn my going… and don’t wear black.’

Just before his execution on 16 October 1946 he was offered a glass of whisky and joked to the warden, ‘You might make that a double.’ He was equally unconcerned as the hangman led him to the scaffold, saying, ‘Let’s get it over with.’

Afterwards the jury asked to see his body, as did several curious females, a request which was curtly refused. That lunchtime he was buried in an unmarked grave by Pentonville Prison’s wall.

CHAPTER TWO

PATRICK JOSEPH BYRNE

Early trauma

Patrick was born to Elisabeth and Joseph Byrne in Dublin in 1932, the second son of what would ultimately become a large family. He was much closer to his mother than to his father, and would remain so throughout his life. This preference for the mother is common in boys who grow up to become sadists, as the father is often so overbearing that the child cannot identify with him. In contrast, the mother tends to be pathologically overprotective, sometimes keeping the child away from possible playmates and making him reliant on her company. Beaten by one parent and emotionally suffocated by the other, the child retreats into a sadistic fantasy life, fantasies that he may later act out.

Psychiatrists would later note that Patrick had sexual abnormalities of the mind when still a child, a trait invariably formed by nurture rather than nature. But they were unable to find out about his formative experiences. It’s merely known that he was small for his age, had curly hair and sparkling eyes, but was extremely nervous and shy.

When he was eight, his mother brought him to hospital in an unconscious state and he remained unconscious for three days. She said that he’d been playing outdoors when a wall fell on him, breaking one of his legs and battering onto his head.

Patrick already had a slightly below average IQ and very poor literacy skills which would have made him unpopular with his teachers. And Irish teachers in the 1930s and 1940s were often disciplinarians who beat their little pupils mercilessly. In class he remained a passive-aggressive loner; though, like many disturbed children, he was creative, being good at art in particular.

As Patrick moved into his teens, he found it impossible to talk to girls, though he fantasised about having sex with them. And as he matured, his fantasies became increasingly cruel.

At 14 he left school and found a factory job. Soon he was drinking heavily. He remained desperately shy, and, even when dragged out to social events by relatives, sat in a corner and refused to dance.

But at 17 he lost his virginity to a much older woman who had recently been widowed. His religious upbringing may have caused him to see this sexual relationship as abusive and wrong – in any case, he would later state erroneously that it was the start of all his problems. He hinted to a friend that he’d told his mother but that she’d refused to intervene. He had sex with the widow many times but believed that she’d put a spell on him and that she’d ruined him for girls his own age. He increasingly hated younger women who he saw as the source of his nervous tension, and he had masturbatory fantasies of putting helpless females through a circular saw.

Early crimes

Like many murderers-to-be, he started with lesser crimes which involved trespass, being convicted of three separate counts of housebreaking in Dublin. In retrospect, he may have been looting these houses for women’s clothing – some of society’s cruellest killers have been cross-dressers who have identified on one level with women due to their strong bonding with their mothers, but who, on another level, despise this supposed weakness in themselves and want to obliterate it. He may also have been hoping that the female occupant would return home, giving him access to a victim in a safe house.

Byrne later spent two years in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps but they saw nothing untoward about his behaviour as he remained quiet and shy.

When he was 26 his mother relocated him, his brothers and three sisters to England. The Byrnes now settled in Warrington and Patrick found a job as a labourer, though he was unreliable and often reported for work in a drunken state.

The voyeur

Patrick Byrne was still living with his mother and had never had a steady girlfriend, but in his fantasies he raped and mastered every girl he came into contact with. This is a trait that’s especially common in embryonic-stage sadistic killers: unable to begin or maintain loving relationships, they spend endless hours developing a rich cruelty-based fantasy life.

It’s unknown when his peeping Tom activities began, but he was definitely an active voyeur when he found work in Birmingham and moved on his own to a lodging house there in the mid 1950s. His nickname by then was Acky and someone had written ‘Acky Byrne The Window Peeper’ on a wall close to his home.

