Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (3 page)

When the maid entered the west London hotel room five days later, she found Margery’s naked body tucked up in bed, blood still smeared over her face, body and vagina. Heath had booked the room in his own name – and Margery had told several of her like-minded friends that they were going to enjoy a flagellation session with his dogwhip – so he immediately became a wanted man.

The second murder

Heath now fled to Bournemouth and booked into a hotel under the pseudonym Group-Captain Rupert Brooke. He loved Rupert Brooke’s poetry and had copied some of his verses into his notebooks and diaries.

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At first he contemplated suicide and asked to be moved to a room with a gas fire as he planned to gas himself. He also wrote to his parents saying ‘life doesn’t mean a thing’, but he didn’t post the note. As the days passed without police interference, he realised that he might literally get away with murder, and his spirits revived.

Whilst out for a stroll, he met a girl he knew and was introduced to her friend, Doreen Marshall. Doreen had been ill so her parents had sent her to Bournemouth to enjoy the sea air. Her doting father had bought her a return train ticket.

Sadly the return portion would never be required.

Heath invited the 19-year-old out to tea and they met up again that evening, dining at his hotel then sitting in the lounge bar with Heath hastily downing numerous beers, gins and brandies. It was evident to others in the lounge that Doreen was increasingly wary of him and at 11.20 p.m. she asked the porter to order her a taxi home.

Moments later Heath cancelled the taxi and insisted that he’d walk her back to her hotel. He told the porter that he’d be back in 30 minutes but Doreen corrected, ‘He’ll be back in fifteen.’

When they reached the comparatively sheltered area of Branscombe Chine, Heath turned on the luckless young woman, punching her in the face and knocking her to the ground.

Whilst she lay there semi-conscious, he tied her hands in front of her with a handkerchief, kneeling on her so hard in the process that he broke one of her ribs. He removed his own clothes and stripped hers off, ripping her underwear from her struggling body, then attempted to rape her. When he failed, he took his large pocket knife and sliced at her throat. He also cut from one breast to the other and threw himself across her, biting her nipples savagely. Then the stabbing continued – marks on her bound hands showed where she’d tried to defend herself from the agonies inflicted by his slashing blade. But another 24

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Neville Heath

stab wound to her throat, which partially severed her vertebral column, provided the fatal blow.

When she was dead, Heath fell on her again with his knife, slashing one of her thighs then pulling the blade upwards to cut deeply into her pubis, stomach and breasts. When he was happy with his handiwork, he took Doreen’s ring and watch from her still-warm corpse and untied the bloodstained handkerchief from her wrists to keep as a souvenir. He dragged her body by the feet to some nearby rhododendron bushes, cutting further branches from nearby scrub to cover it up.

Rifling through her bag, he removed her money, return rail ticket and a small penknife, before throwing the bag behind a bathing hut. Realising that he was covered in blood, he washed himself in the sea, disposing of the murder weapon there, before dressing and walking back to his hotel.

A hastily created alibi

Heath didn’t have a viable explanation for what he’d been doing for the past few hours, so rather than go past the reception desk, he fetched a ladder from the hotel yard and used it to climb into his window. When the porter, unsure if he’d returned or not, peaked into his room at 4 a.m. he was fast asleep. Waking the following morning, the sadist found scratches on his neck and covered them with a silk scarf. He also pawned Doreen’s watch and ring, having pocketed her cash.

Meanwhile the manager of the Norfolk Hotel became alarmed that Doreen Marshall had not returned. Knowing that she’d planned to have tea at the Tollard Royal Hotel with Group-Captain Rupert Brooke, he phoned and asked what had happened. Heath denied knowing Doreen and said that he’d meet her anguished parents at the police station to confirm this.

The newspapers at the time saw this as Heath surrendering to the authorities – but in likelihood the young sociopath thought 25

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that he could talk his way out of it and pretend to aid in the search.

But his fingerprints had already been found in the hotel room where Margery Gardner died and police were looking for him throughout Britain. And when he saw what he thought was Doreen’s ghost (it was her older sister who bore a remarkable resemblance to the murdered woman) he went white and began to shake.

Arrested, he eventually admitted to being Neville Heath. A ticket in his coat led them to a left luggage locker which contained the bloodstained scarf which had tied Margery Gardner’s hands and the other which had muffled her screams. The locker also contained the steel-cored whip which had so cruelly lacerated her flesh. Moreover, a pearl found in his pocket had been torn from a necklace around Doreen Marshall’s throat. His guilt a foregone conclusion, he was remanded in custody in Brixton prison.

Body discovered

On 8 July, a girl out walking her dog found Doreen Marshall’s body hidden under some cut branches and bushes on Branscombe Chine. She was naked apart from one shoe, though her clothes had been piled on top of her body. Her throat had been cut to a three quarter inch depth.

The police now began to investigate Neville Heath’s past, going through the six hundred names in his address books.

Understandably, given the ignorance about consensual sadomasochism which existed at the time, few of his lovers told the truth. For example, the married woman who had screamed when caned too hard told the authorities that she’d only gone to Heath’s room for a friendly drink and that he’d grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back, telling her that he hated women. She further lied that when she refused 26

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Neville Heath

to strip for him, he threw her against the wall so violently that she passed out.

When she regained consciousness, she told police, she found that she was naked and that he had tied her hands behind her back with a handkerchief. Beating her with his fists, he knocked her out again. In reality, Heath’s biographer Francis Selwyn would later note that they’d had a consensual caning session but he’d probably caned her harder than they’d agreed upon.

Nevertheless, she’d voluntarily left the hotel with him rather than ask the manager to order her a taxi to take her home.

