The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (59 page)

Some murderers revel in their devilish work, such as George Stephenson, who after an orgy of violence in which five people were killed asked if his exploits put him in “the top ten”. Others trawl the depths of their imagination to find excuses that might absolve them of guilt. Karl Taylor asked the trial jury to believe that his victim committed suicide by deliberately falling on his knife. And Mark Dixie tried to explain the traces of his DNA on his victim by describing how he came across her lifeless body by chance and performed sex on it.

Also in the realms of the unbelievable was indestructible Mike Malloy who defied a murder gang’s best efforts to poison him with car antifreeze, horse liniment and rat poison. He finally succumbed to their murderous intent when they gassed him.

And the ultimate mystery is murder in a locked room. Isidor Fink was found dead from gunshot wounds in his locked tenement room. There was no murder weapon and no fingerprints, just an abiding mystery and another bizarre murder.

Home Sweet Home

Arthur D. Payne was a successful lawyer with a practice in Amarillo, Texas, living a comfortable life with a wife and three children. On 27 June 1930, he decided to leave the car at home for his wife to use and walked to work. Later that morning, Mrs Payne took her nine-year-old son to go shopping. They travelled only a short distance when the car began to trail smoke before disintegrating in an explosion. Mrs Payne was killed and her son badly injured.

It appeared that explosives in the car had been detonated by a time fuse. While the police were baffled by the incident, the campaigning editor of the
Amarillo News
reported it as a murder and hired a well-known private investigator to hunt down the killer. Arthur Payne offered a $5,000 reward for information.

A.B. MacDonald was an experienced reporter on the
Kansas City Star
. He was a dogged investigator who learned that ninety per cent of Amarillo’s citizens believed Payne had killed his wife. Without supporting evidence, the claim seemed unfounded. Payne had built up a successful law practice defending criminals whose company he particularly sought
out. MacDonald soon discovered that the lawyer had taken out life insurance on his wife and children, with himself named as the beneficiary. When the reporter interviewed Payne, he found him shifty and, instinctively, felt there was a case to answer.

Public opinion was strongly prejudiced against Payne. Enquiries revealed that he had been unfaithful to his wife and he had confided to his lover that he would marry her if he could be rid of his spouse. He had a reputation as a philanderer and was defensive when questioned about his love life.

Under pressure on account of the revelations about his extra-marital activities, Payne broke down and made a full confession which ran to 60,000 words, probably a record of its kind. He admitted trying to poison his wife and then setting up a shotgun to kill her in a simulated accident. When these attempts to eliminate her failed, he resorted to dynamite, with devastating consequences.

Sent for trial and aided by his confession, a Texan jury lost no time in finding him guilty and he was sentenced to death by electrocution. Two days before he was due to be strapped to the electric chair, however, he blew himself up. The blast was strong enough to leave a gaping hole in the wall of his cell. His last wish was that “Home Sweet Home” should be played at his funeral.

While Arthur D. Payne blew himself to extinction, A.B. MacDonald later capped his career as an investigative journalist by being awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Trophy Cabinet

Jane Longhurst, a thirty-one-year-old music teacher went missing from her home in Brighton in the UK on 14 March 2003. Some weeks later, a walker in woods at Pulborough, Sussex, noticed something burning in the undergrowth and discovered her body. The young woman, who had been strangled, was identified by her dental records.

Following this grim discovery, staff at a storage facility in Brighton reported their suspicions of a man calling himself
Paul Kelly who made frequent out-of-hours visits to the unit he had rented. This man had rented a storage space on 25 March, explaining that he needed it urgently to store personal belongings.

Footage from security cameras showed that Paul Kelly had made repeated visits over a three-week period. When police realized this was a false name and he was identified as Graham Coutts, a part-time musician, the next step was to open and examine the storage unit. Officers found a box containing Jane Longhurst’s mobile phone and purse, a bloodstained rope and a shirt stained with blood and semen.

