Life Means Life Page 6

  There followed the killing of victim number three, Martyn Duffey, whose murder is described earlier. The fourth victim was Billy Sutherland, a 27-year-old from Edinburgh, who was working as a male prostitute in London’s West End. Nilsen insists he had no intention of taking Billy home, but the rent boy followed him on the Underground. His insistent manner sealed his fate. Strangled with Nilsen’s bare hands at Melrose Avenue, his body went under the floorboards along with the others. But here Nilsen’s own recollections – the only details available of his crimes with few witnesses – become vague. During this time, he was drinking more and more, traipsing around the gay bars of early 1980s London in search of liquor, sex and victims.

  Victim five was an Asian prostitute, ‘probably Thai or Filipino’; six was an ‘Irish labourer’, while seven a ‘hippy type’ found in a doorway at Charing Cross. Of victim eight, the killer had no recollection apart from that he’d cut him into three pieces before hiding him under the floorboards. Nine and ten were later described to police as merely young Scots picked up in Soho’s gay Dean Street area.

  But Nilsen did manage to recall his eleventh victim. Little wonder, as he was a skinhead with a tattoo ironically reading ‘Cut Here’ around his neck. The lad boasted how he liked fighting and how tough he was. Not so tough after a dozen cans of beer and several large whiskies, though. Nilsen strangled him and hanged his corpse from a bunk bed to admire it for an entire day.

  On 10 November 1980, Scottish barman Douglas Stewart met Nilsen at The Golden Lion in Dean Street. He was to have a lucky escape. As usual, large amounts of alcohol had been consumed and the younger man fell into a slumber. He woke up in the nick of time to find his host strangling him. Nilsen was also carrying a large knife. Stewart literally fought for his life and managed to fend off his attacker. Almost immediately after the attack he called the police, but no action was taken because the officers, it is reported, considered the incident to be a ‘domestic’.

  Murder victim twelve – prostitute and pickpocket Malcolm Barlow – was discovered slumped in a doorway by Nilsen. Suffering from epilepsy, he had collapsed from the effects of the drugs he was taking for his condition. The killer called an ambulance and Malcolm was taken to hospital. After treatment, he returned to Melrose Avenue and waited on the doorstep of his ‘rescuer’s’ home. He was invited inside, plied with drink… and throttled. His corpse was hidden under the kitchen sink until the killer had time to put him under the floorboards.

  The disposal of bodies at Melrose Avenue was a task Nilsen – using butchery skills acquired in the Army Catering Corps – approached with apparent relish. As the space beneath the floorboards filled up, he removed the corpses. Stinking rotten, they would be dissected by him, wearing only his underpants. Heads were cut off, main organs removed and torsos cut into three. Then the parts were packed into suitcases and hidden in a shed at the rear of the property, covered in rubble. Other body parts were dumped in a narrow space between a fence and wall, where London’s dogs, cats and foxes acted as undertaker. Yet more body parts ended up on the bonfire, tyres covering up the smell of burning flesh.

  In his journals, Nilsen describes in revolting detail the process of chopping up one of his victims:

  I had to have a couple of drinks before I could start. I removed the vest and undershorts from the body. With a knife I cut the head from the body. There was very little blood. I put the head in the kitchen sink, washed it, and put it in a carrier bag. I then cut off the hands, and then the feet. I washed them in the sink and dried them. I made a cut from the body’s naval to the breast bone; I removed all the intestines, stomach, kidneys and liver. I would break through the diaphragm and remove the heart and lungs. I put all these organs into a plastic carrier bag. I then separated the top half of the body from the bottom half. I removed the arms and legs below the knee. I put the parts in large black carrier bags. I put the chest and rib cage in a large bag and the thigh/buttock/private parts (in one piece) in another. I stored the packages back under the floorboards.

  In October 1981 Nilsen moved to Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill. There, he had a problem: there was no garden in which to dump or burn the remains of bodies and the floorboards could not be pulled up. He would have to take another route.

