Life Means Life Read online

  Daughter of victim

  Name: Glyn Dix

  Crime: Murder

  Date of Conviction: 16 December 2005

  Age at Conviction: 51

  At around 5pm on 2 October 1979, Pia Overbury left work at a cake shop in Gloucester. She told her builder husband James that she was going straight to a friend’s party and he did not expect her home until late that night. He never saw her alive again.

  At some point shortly after leaving the shop, the 32-year-old mum-of-two met schizophrenic maniac Glyn Dix. Three weeks later a woman walking her dogs found Pia’s body in an isolated copse in the nearby village of Hartbury. She had been tied to a tree, raped and shot in the head.

  The police investigation eventually led to Dix, a 26-year-old hospital porter, and he was charged with murder. At his trial at Bristol Crown Court in July of the following year, the jury heard Dix’s claim that prior to the night Pia Overbury died, she had approached him and offered him £2,000 to kill her violent husband. The pair had gone to a remote woodland area so they could discuss the killing in private and, Dix claimed, so he could fire a shotgun at a tree and thus show how he intended to assassinate Mr Overbury. In reality, there was no such murder plot. Dix forced Pia to the ground and tied her hands round the trunk of a tree. Once he’d raped her, he shot her in the back of the head and left her to rot in a shallow grave.

  He denied murder, claiming Pia had broken down and told him that she would rather be dead than continue her unhappy marriage. He said she begged him to kill her and that he obliged.

  On the third day of the trial, faced with overwhelming evidence of sexual assault, Dix changed his plea to guilty on the advice of his solicitor. He said he had been inspired to rape and kill by the ‘change of the seasons’ – suggesting a black-magic link. He was sentenced to life in prison.

  Dix remained behind bars for 19 years, spending a significant part of his sentence in high-security psychiatric hospitals before a gradual process of release. As part of this process, he was moved for a while to low-security Gloucester Prison, where the more relaxed regime would ready him for life in the outside world. During his months at Gloucester, Dix shared a cell with Adam Langford, 21, who was serving six months for driving offences. The pair became close friends and when Dix was sent to nearby Bristol jail’s psychotherapy ward to serve out the last stretch of his sentence, Adam – by now released – kept in touch. He was disqualified from driving so his mother Hazel drove him to prison visits. At 50, Hazel had plenty in common with Dix, who was by now 46, and the pair got along swimmingly.

  After that first meeting Dix began writing to Hazel from prison and a romance started. He was warm, witty and charming in his letters and Hazel soon visited him on her own. The relationship developed at a pace and days after Dix’s release on life licence in September 1999, they married at Redditch Register Office.

  Dix moved into Hazel’s home in Seymour Drive, Redditch, and for five years the couple seemed normal and happy. That situation changed on 19 June 2004, in a shocking, barbaric and bloody way that left Hazel’s family destroyed and several policemen in need of counselling.

  On the afternoon of that sunny Saturday, Hazel and Dix had an argument over what to watch on television and the convicted killer flipped, stabbing his wife to death and chopping her body into 16 pieces. Her son Adam came home at around 3.30pm to find his former cellmate standing naked, knife in hand, over his mother’s mutilated body. He had used 15 different instruments on her, including a knife, hacksaw and scissors.

  He had also daubed murals on walls, depicting a scantily-clad woman on her knees and a hooded knifeman standing over her. As a sickened Adam tried to take in the horror before him, Dix grinned and said: ‘We had a little argument.’ In deep shock, Adam ran across the road to his sister Rachel’s house.

  Rachel, 32, recalled: ‘Suddenly Adam ran through the door and said that Glyn had stabbed my mum. My sister Vicky and I were in my kitchen. He was shouting: “He’s killed Mum, he’s chopped her up!” and then he flew out of the front door. “What’s that about?” I thought. “What’s he on?”We ran to Mum’s conservatory and stood at the door. It was open and the kitchen door was open.

  ‘Dix was there and he had nothing on, no clothes. He had put them in the wash because they were covered in blood. Mum was on the floor. I saw her hair; her body had gone yellow. Dix said calmly, “We had a little argument.” The knife was still in his hand, but there was nothing on it. He was clean – he’d washed himself and the knife. He looked straight through us.’