Byrne found erotic satisfaction in watching unaware women undress. His favourite venues included the Birmingham YWCA hostel a mere half mile from his lodging house, the hostel where he would eventually kill. On one occasion he was caught on the stairs there and on another occasion he entered a young teacher’s room, the sound of her door opening waking her. He stared at her breasts through her nightgown and walked towards her but she remained calm, explaining to him that she was engaged to another man. He seemed to respect this (it made her a ‘good woman’ in his eyes), apologised and agreed to leave. She then led him out of the front door, locked it and phoned the police.

Patrick was introduced to an 18-year-old girl at a social club and met her there weekly, though he never made a pass at her. He insisted on walking her home because he warned that ‘bad men might rape or hurt her’. He talked of such potential attacks again and again. But many women were naïve about criminal psychology in the 1950s and they simply believed that Patrick was a gentleman who was looking out for them. In truth, he was projecting his own sexually sadistic fantasies onto other men and imagining they were as deviant as he.

Prison

Byrne now began to show his true colours, assaulting a policeman in January 1958. He was sentenced to two months in prison. A few months later he was drinking in a Warrington pub when the landlord refused to serve him again as he was clearly drunk and disorderly. ‘Give us the drinks or I’ll knife you,’ Byrne screamed, so his friends tried to eject him from the building, but he was holding onto the bar top so tightly that it took three of them to prise him loose.

The murder

On 23 December 1959, he drank heavily in a Birmingham pub at lunchtime and into the early afternoon. When he belatedly returned to the building site where he was working, his foreman ordered him to remain on the ground rather than risk him climbing the scaffolding. Shortly afterwards, Byrne decided to go home. He was walking along the road when he saw a girl going into the YWCA hostel in Edgbaston, one of his favourite peeping Tom locations. He went to the back of the hostel, peeped through a window, and saw another girl in a red jumper and underskirt combing her hair.

Deciding to get a better look, Byrne entered the hostel through an adjacent open window and stood on a chair so that he could peep through the glass partition above the door. After a few minutes it became obvious that the occupant – Sidney Stephanie Baird, who was always known by her middle name

– wasn’t going to undress further, so Byrne got off his chair. Seconds later Stephanie, who must have heard a noise in the corridor, opened the door and asked him what he wanted. When he said that he was looking for someone she offered to get the warden, whereupon Byrne attempted to silence her with a kiss.

He put his hands around the 29-year-old’s waist and pushed her back into the room, making her scream in terror. During the desperate struggle which followed, the contents of the room were strewn all over the place. The 27-year-old then put his hands around her throat and she fell to the floor with him on top, whereupon she sustained a fractured skull. Byrne continued to squeeze her throat whilst kissing her, then he bolted the door and undressed himself.

He removed Stephanie’s jumper and committed various sex acts upon her body. By now she was dead or dying. He’d later say, ‘I seemed to be in a hurry to do everything to her and hadn’t the patience.’ He undressed down to his shoes and socks then rolled all over her and entered her corpse. The fantasy had been to make girls scream by putting them through a circular saw – but now that he’d inadvertently killed his victim, he wanted to defile her body as much as possible, an extension of his sadism.

When he tired of necrophiliac sex, he went into her cupboard and fetched a table knife, carving around her right breast until it was fully excised. He then scored her chest with the blade and cut her back. He also attempted to cannibalise one of her breasts after putting sugar on it, and sawed her head off – an act which took between 15 minutes and half an hour.

Halfway through these mutilations, which doubtless brought him to orgasm, Byrne scribbled a note on an envelope which said: ‘This was the thing I thocht (sic) would never come.’ He would later say that he thought he might rape a girl but didn’t believe the day would come when he would murder for sex.

He left her body on the floor but placed her head and the knife blade on the bed. He seemed confused at his own motivation for removing the head, later telling the police ‘It’s been puzzling me since why I took the head off. It’s not connected with sex in all the books I’ve read.’ It’s likely that his hatred was aimed at another woman, and he was only able to depersonalise Stephanie’s body by removing her face.