  Nilsen’s first known guest at his new address was student Paul Nobbs. He awoke after a drinking session with Nilsen, suffering bruises to his throat. Paul, 25, consulted a doctor, who told him that he had probably been strangled. The man, who met Nilsen in Soho’s Golden Lion, refused to go to police – he was afraid his homosexuality would be discovered. Another hair’s breath escape was by drag queen Carl Stottor – who went by the name of Khara le Fox. After meeting Nilsen in the Black Cap pub in Camden, he awoke submerged in Nilsen’s bath. His attacker explained to Carl that he had passed out and it was only a revival attempt.

  In December 1982, John Howlett became the first to be murdered at Cranley Gardens. There was a tremendous struggle, during which John even tried to strangle Nilsen back. Eventually he was drowned after having his head held underwater for five minutes. He was to become the first victim of a ghastly end – being flushed away in pieces down the toilet into London’s Victorian sewerage system.

  Nilsen’s next victim was drunken drifter Graham Allen. Taken home from his haunt on Shaftesbury Avenue, Graham was given a meal. As he tucked into an omelette, the homeless man was strangled from behind and left in the bath for three days while Nilsen planned his disposal. Body parts were boiled on the stove and the flesh either flushed down the lavatory or put in black-liners and left out for refuse collectors.

  Nilsen’s unwitting nemesis was drug addict Stephen Sinclair. The youngster dropped into a booze and drugs-fuelled stupor at the killer’s home, where he was stripped and strangled. His body was cut up and flushed down the drains.

  The slow-burning massacre that stalked London’s gay and homeless young men since 1978 was brought to light by a cleaning company responding to a blocked drain – blocked, it turned out, by pieces of Stephen Sinclair’s body. The company found the drain was packed with a flesh-like substance, resembling chicken.

  Suspicious, the drain inspector summoned his supervisor and they called police. Upon closer inspection, some small bones and what looked like human flesh were found in a pipe leading off from the drain. DCI Peter Jay was called to the scene with two colleagues and waited outside until Nilsen returned home from work. As they entered the building, Jay introduced himself with the now-famous words: ‘Mr Nilsen, we’ve come to talk to you about the drains.’

  As they entered the flat DCI Jay immediately smelt rotting flesh. Nilsen asked why the police would be interested in his drains and the officer told him they were filled with human remains. ‘How awful!’ Nilsen exclaimed. ‘Don’t mess about, where’s the rest of the body?’ snapped Jay.

  Dennis Nilsen came to trial at Court No. 1 at the Old Bailey on 24 October 1983. He was charged with the murder of six of the seven men that police had been able to identify: Kenneth Ockendon, Martyn Duffey, Billy Sutherland, Malcolm Barlow, John Howlett and Steve Sinclair. The defendant was also charged with the attempted murder of Douglas Stewart. To each count, he pleaded not guilty.

  He told the court: ‘By nature I am not a violent person. You can look at my school reports, Army and Police Service, and nine years in the Civil Service and you’ll find not one record of violence against me.’ Questioned by the prosecution as to why he murdered, he replied: ‘Yes, it is a great enigma. These things were out of character. I killed people over a period of five years and it got worse.’ He denied that during his time on remand he had taunted fellow prisoners about his crimes, saying: ‘I’ve never gloried in their publicity, never given interviews to the press, not received any money for anything.’ He added: ‘Since I have been in prison I have felt no irresistible urge to kill someone else.’

  Defence counsel Ivan Lawrence, QC, argued Nilsen was not guilty on account of being mentally ill. He told the jury: ‘One would have to say t
hat anyone committing such crimes must be out of his mind.’ But the prosecution, led by Alan Green, QC, had already told the jury that Nilsen killed simply because he enjoyed it. After 24 hours, the jury returned a ten to two majority verdict. Nilsen was guilty on all counts and he was sentenced to life, with a recommendation that he serve at least 25 years. Home Secretary Leon Brittan later imposed a full-life tariff.

  In his summing-up, judge Mr Justice Croom-Johnson said: ‘There are evil people who do evil things. Committing murder is one of them. A mind can be evil without being abnormal.’

  ‘ROT IN HELL!’

  ‘He was so evil that no restriction such as a curfew or tagging would have stopped him. You would literally need a policeman at his side at all times to stop him.’

