Life Means Life Page 5

  Sentencing Bellfield in his absence, Mrs Justice Rafferty said: ‘You have reduced three families to unimagined grief. What dreadful feelings went through your head as you attacked and in two cases, snuffed out a young life is beyond understanding. You will not be considered for parole and must serve your whole life in prison.’

  Explaining the whole life tariff, the judge added: ‘Aggravating features are the chronicle of violence directed towards lone vulnerable young women during the hours of darkness and substantial premeditation and planning. There are no mitigating factors.’

  DCI Colin Sutton, who led the investigation, said outside court: ‘Levi Bellfield is a predator, who preyed on women over a period of time. He targetted his victims at random, attacking those much smaller and weaker than him. Only he knows why he did what he did.’

  Survivor Kate Sheedy and the families of the dead girls held hands with friends and supporters as the verdicts were delivered. They burst into tears of relief when the man who had wrecked their lives was found guilty.

  Kate, by then a 21-year-old university student, faced reporters outside court, saying of Bellfield’s absence at the sentencing: ‘I am disappointed that he was not in court to hear the judge’s words, which were so strong. I think it shows the type of person he is – a complete coward.

  ‘It means so much to me that he got a full life term; it’s what I wanted. The fact that he will never see the light of day again is brilliant. Even if it had been 40 years’ time, I would not feel safe if he was let out again. I have waited for nearly four years for this day.’

  Amelie’s mother, Dominique Delagrange, paid tribute to her daughter and said of Bellfield: ‘We would like to have heard from Bellfield a confession of sorts, some evidence of remorse. In this we were disappointed. This guilty person has showed an unbelievable level of arrogance.’

  A female officer who worked on the case said: ‘Bellfield has deprived us of the pleasure of seeing his face when he was told he will never leave jail, but at least we can be satisfied that this is the last time he will be in control.’

  Bellfield, who had 11 children by five women, was arrested in November 2004. The jury found him unanimously guilty of murdering Amelie Delagrange and convicted him by a 10–2 majority of Marsha McDonnell’s killing and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy. After deliberating for six days, the jury was unable to reach verdicts on charges that Bellfield attempted to murder hairdresser Irma Dragoshi, 33, who received head injuries, and kidnapped Anna-Maria Rennie, 17. Those offences, which all occurred at bus stops, were ordered to lie on file.

  The judge ruled that a great deal of the evidence gleaned while Bellfield was under suspicion was too prejudicial for the jury to hear. But once he was jailed, much of this evidence came to light. Several women who had earlier given statements to police about Bellfield have since told of the full shocking extent of his loathing and predatory attitude towards females. His former friends, work colleagues and prison acquaintances came out to speak of a psychopath who thought he was above the law.

  Paul Jarvis met Bellfield while he was on remand at Belmarsh Prison, South-East London, in 2005. He said: ‘He was like a caveman. He treated women like dogs.’ Bellfield told him: ‘You feed them and keep them – you can do what you want.’ Jarvis also revealed that the thug confided in him that he murdered Amelie Delagrange after she refused his offer of cocaine. This evidence was not allowed at the killer’s trial.

  Bellfield was renowned in his hometown of West Drayton, Middlesex, for trying to pick up teenage blondes, who he followed in his Toyota Previa people carrier. The car had blacked-out windows and he kept a mattress and blankets in the back – they came in handy when girls were drunk or naïve enough to fall for his propositions. Those who resisted his advances were sometimes drugged and raped.

  As the years passed, fuelled by steroids, cocaine and mental instability, Bellfield’s violent obsession with young blondes worsened. His ex-girlfriend Johanna Collins, with whom he had a son and a daughter, described him as, ‘Six-feet-one of pure walking evil’. Johanna suffered three years of ‘hell’ with the killer, telling of how he ruled her with the fear of beatings and systematic rapes. She also admitted how he would return home from his work as a club bouncer and boast about the girls he had raped that night.

  She said: ‘When he came in late at night after working on a club door, he would tell me how he had “another little slut” in the back. Levi took great pleasure in telling me how they fancied a kiss and a cuddle, but when he got them where he wanted them, he just took them.