  She continued: ‘Then he slowly beckoned at me with his finger to go to him. “Come here,” he said. He’d cut Mum into 16 pieces. He dismembered her everywhere. He even took pieces of skin off her rib cage so you could see them as well. He stabbed her in the heart so at least we believe she died quite quickly. I swore at him at the top of my voice and ran back to my house, locked the front door and phoned the police.’

  Adam said: ‘When I went back, Dix looked at me with evil eyes and said, “Now we can be one.” I grabbed him and punched his head – I wanted to kill him. He tried to stab me, but then the police burst in. My mum gave him everything. He took her life and ruined mine.’

  Blaming himself for his mother’s horrific death, Adam said: ‘I have sleepless nights. If I’d never gone to jail, I’d never have met this animal and Mum would be alive today. I knew he was in for murder, but couldn’t find out anything about his past.

  ‘He told me he was ex-SAS and had been fitted up after a woman hired him to kill her violent ex-partner. He also conned my mum. By marrying her, he was able to get out of jail on licence – he repaid her by butchering her.’

  When police arrived at the house, Dix told them: ‘That’s my wife Hazel, and I love her. We had an argument and it went too far.’

  Because of the extreme nature of the murder, Hazel’s remains had to be left in her house overnight, despite most of her children living nearby. ‘I know the police have to do their job,’ said Rachel. ‘But whether she was dead or not, they should have taken her out. My poor mum had gone through that and they just left her there on a cold floor all night.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep at my house. I went to my sister Jodie’s round the corner. Adam lived with Mum and Glyn. Adam and I can’t bear to be in the house now.’

  Dix admitted murder and was quickly diagnosed as suffering from extreme schizophrenia. Doctors found he displayed psychotic tendencies when he failed to take his medication. He was remanded at Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital on Merseyside until 16 December the following year, when he pleaded guilty to his wife’s murder at Birmingham Crown Court.

  Prosecutor Jonathan Gosling told the court that on the day of the murder, Dix, 51, said that he and Hazel were watching television naked in the living room after making love. They then rowed over which channel to watch. ‘When the police arrived, moments later, the defendant was still kneeling astride his wife with a knife in his hand,’ said Mr Gosling. He then quoted a statement Dix had made to police in which he said: ‘Hazel had said, “Right, that’s it!” and she got hold of a knife and I got hold of a knife and as we started facing each other, I stabbed her. She was going on and on, and I felt under pressure. I felt my anger rise, I said I had had enough of her.’

  His defence counsel Andrew Fisher said: ‘Mr Dix wants to put it on the record and acknowledge the gravest regret and deepest remorse for what occurred.’ Mr Fisher continued: ‘He is bitterly, bitterly regretful and remorseful for what happened. He loved her dearly. She was, in his words, his soulmate. He can’t explain quite why he flipped that day.’

  Sentencing Dix, Mr Justice Butterfield told him: ‘You stabbed her to death and dismembered her body. It was brutal, horrific and abhorrent. You took the life of a woman who did much to help you and showed you much kindness. You have also deeply hurt the family, who welcomed you with open arms.’ The judge added: ‘Your risk has been described as extremely high. Your counsel has sensibly decided that I should not apply a
set period and you will be detained on a whole life order. You will be detained either in a specialist hospital or a prison until you die. You are an extremely dangerous man.’

  Outside court, Hazel’s brother Wayne Denver, 67, said the family was pleased with the sentence and that they hoped Dix would never be released. He said: ‘We have each lost a sister, a mother, a grandmother and a very dear friend, and no words can describe the devastation this family feels about a man who gave the persona of a loving, caring person. He must never be set free for any reason. This will stay with us for the rest of our lives.’

  Rachel said that she was haunted by the thought that she might have prevented her mum’s grisly death: ‘I think, if I’d sat there on the Saturday afternoon with no telly or music on, I might have heard something. I could have done something.’ She added: ‘I dream that I’m looking at Mum when she was at the funeral home. I also dream that I’m looking at her in pieces. It’s horrible.’

  Of Dix, she said: ‘He has never really said much to the police, just that it was a row about the TV programmes. That’s all we know.’

