After his trial, three women raped by Dembovskis in his home town of Livani spoke of their ordeals. In June 1990, kindergarten teacher Anastasia Skadina, 31, was walking across a bridge when Dembovskis leapt out at her, brandishing a knife. The mother-of-two recalled: ‘He shoved me into a bush near the river. It was horrible, he was saying, “Just relax like you are with your husband.” He had a tattoo of two eyes on his abdomen; it was very weird. The whole thing was horrible.’ The terrified woman reported the attack to police, who recognised her attacker from his distinctive tattoo. Dembovskis was caught the next day and was jailed for seven years.
From prison, he took twisted pleasure in taunting his victim further. Anastasia said: ‘He wrote a letter to me from his cell. It was filthy, really filthy. He drew a picture of a baby’s dummy as if to suggest maybe I was pregnant from what he did. When I read his letter, it was like being raped again.’ Of Jeshma’s murder, Anastasia, by then aged 47, said: ‘I am so sorry for the poor girl’s family. I was so lucky to escape with my life. I still don’t like to leave the house without my husband and I worry all the time about my own daughter. She is now living in England and if I had known he was there, I would never have let her go.’
Dembovskis served his full sentence for the attack on Anastasia, but he was far from rehabilitated and within weeks of his release in 1997 he viciously attacked another woman. Svetlana Dolbikova, 19, was three months pregnant when he raped her in September of that year. She said: ‘He held a knife to me while he raped me. I screamed at him, “I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant!” but he did not care.’ Svetlana lived on the same estate as Dembovskis and, with a group of friends, went to a party that he was holding at his mother’s flat. When she went to use the toilet, he seized his moment and dragged her into the kitchen at knifepoint, whispering: ‘If you want to live, keep quiet or you will die before the morning.’ He then repeatedly raped the teenager, only letting her go the following day. Svetlana was so traumatised that she was too afraid to report the incident, terrified her attacker would come after her and her baby. When she heard that he had been jailed for the rest of his life, Svetlana, whose daughter was by then aged seven, said: ‘I look at her beautiful face and shudder to think that monster could have hurt her. I am glad he will rot in jail.’
Two months after the attack on Svetlana, Dembovskis claimed his next known victim. He dragged Ineta Maloseva into a filthy basement as they walked home together from a party. She said: ‘He pushed me to the wall and put a kitchen knife to my neck, drawing blood. He said: “If you start crying, I will kill you immediately.” I will never forget the foul smell in that basement. His body was covered with a skin infection and he had medication all over him. He smelled of sweat and he was unwashed.’
Dembovskis was jailed for a further seven years for the attack but incredibly, at a bungled appeal in 2000, he was released early when it was decided that because Ineta was friends with his previous victim, Svetlana, she must have known what he had done to her and had been ‘foolish’ to go near him. He was back on the streets after serving less than half his time.
Latvia joined the EU in 2004 and Dembovskis automatically acquired EU citizenship, giving him the chance to start afresh abroad, where the authorities were ignorant of his past. He seized the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and bought a one-way ticket to London. In November of that year, he strolled through British immigration without any checks.
When he arrived in London, he slept rough on the streets and drank heavily. A Russian-based Christian charity realised his plight and put him in a hostel in Harrow, North-West London, and paid for dental treatment as he had already lost most of his teeth.
He was befriended by fellow Russian immigrant Datsyuk Ramonovich, who helped him get work at the Car Valet UK car wash in Harrow town centre, where he earned up to £400 a week, paid in cash. But he soon tired of the hostel’s rules and moved into the eight-bedroom house, close to where he killed Jeshma. One colleague at the car wash recalled: ‘He had spent more than half his life in prison and sometimes he told me he missed it. He would tell stories about it, how they would fight each other. It was cold and damp, but he said he got used to it. Outside, he was alone and he said he felt lonely; there was no one to help him. When he was waiting around at work, he would walk from one side to the other with his hands behind his back, like he was in the exercise yard.’
According to his roommate, Vladimir Ivanov, Dembovskis would often skip work through being drunk or hungover. ‘He always kept a bottle of brandy in his bedside cabinet,’ he said.
After the trial, Jeshma’s mother, Manjula, and father, Suresh, said in a statement: ‘The man had a violent past, yet he was easily allowed into this country. We have to ask how and why this came about and what checks were made about his background before he was allowed to set foot on British soil.’