  ‘I would be told to get out of bed and scrub the cars out so there was no trace left of whatever he had done. He would tell me straight out if he had raped a girl – or even two – on an evening. He’d laugh and say they deserved what they got.

  ‘When he finished he told the girls to ‘F**k off back into the nightclub’ or just to ‘F**k off’. He warned them what would happen if they went to police. I was just too scared to even think of saying anything.’

  Johanna revealed how she had once found Bellfield’s ‘stalking kit’ in a bin bag when she was tidying the garage. She said: ‘I pulled out my dad’s old donkey jacket. There was also what looked like a bobble hat and a magazine, Cosmopolitan. The coat felt heavy and something was in the lining. The left-hand pocket had been cut out so your hand went right the way down to this hunting knife.

  ‘Then I realised the “bobble hat” was a full-face balaclava. I opened the magazine and all the pictures of pretty girls or models with blonde hair had been slashed or hacked-up.’ When she mentioned her shocking find to her husband, Bellfield flew into a rage. Johanna said: ‘He beat me and forced my face over the pictures of the blondes, shouting, “I f**king hate blondes, they should all f**king die!”’

  Becky Wilkinson, mother to four of Bellfield’s children, said she felt safe for the first time in years after he was jailed. Becky, who was with the brute from 1989 to 1995, told: ‘For those years I went through a traumatic, violent relationship with Levi that I couldn’t escape. When I eventually did, he would stalk me.

  ‘For the time we were together he would hit me, rape me. I wasn’t allowed to speak to my family or see them – he wouldn’t let me do anything. It is a big relief to know he will die behind bars.’

  Bellfield, overweight with a squeaky, effeminate voice, told a colleague at the wheel-clamping firm where he worked that girls who dyed their hair blonde were: ‘Impure sluts who deserved to be messed around with.’ He boasted that he regularly shaved his entire body to avoid leaving DNA evidence, saying he was ‘untouchable’.

  A former bouncer friend recalled how Bellfield spiked a young blonde’s drink with date-rape drug Rohypnol at a club in Maidenhead, Berkshire. He raped the girl in the car park and stole her mobile phone. Later that night the girl’s mother called the phone and Bellfield taunted her with details of what he had done to her daughter.

  Bellfield suffered wild mood swings and went from friendly and affable to murderous in a heartbeat. In 2004, he turned on his former friend Peter Rodriguez, hitting him three times in the head with a hammer and stabbing him with a screwdriver in the stomach and kneecaps.

  The wheel-clamping business Bellfield ran was known for its bullying methods. He and fellow clampers demanded £250 in cash to release vehicles and those who argued were threatened with violence. Motorists who would not pay up were warned they would receive a visit at home. Bellfield told them he had police contacts that could trace addresses from car number plates.

  Ricky Brouillard, who worked for the thug, told police that Bellfield once offered to sell him sex with his ‘naïve’ 16-year-old girlfriend and her sister, 14. ‘I would describe Levi as an animal,’ Brouillard said. ‘I remember being disgusted. I met his girlfriend on one occasion and he said, “Do you want to buy her off me?”’

  Bellfield boasted that he made more than £70,000 in cash every year from his various jobs and he regularly flashed thick wads of money. He thought he was abov
e the law and he was arrogant and reckless. But that recklessness was to prove his undoing. Bellfield had been clever on his nights out hunting down and beating women, being careful to dispose of vehicles and clothing used in the attacks. But he did not consider the CCTV cameras that caught him on film or the evidence of mobile phone records placing him at the scenes of his crimes.

  Cameras on buildings and on buses captured detailed footage of four of Bellfield’s vehicles and placed him at the scene of the murders of Amelie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell, and at the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy. The day before his arrest, police were following his car when he pulled up and started chatting to two young girls who were waiting at a bus stop. Later, the girls told police how he had offered them a lift and asked how old they were. When they said they were 14, Bellfield said: ‘You must be virgins – I bet you are nice and tight.’ He then drove away, laughing to himself.

  Emma Mills – mother of three of his children – was living with Bellfield when police arrived at their West London home to arrest him. She recalled: ‘It must have been four or five in the morning when they came. The house was lit up with torchlights and I thought he must be in trouble with the police – he’d been in trouble before, for fraud.