  Despite the horrific nature of Hazel’s death, her children are determined not to let it destroy their lives completely. ‘Mum wouldn’t have wanted that,’ insisted Rachel’s twin sister Jodie. ‘She would have wanted us to stay strong. We have children of our own and they keep us going.’

  They suspect they will never understand how a man who seemed ‘so in love’ with their mother could put her through such an unimaginable ordeal. ‘Him saying sorry wouldn’t make a difference,’ said Rachel. ‘He will rot in jail for the rest of his life and we’re glad.’

  Another of Hazel’s daughters, Tracie Gower, 34, told how she boycotted her mum’s wedding to Dix. She fought back tears as she explained: ‘I couldn’t stand the idea of having a killer as a stepdad, but Mum wouldn’t listen. I’d never met him, but felt it was a terrible mistake. The family asked questions, but got no answers – he convinced Mum he wasn’t guilty.

  ‘Despite our warnings, she married him believing he’d been wrongfully jailed. Yet it was clear he was a menace to society. I asked Mum just before the wedding, “Do you know what you’re doing?” and she replied, “He’s the man for me.”’ She added: ‘I only met Dix after Mum married. At first he struck me as devoted to her. There were never any tell-tale signs of what he’d do. That’s why we think it was a ritual killing, he’d planned it all. I’m convinced he was into the Occult. What he did to my mum was straight out of a horror film. I think he killed her in some kind of sick, satanic sacrifice.’

  Rachel said: ‘We put our trust in him to look after our mother for the rest of her life. I wish they could bring back hanging, but that would be too quick for him – he should be buried alive.’

  Tracie told of the family’s anger that someone as dangerous as Dix was ever allowed out of prison: ‘Someone decided to let this man out to kill again. I’ve written to the Home Office asking why he was allowed out. I want to know why nobody warned us of his past. This man has destroyed the lives of two families. Unless action is taken, the same mistake will happen and other innocent lives will be taken by evil men like him.’

  The Parole Board said the case would be referred to a Review Committee. A spokeswoman commented: ‘Regrettably, no matter how much care we take, a few people will reoffend. When they do, we try to look at what lessons can be learned.’

  Recalling the day he saw his mutilated mother, Adam Langford said simply: ‘I wouldn’t wish the pictures I have in my head on anyone else.’

  ‘VIAGRA MAN’

  ‘They called him “The Viagra Man” as they said he took that drug before helping himself.’

  Culshaw’s neighbour

  Name: Paul Culshaw

  Crime: Serial rape and murder

  Date of Conviction: 10 February 2005

  Age at Conviction: 37

  Residents of Lancaster’s deprived Ryelands estate might have been forgiven for thinking Paul Culshaw was a decent, charitable man. Unlike many of his neighbours, who shunned and loathed the estate’s growing number of drug addicts, Culshaw, despite not being a user himself, gave them refuge at his rented flat. He kept an open house, where they could take heroin and crack cocaine in relative safety from the dangers that lurked for homeless people on the city’s streets. Often he would supply the drugs himself if the desperate addicts had none and he thought nothing of letting them sleep over.

  But what the casual eye couldn’t see was that behind closed doors the vicious pervert would use the zombied girls – they were always female – to satisfy his insatiable lust for warped sex. One victim of this appetite was heroin user Clare Benson-Jowry. The 23-year-old mother-of-one was a regular visitor to Culshaw’s home, where she would take heroin with fellow addicts. She and her friends were wary of visiting his place alone, knowing of his tendency to ‘try it on’ and conscious of the stories they had heard of what he did to girls when they were too out of it to resist. Clare knew Culshaw’s flat was a dangerous place to visit alone, but that’s exactly what she did on 20 June 2004 – and she paid the price. Three-and-a-half weeks later neighbours complained of a ‘dreadful smell’ coming from the property and police found her badly decomposed, half-naked body in Culshaw’s bedroom the following day. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a shoelace, tightened with a fork.