A crowd puller

Heath had cheerfully admitted both murders to the police but his counsel urged him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity for the sake of his family. Shrugging, he entered a not guilty plea.

Questioned by a psychiatrist, he would only say that whipping a girl gave him the kind of sexual release that sexual intercourse gave to most men. He subsequently suggested that he’d recovered from a blackout to find Margery Gardner lying dead next to him. He was so indifferent to the suffering which he’d caused, and so fearless regarding his own imminent fate, that it was evident to the psychiatrist that he was a psychopath.

Newspaper accounts of his flagellation fetish made the case the most talked about of its day, and women flocked to Neville Heath’s trial, coming to blows outside the courtroom in their desperation to reach the public gallery. Some had queued for 14

hours, his sadism clearly having strong appeal. That said, there was no suggestion in the newspapers at this stage that Margery Gardner and previous partners had consented to being tied up and chastened, so the public’s impression was of a man who had forced all of his partners to submit to the whip.

There had, of course, been British sadists before Neville Heath, but they lacked the clear sadistic symbolism of the whip 27

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and handcuffs. Jack the Ripper, for example, evidenced sadism in his slashing and cutting gestures and especially in excising the breasts and uterus of some of his victims. The true identity of Jack the Ripper remains unknown: he may have been the gentleman James Maybury or the mentally ill scavenger Aaron Kosminski beset by voices. He may even have been a medical student called John Sanders who went insane and was shipped off to a sanatorium in Weston-super-Mare. Coincidentally, the bracing seaside town also featured in Neville Heath’s life story for he borrowed a large amount of money from an aunt who lived there and never paid it back.

But, whoever Jack the Ripper was, he lacked Neville Heath’s controlled cruelty, for as mentioned earlier Heath would wait for one minute after lashing a prostitute, enjoying her anguished writhing to the full before applying the next merciless stroke.

Now the public wanted to know exactly what he had done to his two victims. Many female members of that public also wanted to attract his attention, dressing in their most fashionable clothes and self-consciously combing their hair as they sat in the Old Bailey’s gallery.

A psychopath

The trial opened at the Old Bailey on 24 September 1946.

Heath pleaded not guilty to murdering Margery Gardner.

The prosecution gave the impression that she’d been tied and whipped against her will and the defence tried to suggest that she was promiscuous – but, even if she had been, it hardly excused violating her with a whip handle and suffocating her to death. The girlfriend who Heath had proposed to in Worthing took the stand and described him as a gentle and considerate lover then the prosecution detailed the injuries he’d inflicted on his naked victim. Another doctor testified to the injuries received by Doreen Marshall. The trial lasted for three days.

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Neville Heath

Unsurprisingly, it took the jury only an hour to find him guilty of Margery Gardner’s murder. Asked if he had anything to say, he replied ‘Nothing’ and was duly sentenced to death.

The authorities decided there was no point in having a separate trial for Doreen Marshall’s murder as her killer was already condemned to die.

Afterwards the popular press gave the impression that men enjoying sadomasochism today would become murderers tomorrow. But, as Heath’s biographer Francis Selwyn perceptively noted: ‘… no one had suggested that the teachers and workhouse masters who flogged their way through generations of the young were likely to die on the gallows.’

The hanged man

Awaiting execution, Heath let his mother visit him once then he refused to see her or the rest of his family and friends as he felt ashamed of the prison uniform. He wrote to his mother saying, ‘My only regret at leaving the world is that I have been so damned unworthy of you both.’ He wrote again the following day, hours before he was to be hanged, to tell her that he would stay awake to see the dawn for the last time, adding

‘Well, it wasn’t really a bad life while it lasted… Please don’t mourn my going… and don’t wear black.’

Just before his execution on 16 October 1946 he was offered a glass of whisky and joked to the warden, ‘You might make that a double.’ He was equally unconcerned as the hangman led him to the scaffold, saying, ‘Let’s get it over with.’

Afterwards the jury asked to see his body, as did several curious females, a request which was curtly refused. That lunchtime he was buried in an unmarked grave by Pentonville Prison’s wall.

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CHAPTER TWO

PATRICK JOSEPH

BYRNE

Patrick Byrne committed one of the most horrific
sex murders of the late 1950s – and immediately
tried to commit a second. His sadistic acts sparked
one of the biggest murder hunts in British history.

Early trauma

Patrick was born to Elisabeth and Joseph Byrne in Dublin in 1932, the second son of what would ultimately become a large family. He was much closer to his mother than to his father, and would remain so throughout his life. This preference for the mother is common in boys who grow up to become sadists, as the father is often so overbearing that the child cannot identify with him. In contrast, the mother tends to be pathologically overprotective, sometimes keeping the child away from possible playmates and making him reliant on her company. Beaten by one parent and emotionally suffocated by the other, the child retreats into a sadistic fantasy life, fantasies that he may later act out.

Psychiatrists would later note that Patrick had sexual abnormalities of the mind when still a child, a trait invariably formed by nurture rather than nature. But they were unable 30

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Patrick Byrne

to find out about his formative experiences. It’s merely known that he was small for his age, had curly hair and sparkling eyes, but was extremely nervous and shy.

When he was eight, his mother brought him to hospital in an unconscious state and he remained unconscious for three days.

She said that he’d been playing outdoors when a wall fell on him, breaking one of his legs and battering onto his head.

Patrick already had a slightly below average IQ and very poor literacy skills which would have made him unpopular with his teachers. And Irish teachers in the 1930s and 1940s were often disciplinarians who beat their little pupils mercilessly. In class he remained a passive-aggressive loner; though, like many disturbed children, he was creative, being good at art in particular.

As Patrick moved into his teens, he found it impossible to talk to girls, though he fantasised about having sex with them.