  ‘But this was different. There were about 30 policemen with guns; there were dogs, all surrounding the house. They were banging on the door and screaming his name. I thought, “What the hell have you done now?”We were in bed and he turned, and he just looked at me and he looked so scared. It was complete fear. I’ve never seen him look like that before.

  ‘He said, “I’m sorry,” and then he ran out onto the landing, pulled out a chest of drawers and used it to jump up into the loft – that’s the last time I ever saw him. I went downstairs just as the door flew open and a load of police officers pushed past me, calling his name.’ Police found Bellfield naked in the loft, crouched behind a roll of insulation. Ironically, officers noted that the prolific sexual predator was anxious to hide his private parts that had shrunk after years of steroid abuse.

  Police believe the three hammer attacks for which Bellfield was jailed are just the tip of the iceberg. They suspect he may be responsible for many more, similar attacks on women. Officers are currently working through cases where victims have no recollection of being attacked because of their horrific injuries. In many cases, their injuries were put down to falling over drunk or fainting.

  DCI Sutton said: ‘There is a group of 20 or so other offences that we will be looking at because we feel they may be offences which Bellfield had something to do with. They are not 20 murders, they are 20 attacks on women.’

  After the trial, it emerged that Bellfield’s first girlfriend, Patsy Morris, was murdered in 1980. The 14-year-old was found strangled in undergrowth on Hounslow Heath, 48 hours after going missing from a playground. Bellfield, then just 12, was said to have been fascinated by the unsolved killing – it is just one of the many crimes that police have said they will be questioning him about.

  ‘DEATH IN THE DRAINS’

  ‘One would have to say that anyone committing these crimes must be out of their minds.’

  Defence counsel Ivan Lawrence, QC

  Name: Dennis Nilsen

  Crime: Multiple murder

  Date of Conviction: 3 November 1983

  Age of Conviction: 37

  Respected civil servant Dennis Nilsen sat in the bath with his lover, a 16-year-old called Martyn Duffey. It was bizarre that a dog-loving, nerdy pen-pusher was soaking in the suds with a handsome, streetwise young man, and it was especially odd because Martyn was dead.

  It was May 1980, and Martyn had made his way from his home in Merseyside to London, looking for work. There, he found a sex-crazed serial killer.

  The pair met by chance in the capital’s West End. At that time the deal was simple: if you were a young man who asked for money, there were men who would give you money – so long as you did as they requested. Nilsen asked and Martyn said yes. For a roof over his head and a hot meal, he accepted Nilsen’s offer of a bed to sleep in at his house in Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood Hill, a suburb of North London.

  It was the costliest deal of the young man’s life.

  As Martyn slumbered, Nilsen strangled his guest, but as he withdrew his hands he realised he didn’t have a corpse in front of him, but an unconscious 16-year-old youth, who would scream down the neighbourhood if he woke up. So Nilsen dragged him to the kitchen, filled the sink with water and plunged his head underneath until he was sure no life remained. He then filled the bathtub, added a splash of bubble bath and placed Martyn’s cooling body in the water… Then he got in himself.

  In a journal written in prison, and quoted in the Nilsen biography Killing for Company by Brian Masters, the killer recalled the macabre episode:

  I remember sitting astride him (his arms must have been trapped by the quilt). I strangled him with great force in the almost pitch darkness with just one side light on underneath. As I sat on him, I could feel my bottom becoming wet. His urine had come through the bedding and my jeans. I pulled him over my shoulder and carried him down. He was unconscious, but still alive. I put him down, filled the kitchen sink up with water, draped him into it, and held him there, his head under the water. I must have held him there for about three or four minutes. I then lifted him into my arms and took him into the room. I laid him on the floor and took off his socks, jeans, shirt and underpants. I carried him into the bathroom. I got into the bath myself this time and he lay in the water on top of me. I washed his body. Both of us dripping wet, I somehow managed to hoist this slipping burden onto my shoulders and took him into the room. I sat him on the kitchen chair and dried us both. I put him on the bed, but left the bedclothes off. He was still very warm. I talked to him and mentioned that his body was the youngest-looking I had ever seen. I kissed him all over and held him close to me. I sat on his stomach and masturbated. I kept him temporarily in the cupboard. Two days later, I found him bloated in the cupboard. He went straight under the floorboards.