  Detective Inspector Tim Grattan-Kane

  Name: John McGrady

  Crime: Serial rape and murder

  Date of Conviction: 16 May 2006

  Age at Conviction: 48

  The mum of murdered schoolgirl Rochelle Holness will never forget 25 September 2005 – the last day she saw her daughter. ‘It was a Sunday,’ Jennifer Bennett recalled. ‘I’d been to my sister’s and when I got back I was shocked because all the dishes in the kitchen had been washed up. I went up to Roch’s room to thank her and she just said “OK” like a typical teenager.’

  Rochelle stayed upstairs, sorting through her clothes and texting her boyfriend. About 20 minutes later, she came down when the credit ran out on her phone. Jennifer said: ‘She came to me and asked for money for the payphone. I didn’t have any money, but a friend gave her 30p and off she went. Rochelle left the house at 7.30pm. It was still light outside and I didn’t think anything of it. She was 15 and she was always going to the phone box – it was only a three-minute walk away.’

  At around the same time that Rochelle left her home in Lewisham, South London, alcoholic serial rapist John McGrady was at his council flat on the nearby Milford Towers estate, attempting drunken sex with his girlfriend, Margaret Arif. Since waking up hungover at lunchtime, the former butcher had been downing cans of strong cider and now, unable to perform in bed, he became frustrated. Margaret knew what was coming so she dressed before her lover’s mood worsened. As she left the shabby seventh-floor flat, McGrady asked: ‘What am I going to do? That means I will have to go out to look for someone.’ Margaret thought he was joking and laughed as she walked past the empty cider cans strewn across the floor. She had no idea what was to come.

  The phone box Rochelle Holness used that night was on the outskirts of McGrady’s estate and just a few minutes’ walk from her home. CCTV footage shows her walking away from there at 8.03pm, at which point she was alone. As she made her way home, Rochelle crossed paths with McGrady, a psychotic sex offender, who had already served two life sentences for attacks on young women.

  In a drunken, sexually frustrated rage, McGrady abducted the young girl from the street and marched her up to his flat with the intention of raping her. No one but McGrady knows for sure, but police believe he threatened the teenager with a knife. His previous sex assaults involved knives and unless her life was in immediate danger, Rochelle would never have gone off with a scruffy stranger who stank of stale booze. Furthermore, she and her friends knew to stay away from Milford Towers, a run-down, crime-ridden 1960s estate despised by residents, a place that the local deputy mayor conceded was ‘ghastly’.

  That night, Rochelle’s mum went to bed expecting her daughter to return at any time. When she checked her room at 11 the next morning and saw she wasn’t there, she simply assumed she had gone off to school. But that evening she didn’t come back and Jennifer started to worry. She tried ringing Rochelle’s mobile, but it just rang and rang.

  In an interview with the Mirror, Jennifer said: ‘At 10pm her boyfriend Seb called to check Rochelle was alright. He said she was supposed to see him, but she never turned up. I thought that was weird, so I immediately started ringing around her friends to see if she was with them, but of course she wasn’t. I couldn’t sleep that night.’

  The next morning she called the police and reported Rochelle missing. When she still hadn’t returned the following day, Jennifer went to a photocopying shop and made hundreds of flyers, each bearing Rochelle’s picture.

  That afternoon – Wednesday, 28 September – Jennifer was handing out the flyers close to where Rochelle disappeared when her son Michael, 22, rang her mobile. Jennifer recalled: ‘Michael said, “Mum, there are loads of police outside the flats across the road.” I rushed home and when I got there, my other son Richard said he’d heard someone had been murdered.’

  Together with her ex-husband, Denroy – Rochelle’s dad – Jennifer ran over to Milford Towers to see what was going on. Denroy, 45, said: ‘When I got there they were carrying a stretcher out with a body bag on it. As they walked past me I tried to open the bag. I wanted to see if it was Rochelle inside, but the police stopped me. I thank God now that I didn’t see what was in it, because if I had, I think I would have died there and then.’