Coutts had kept his victim’s body in the storage unit so that he could view it as a trophy at his leisure. It was only when the remains began to putrefy that he was forced to remove them. He had a history of fascination with violent sex and harboured a fetish for strangulation. He was addicted to violent pornography and acted out some of his fantasies with co-operative partners. He confided to one of them that the time would come when he would rape and strangle a woman.

At his trial for murder in Lewes Crown Court in February 2004, he denied murder, claiming that Jane Longhurst’s death was an accident that occurred during a sex game. Evidence of his taste for sexual violence had been found on his computer and he frequently viewed pornographic programmes. The prosecution argued that Coutts was fixated on images of helpless women who ended up being strangled.

The trial jury found thirty-six-year-old Coutts guilty of murder and the judge passed a sentence of thirty years’ imprisonment.

“. . . Am I In The Top Ten?”

On 1 September 1986, Joseph Cleaver and his wife Hilda were enjoying a family dinner party at their country home when five intruders burst in. Cleaver and his wife, their son Thomas and daughter-in-law Wendy, were dragged away from the dining room by armed men. Also taken was Margaret Murphy, a live-in nurse who looked after Mrs Cleaver, a stroke victim. They
were taken upstairs into the bedrooms where they were tied up and strangled. The daughter-in-law was raped, strangled and mutilated. Having ransacked the house, the gang then started fires with petrol poured over their victims before fleeing into the night.

The carnage that had occurred at the Cleavers’ home, Burgate House near Fordingbridge in Hampshire in the UK, was discovered the next morning when the gardener and cleaner arrived to begin work. They found half-eaten food still on the plates on the dining room table, mute testimony to the violence that had occurred.

Police had an early lead when a red car believed to have been used by the gang was traced to Coventry. It had been rented by a George Stephenson who returned it to the hire firm on the day after the murders. Within forty-eight hours, Stephenson and two associates, George and John Daly, were being questioned. Stephenson had worked for the Cleavers as their handyman but had been dismissed for drunkenness. George Daly had convictions for burglary and theft.

Since his teenage years, Stephenson had a history of casual employment mixed with periods of detention for theft and handling stolen goods. He also had a violent temperament and his wife of six weeks deserted him after he abused her. Once arrested, Stephenson said he had been shocked to see his face on television as a wanted man. He thought he might be questioned about a robbery but he did not realize anyone had died. He put the blame on the Daly brothers who wanted the shotguns that Joseph Cleaver kept in his house. He said John Daly was drunk on the night of the robbery. Stephenson drove them down to Bournemouth where they celebrated by drinking a bottle of wine.

Stephenson and the Daly brothers were sent for trial at Winchester Crown Court in October 1987, when the full extent of what happened at the Cleavers’ home the previous year was exposed. Wearing stocking masks the trio had burst into the house armed with pickaxe handles and two cans of petrol. They started their night of horror by beating the family’s dog. After tying up their victims, they each raped Wendy Cleaver
and then strangled her. Finally, dousing their helpless victims with petrol, they threw firelighters into the bedrooms burning them alive.

When questioned by detectives, Stephenson had asked, “Is this the worst murder of all time? . . . Am I a star? . . . Am I in the top ten?” The three defendants were found guilty of murder and manslaughter and given a total of thirteen life sentences. Mr Justice Hobhouse told Stephenson, “In all that occurred that night you showed no mercy. You deserve none.” Facing a minimum of twenty-five years’ imprisonment, Stephenson smirked and shrugged his shoulders.

Unlikely Excuse

On 18 May 2007, Kate Beagley, a thirty-two-year-old manager at a utility company, went to the CC Club in central London for drinks with friends. During the evening she became acquainted with Karl Taylor, a fitness instructor, and they exchanged telephone numbers. Later they agreed to go on a date.

The couple met at the Roebuck public house, Richmond Hill on 30 May. They were noticed by fellow customers and Beagley was observed to be busy using her mobile phone. When she did not turn up for work, her friends and family began telephoning around in efforts to locate her.

Karl Taylor was arrested on suspicion of kidnap, and when questioned, admitted that he had killed Beagley and told police officers where to find her body. She was found in Oxhey Woods, near Watford, lying in a drainage ditch. She had been stabbed in the face and neck.