  One former addict who often visited Culshaw’s flat, a girl who asked not to be identified, knew Clare and remembers the first time that she accepted Culshaw’s offer of hospitality. She recalled: ‘Paul was always really nice when you arrived, but he would often change once you’d had your gear and you didn’t know – or care – what was going on. He made out that he was this really nice bloke who wanted to keep girls off the streets, but that was not why he let us stay there.’ The 27-year-old, who is now beating her addiction through Lancaster’s Inward House Projects rehabilitation initiative, added: ‘I first met him just after Christmas in 2003. I had only just moved from Preston to live with a mate, after leaving my boyfriend. I was on a come-down so I was drinking cider to make it easier. I was drunk, but wanted some brown [heroin]. Paul came over and offered me a rolly [a cigarette] and we started chatting. He was really down-to-earth and charming. I told him I was dying for a fix and he invited me round to his and said he would give me the money for a tenner’s worth as long as I paid him back.

  ‘I went with him to his flat and he already had some gear there. I smoked some on the couch while he watched a porn DVD. I don’t remember much about the rest of the night but when I woke up on the couch the next day I knew he’d done something. My blouse was buttoned up, but my bra was pulled down; my jeans were undone as well. It freaked me out and I left the place before he got up.’ She continued: ‘I told a few people about what happened and they said Paul was a creep, but handy to know. They said he was always sound if you wanted to go round, but you had to make sure you only went when other people were there; he never did nowt when people were around. I went to his place plenty of times after that, but never on my own.’

  When Clare’s body was found on 15 July, Culshaw was nowhere to be seen. Police ran checks on the flat and knew they needed to look no further than the tenant in their search for the man responsible for the murder. Records showed Culshaw was unemployed and had a history of violence against women. In 1985, aged 18, he broke into a woman’s home in Up Holland, West Lancashire, in the early hours. Armed with a penknife and broom handle, he attacked the 43-year-old resident in her sleep, brutally raping her. He told her that he would return and kill her if she dared phone the police.

  For that offence he was jailed for three-and-a-half years at a young offenders’ institution but his time inside did little to subdue his deviant desires. Weeks after his release in 1988, he again forced his way into a lone woman’s home, where he subjected the occupant to a vicious sexual assault. This time, however, he attempted to kill his victim to prevent her from identifying him. He was only stopped from doing so when dis
turbed by a neighbour during the final throes of strangulation. Culshaw was jailed for 10 years for attempted murder and indecent assault.

  At his trial for Clare’s murder at Preston Crown Court in February 2005, Culshaw, 37, denied any part in her sexually motivated killing. Giving evidence, he told defence counsel John Bromley-Davenport, QC, he had ‘panicked’ when he saw ‘one of my best friends’ dead on the sofa. He claimed that because of his police record he immediately thought he would be blamed for her death, regardless of his innocence. In mitigation, he said that he had admitted in court all his previous crimes and also assaults on his former wife. While he acknowledged that he was the obvious suspect, he insisted that in this case, the police had the wrong man. ‘You pleaded guilty to those offences – are you guilty of this offence of murder?’ asked his counsel Bromley-Davenport. Culshaw replied: ‘No, I am not.’ He then told the court how Clare would occasionally visit his flat to smoke heroin. ‘She was very honest, a very open person,’ Culshaw said. He added: ‘She was very attractive. I fancied her, but I never did anything about it.’

  He told the jury how, on the night she died, Clare had visited his flat, asking if she could come in and watch television: ‘We watched telly for a while, watched videos and stuff, and talked about nothing, really. She asked me if she could smoke a bit of heroin on foil and stay the night. I said yes, rolled myself a joint and had a bath.’ He added: ‘When I came out, I automatically assumed she had got her head down on the sofa.’ He told the court he had then left the flat to go to nearby bus stops in search of cigarette ends so that he could take the tobacco from them and roll his own at home. When he returned an hour later, he discovered Clare’s body. He told the court: ‘Her eyes were wide open and dry; her head did not look natural. She was fully clothed. I automatically assumed someone had killed her while I was out.’ He insisted that at no stage did he touch the body. Asked why he did not phone 999, he said: ‘She was too far past help; I was satisfied in my mind she was dead. I have no trust in the police. I knew as soon as I phoned them, I would just get blamed for it.’ Standing emotionless in the dock, he added: ‘I was physically sick and just panicked.’ He said he then left the flat and made his way to Penrith, a picturesque town in the Lake District, making most of the 50-mile journey on foot and taking none of his belongings with him.