  Inside was the couple’s treasured daughter. ‘I grabbed a police officer and gave him a flyer with Rochelle’s photo,’ Jennifer said. ‘I asked, “Can you tell me if that’s my daughter in there?” He took it and said he would go and check. He came back down half an hour later and it was the look on his face I will always remember. He said he couldn’t confirm anything except to say that it was a girl and that they would like me to go to the police station to answer questions.’

  The next day, a police liaison officer arrived at the house. Jennifer said: ‘I just looked at him and said, “It’s my daughter, isn’t it?” and he said, “I’m so sorry.” I immediately said, “I want to see her.” But then he added, “I have some other bad news. Her body was dismembered into nine parts – we found her in black bin bags.” He was very factual, but I was in hysterics, a complete mess.’

  Forensic scientists were unable to tell whether Rochelle was sexually assaulted, but three deep scratches down McGrady’s arm proved she fought him as he tried to have his way with her before choking her to death. Police believe she died within an hour of being at McGrady’s flat and that she lay there dead overnight.

  The following day, McGrady was caught on security cameras in a nearby hardware store buying hacksaw blades. Back at his flat, he used knowledge gained as a butcher’s assistant to cut her up into pieces, which he stuffed into five black bin-liners. He then loaded the bags into a Tesco trolley and transported them to a rubbish chute nearby, leaving a trail of blood along the way.

  Two days after Rochelle went missing, McGrady’s girlfriend Margaret visited his flat, where she found him shaking and repeating the words,‘I have killed a man.’ She noticed there were bloodstains on the carpet, but she assumed both the blood and his ramblings were down to a drunken fight between him and any number of fellow violent alcoholics living on the estate.

  When she returned the next day, she found that he had cut his wrists and other parts of his body. There was a bloodied steak knife on the arm of his chair and scattered around him were suicide notes he’d written, confessing to Rochelle’s murder. One was addressed to Margaret and another to the police. In the letter to the police, he claimed that he’d been ‘told what to do by a greater force.’

  His wrists still dripping with blood, McGrady took Margaret to where he had dumped the body parts. After composing herself, the sickened woman phoned the police. Within minutes, four police officers and an ambulance were at the scene. An hour later, Milford Towers was cordoned off and according to witnesses at least 40 police were in attendance. Questioned after his arrest, McGrady admitted killing Rochelle, but claimed he could not remember any details about the girl’s abduction, murder or the subsequent dismemberment and disposal of her body.

  On 16 May 2006 Belfast-born McGrady – who hails from a family of IRA killers – was jailed for the rest of his life at the Old Bailey. Judge Stephen Kramer told him: ‘You cruelly took the life of a young girl and you have left
her family, and especially her mother, bereft. I am driven to the conclusion that you must have been motivated by sexual desires.

  ‘I am also satisfied that, particularly when you have been drinking, you are – and continue to be – a dangerous predator on women, especially young women. Just punishment requires me to pass a sentence which means you never have the opportunity to prey on young women again.’ As he was led to the cells, Rochelle’s mum screamed at him: ‘Rot in hell!’

  John McGrady had a long history of violent sexual crimes against young women. In 1988 he was jailed for six years for raping two 19-year-olds at knifepoint in Greenwich, South-East London. He forced the pair to commit humiliating sex acts on each other before raping them in turn.

  In 1993 he pulled a knife on a woman who he had followed off a bus. He bundled her over a wall and was ready to assault her when a police patrol car stopped and disturbed him. This time, he went back to jail for five years. He had also been acquitted of rape three times in 1984, telling juries that the women had consented. In one case the alleged victim said he had worn a balaclava and used a knife.

  Outside court, Rochelle’s mum voiced her family’s outrage at the system’s failure to monitor such a dangerous man: ‘The system has let us down. We feel terrible anger and upset that a man with such predatory instincts was allowed to live with us.’

  Rochelle’s murder led to huge criticism of the system of monitoring sex offenders in Britain. Despite his appalling history of attacks on young girls, McGrady was one of thousands of ex-convicts left off the Sex Offenders’ Register because their crimes took place before it was created and inclusion was feared to be in breach of their human rights.