Tayor said he only wanted to steal her car and had put the knife to her neck in order to take the ignition key. He put her body in the boot of her VW Golf and drove to the spot where he dumped her. He was careful to strip the body and wash it with mineral water to remove any forensic traces. He then drove back to London where he had a flat in Covent Garden. On the way, he threw the murder weapon and some of Beagley’s clothes out on to the motorway. He also telephoned his
girlfriend and, later, showed off the new car he had acquired. Taylor’s route was confirmed by CCTV images recorded at a filling station in Shepherd’s Bush where he stopped to re-fuel the VW.

Enquiries into Taylor’s background showed that he had a conviction for obtaining property by deception and that he had talked of taking his own life. He was sent for trial at the Old Bailey in March 2008. The prosecution accused him of concealing a knife in his coat sleeve when he met Beagley on their first date. They sat on a park bench overlooking the river when he threatened her with the knife.

Taylor’s version of events was that he produced the knife and told her he only wanted her car. When she resisted and grappled with him, he cut her “because she was going for my face.” He claimed that Beagley had committed suicide by pushing her head on to the knife after discussing some of her personal problems with him.

The jury convicted twenty-seven-year-old Taylor of murder and Judge Giles Forrester sentenced him to a minimum of thirty years’ imprisonment. The judge described him as arrogant and highly dangerous and said, “This was murder done for gain. You went to meet this girl equipped with a knife. You took advantage of her vulnerability for your own ends.” Taylor’s suggestion that the dead woman had committed suicide by throwing herself on to his knife did not merit a great deal of discussion.

Sexual Predator

Eighteen-year-old Sally Anne Bowman, an aspiring model, became a murder victim on 25 September 2005. Her body was found with stab wounds lying on the driveway at her home in Croydon, south London.

The post-mortem showed that she had been repeatedly stabbed. There were bite marks on her body and she had been sexually assaulted. The hunt for her attacker led to one of the UK’s largest mass screenings for DNA. Appeals for information were broadcast on the BBC’s “Crimewatch”
programme and an e-fit was issued of a possible suspect. The police had a strong idea that the attacker lived locally.

Mark Dixie, aged thirty-seven, was arrested on 15 June 2006. He had been involved in a bar brawl after a football match. The police exercised powers they were given in 2000 to take DNA samples from anyone arrested and held at a police station. Dixie’s DNA matched that left on the body of Sally Bowman.

He lived in south London, was estranged from his family, and worked as an itinerant pub chef. He had a long history of sexual offences with convictions going back over twenty years. He had worked in Holland and Spain and also in Australia where he was linked with an unsolved rape and attempted murder in 1998.

In his circle of acquaintances, Dixie was known to use aliases and to be a recreational drug user. On the night before Sally Bowman was killed, he had celebrated his birthday, drinking beer and using cocaine. When detectives searched his accommodation they found a copy of the
Sun
newspaper dated 23 February 2006 with semen traces on the front page. That issue of the newspaper carried a report of the murder that had occurred five months previously.

During his trial at the Old Bailey, a nineteen-year-old woman from Perth, Australia, described being raped in 1997 by a man who broke into the house where she was living. He knocked her unconscious and left traces of semen on her clothing. DNA recovered from those traces belonged to Dixie. He denied the attack.

His explanation for his DNA being found on Sally Bowman was that coming home from his party, he found her lying on the driveway of her home and decided to have sex with her lifeless body. He also left bite marks on her. Dixie’s counsel contended that while the evidence showed he had sex, it did not prove that he was a murderer. The jury thought differently and took only three and a half hours to bring in a guilty verdict. Mr Justice Gordon, saying there were no mitigating circumstances in Dixie’s case and he had shown no remorse, sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Dixie’s conviction and that of Steven Wright (
see page 382
), the Suffolk murderer, in the same week, prompted the British police to call for a national DNA register. DNA had played a crucial role in bringing both murderers to justice.