Roberts Snepits, the Police Chief in Dembovskis’ hometown Livani, said: ‘He is a maniac. Jeshma would be alive today if only the Latvian appeal court and everyone else had listened to us.’
His mother was not at the Old Bailey to see him caged, but from her crumbling apartment in Livani she said he had been a happy schoolboy, who always wanted to be a lorry driver. She said the family had been torn apart by the deaths of his brother Ivans and his father Vladislav in the space of just three years. She remembered: ‘When he was a boy at home he was very clean and never swore, but he got in with a bad crowd and changed; he became bad. What he got up to, I can only guess: it was horrible. His father drank alcohol very rarely, but Viktors drank a lot, usually at the homes of his friends. He had parties here, but I did not like them – I used to tell his friends to get out.’
When Latvia found independence in 1991, Dembovskis moved to Rija and joined the Seventh Day Adventist Church, where he earned certificates for bible reading. His mother, sitting beside a picture of Jesus, said solemnly: ‘He found God. I thought he was going to make something of his life.’
‘A MADMAN ON THE LOOSE’
‘He is the sanest man in the building.’
Psychologist at Ashworth Hospital.
Name: Anthony Arkwright
Crime: Triple murder
Date of Conviction: 12 July 1989
Age at Conviction: 22
Skinny survival fanatic Anthony Arkwright had only one ambition in life – to be an infamous killer. He even boasted to friends that one day he would be as well known as Jack the Ripper.
In August 1988, aged 21, he murdered three defenseless people in such a sadistic and gruesome manner that even hardened police were physically sick when they saw the slaughter. But despite the horrific nature of his crimes, Arkwright never won the notoriety he craved.
In the weeks leading up to the 56-hour killing spree, the 6ft 4in, spikey-haired loner was working at a scrapyard near his home in Wath, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire. He spent his nights constructing hideouts by railway tracks, assuming the role of an SAS-style survivalist. For hours on end, he sat crouched watching from his camouflaged dens, a hunting knife tucked down his boots. In summer he preferred sleeping there to his council flat.
During the long periods of time he spent alone, Arkwright fantasised about the people he would kill. In the months leading up to the murders, he became obsessed with the mistaken belief that he was born out of an incestuous relationship between his mother and her Lithuanian-born father, his grandfather Stasys Puidokis.
On Friday, 26 August, Arkwright was sacked from his job for poor attendance. He took his severance pay and got drunk at the nearest pub. Then the carnage began. At around 4.15 that afternoon he walked to his grandfather’s home in Ruskin Drive. He was not there, so Arkwright went to the nearby allotments where the old man spent much of his time. As he looked up from his weeding to greet his grandson, Arkwright stabbed the 68-year-old in the neck. The knife cut through the pensioner’s spinal cord, paralysing him. As Mr Puidokis lay still and bleeding on the ground, he grabbed his feet and dragged him into his shed. There, he grabbed an axe
and buried it in his grandfather’s chest. He then smashed his skull to pieces with a 14lb lump hammer.
After locking his grandfather in his shed, he went back to the dead man’s house and stole his life savings of £3,000. His grandfather’s housekeeper, Elsa Konradite, 72, was later found dead in the kitchen. Both she and Mr Puidokis lay undiscovered for six days.
That night, Arkwright went on a pub crawl round Mexborough and dropped hints to people he met of the brutal murder he had committed. One barman remembered the ‘wild-eyed weirdo’ ordering a drink and saying: ‘It’s been murder on the allotment today.’ Several more witnesses recalled similar remarks from him that night, demonstrating his need for public recognition. As he walked home at the end of the evening, Arkwright tried to pick a fight with a group of nightclub doormen. The wannabe SAS hard case suffered the humiliation of being picked up by his trouser-belt and hurled across the pavement by one of the burly bouncers.
By 3am the following day, Arkwright, angered by the bouncer incident, was back at his flat on Denman Road in Wath. He got changed and entered the flat of his next-door neighbour, Raymond Ford, who Arkwright enjoyed bullying. Raymond, 45, was a depressed ex-teacher, who spent his days drinking cheap cider and completing the Guardian crossword. He was tormented by his sadistic young neighbour who regularly smashed his windows and shoved excrement through his letterbox. Earlier that week, Arkwright had burgled Raymond’s flat, stealing a clock and a microwave. Raymond reported the harassment and burglary to the police, naming Arkwright as the offender. The sadist was aware of this and he wanted revenge.