  It was a new experience for Nilsen: he’d never bathed with a corpse before, but he’d killed before. And now, as the pale, prune-like body of Martyn Duffey lay between his legs, he knew he’d kill again.

  Dennis Nilsen was born in November 1943 at Academy Road, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire to a Scots mother and a Norwegian father, Olav Magnus Moksheim, who had adopted the surname Nilsen to seem less German at a time when Britain was battling Hitler. His father was an alcoholic, as were many seafaring men at that time in the North-East of Scotland. Nilsen’s parents divorced when he was just four. Later in life, his mother remarried and the boy’s new family warned him of ‘impurities of the flesh’. This advice was to give him an unhealthy view of human relationships and a murderous conception of sex.

  Between 1961 and 1972 Nilsen served in the British Army with the Royal Fusiliers. He loved drinking with his comrades and was a regular in the bar. Like many young soldiers of his time, he saw action in the conflict in Aden, which raged in what is now Yemen from 1963–67. Later serving in the Persian Gulf, where he became a cook, he was popular with colleagues because of the amount of meat he could cut from a bone. It was reportedly in the Middle East that he discovered his homosexual tendencies with an Arab boy. There followed a short stint in the Metropolitan Police, but he was unhappy with the prevalent homophobic, macho atmosphere at Willesden Police Station, where he was based, and after a year, he resigned.

  Nilsen the copper became Nilsen the civil servant, securing a place as a clerk at Kentish Town Job Centre. Colleagues viewed him as diligent, almost workaholic. They also respected his commitment to the Trade Union Movement. By this time, he was about to begin another career: as a killer. On 30 December 1978, he was drinking alone in a pub called the Cricklewood Arms, popular with the area’s large Irish community. There, he met a young, anonymous Irishman, who looked about 18. The lad accepted his older friend’s invitation back to the flat at Melrose Avenue for more alcohol. Afterwards,
the pair went to bed, but fell asleep without having sex. During the night Nilsen woke with a desire to kill – he took a cord from the end of the bed, wrapped it round the young Irishman’s neck and pulled. There was a struggle, but within a minute the victim was still.

  To make doubly sure he had actually killed, Nilsen fetched a bucket of water and held the youth’s head in it. In what was to become a repeated trademark, he then carefully washed him and put the body to bed. The next day, he placed it under the floorboards, only to retrieve it a day later for another hot bath. Following this, the body remained under the floorboards until August 1979, when the killer burned it on a bonfire of fence posts at the bottom of the garden.

  The next attack, in October 1979, did not prove fatal. Andrew Ho, a young student from Hong Kong, was lured back to Melrose Avenue. But the killer’s attempts at strangulation were half-hearted and his victim escaped. Police were alerted and quizzed Nilsen, but the investigation was dropped as Ho, 19, did not want to go through with a prosecution and admit in front of a public court that he had intended to sleep with a strange man twice his age.

  Nilsen’s second murder came on 3 December 1979. He took a day off work to go Christmas shopping. At the time no one perceived it as odd that such a loner would need time to buy gifts for anyone, but the clerk had other items on his shopping list and as he sat drinking in the Princess Louise pub in Holborn he came across Canadian Kenneth Ockendon. Kenneth, 19, had just completed a technical course and was holidaying before flying home for Christmas. His final destination was Melrose Avenue, where he accepted an offer of a heavy boozing session with Nilsen.

  As Kenneth drank whisky and listened to music through headphones, Nilsen strangled him with the flex from his stereo. Once more, the victim was given a hot bath before being taken to bed. The next day, the corpse was hidden under the floorboards, only to be disinterred several times over the next fortnight to ‘watch’ TV on an armchair next to the whisky-swigging murderer. Kenneth was one of the few victims to be reported missing. His frantic parents in Canada contacted police in London, who found his unused airline ticket home in his hotel room. But there was little more they could do. Kenneth Ockendon was placed on Scotland Yard’s Missing Person’s Register.