Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (2 page)

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 15

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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.

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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.

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£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.

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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.

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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 20

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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 rst 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 21

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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 22

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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.