Attempted murder

Byrne now dressed but he had the desire to kill another female victim, specifically an attractive one. With this in mind, he went into the hostel’s garden and took a bra from the line, wrapping a heavy rock in it. Thus armed, he made his way to the YWCA’s ironing room where he found 20-year-old Margaret McDonald Brown. He switched off the light then struck her on the head, but when she screamed loudly (her thick hair had cushioned the worst of the blow) he ran away. Margaret Brown collapsed and another resident phoned the police.

They began to search the hostel for the attacker, finding, to their horror, the decapitated body of Stephanie Baird. Her headless corpse was so horribly mutilated that one of the two policemen who found her vomited and the other went into deep shock and remained off work for many weeks.

Meanwhile, Byrne hurried back to his lodging house a mere 400 yards away, changed out of his bloodstained work clothes and wrote a suicide note to his mother which said ‘I am very sorry youse will have to receive this horrible letter.’ He went on to suggest that he had a split personality but that the real him was good. Then he remembered that it was Christmas, a time of year which was incredibly important to his religious mother, so he decided to live and tore up the note.

He went out drinking with his cousin but was so shaken by the murder and attempted murder that he was afraid to sleep alone and so slept in his cousin’s room. The next morning, he took the train to his mother’s home in Warrington.

Manhunt

Meanwhile the police began one of the biggest manhunts in British history, employing bloodhounds and setting up roadblocks. Every sexual offender in the area was rounded up and interviewed. They also checked 4,000 handwriting samples against the note, painstakingly pieced together by the police, that Byrne had left behind.

By January, the Birmingham police were cooperating with half a dozen other British forces, ranging from York to West London. When this still didn’t bring in their killer, they got in touch with their European counterparts asking if they had any unsolved sex crimes with a similar signature.

Meanwhile they were also interviewing every man who lived or worked within a three-mile radius of the YWCA. During these interviews, Patrick Byrne’s landlady told them that he hadn’t returned from his mother’s after the Christmas break, which seemed suspicious, but his cousin gave him an alibi for the night of Stephanie’s murder. Luckily, the police went to his mother’s house in Warrington anyway and she explained that he’d now found a labouring job near her home so had moved in with her and wouldn’t be returning to Birmingham.

Asked to attend Warrington police station on Tuesday 9 February 1960, he arrived and nervously denied any knowledge of the crime. But he looked stunned when they asked if they could take his fingerprints. The detective had a feeling that the somewhat immature labourer was holding something back and added, ‘Is there anything else you would like to say?’ Byrne hesitated then blurted out, ‘Yes, I want to tell you about the YWCA. I had something to do with that.’

He went on to give full details of the mutilations carried out on Stephanie Baird, details which hadn’t been made public. He said: ‘I cannot get it off my mind.’ He added that he’d had an equally strong urge to kill Margaret Brown – to kill all beautiful women – but that he’d panicked when she screamed and the stone swung out of his hand.

Trial

Byrne pleaded guilty to the murder of Stephanie Baird at Birmingham Assizes in March 1960, so only his degree of culpability had to be decided at the trial. Three psychiatrists testified for the defence, saying that Byrne was a sexual psychopath who was aroused by sexual perversion, their term for sadism. He was also sexually immature and partly insane – but at the time of the offence he’d known that his actions were wrong. The prosecution said that he was fully aware that he was killing his victim and mutilating her body so deserved to be found guilty of murder rather than manslaughter.

The all-male jury took only 45 minutes to find Patrick Joseph Byrne guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He appealed and the sentence was changed to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, but the court confirmed that the sentence should still be life.

Freed

Patrick Joseph Byrne spent the next 33 years in prison, then was released in 1993 on licence, aged 61. But his subsequent behaviour concerned the Home Office and he was recalled as a precaution in 1999.

CHAPTER THREE

VICTOR GLENFORD MILLER

Early beatings