Naked apart from a Prince of Darkness devil-mask covering his face, Arkwright entered the flat through a window he’d smashed with a brick a few days earlier and he attacked Raymond as he sat slumped in an armchair in front of the television. He stabbed him more than 500 times, thrusting the knife deep into every part of his victim’s body. The maniac then gutted and disembowelled the corpse, using a technique similar to that used by Jack the Ripper on his victims in Victorian London. Raymond’s body was discovered three days later, his entrails draped around the room. Describing the scene that greeted police, one seasoned detective said: ‘It was the most brutal act of slaughter I have ever seen. It is all the more chilling when you realise he must have spent at least half an hour inflicting those terrible wounds.’
Next, Arkwright went home and showered to remove the blood from his body. Four hours later, two policemen knocked at his door. Unaware of the horrors next door, the officers arrested him for the burglary at Raymond Ford’s flat. He was detained for three hours before being released on bail to appear in court the following week.
Amused at being a murderer allowed to walk free from a police station, Arkwright spent Saturday evening in high spirits, drinking in pubs around Mexborough. In the early hours of Sunday, 28 August, he murdered another of his neighbours on Denman Road. He entered the specially adapted bungalow where wheelchair-bound Marcus Law lived after a motorcycling accident. Marcus was stabbed at least 70 times. Arkwright then tried to gut his victim, but failed. Instead, he rammed his victim’s crutch into a gash in his stomach.
In what he would later describe as punishment for all the cigarettes Marcus had scrounged off him, Arkwright gouged out the 25-year-old’s eyes and placed unlit cigarettes in the sockets, as well as in his ears, up his nostrils and in his mouth.
The following morning, the killer bumped into Marcus’ mother and smirked as he told her how sorry he was to hear of the suicide of ‘poor old Marcus’. She hurried to her son’s bungalow, where she made the horrific discovery.
By 1pm Arkwright was arrested for his disabled neighbour’s murder. While being interviewed, he took a pack of cards from the table and shuffled through them. He picked out the Four of Hearts, laid it down in front of the two detectives and said: ‘This is the master card – it means you have four bodies and a madman on the loose.’ As if interpreting the card like a Tarot reader, he added: ‘I can see Marcus Law, but the others are indescribable. They are just too horrible to describe.’
An urgent search was made for the three missing bodies and, one by one, they were discovered by sickened police. But after being charged with the four murders Arkwright felt out of the limelight – that he was no longer the one calling the shots. So he invented a fifth victim, which led to police frogmen searching a lake while another team of officers worked their way through a drainage ditch.
Arkwright’s attention seeking continued while awaiting trial at Hull Prison: he was offended at the lack of respect and recognition afforded him and staged a ‘dirty protest’ by smearing his excrement over the walls of his cell. He managed to convince prison doctors that he was insane and he was transferred to Rampton Psychiatric Hospital on Merseyside. But after detailed examination, he was declared fit to plead. ‘He is the sanest man in the building,’ reported one Rampton psychiatrist.
At his trial in July 1989, prosecution counsel Steven Williamson, QC, described the murders in chronological order, ending with the death of Marcus Law. Of that dreadful final crime, Mr Williamson said: ‘The mother of Marcus Law was to find her own son dead. Even before the discovery, Arkwright spoke to her about the death of Marcus, thus betraying his knowledge.’
After an adjournment requested by his lawyers, Arkwright changed his plea to guilty of the murders of the three men, but not guilty to that of his grandfather’s housekeeper, Elsa Konradite. The judge ordered that particular charge to lie on file.
Before sentencing, Arkwright’s barrister, James Chadwin, QC, stated: ‘Arkwright is a young man who suffers from severe personality damage and disorder. He has shown signs of disturbance since the time his mother left him when he was four years old.’ Recommending he serve at least 25 years, judge Mr Justice Boreham said the murders ‘…can only be described as horrible offences of sadistic cruelty. Cruelty for its own sake.’ He added: ‘I accept you have had a deprived and disturbed childhood, but that cannot be any excuse for the appalling cruelty and apparent sadistic pleasure with which you carried out these offences. There is nothing in the medical evidence to suggest anything to mitigate what you have done. I have no doubt, having read the reports of three eminent psychiatrists and others, that you constitute a serious danger to the public and will remain so for a very long time to come, and the horror of this case leaves me no option but to pass life sentences.’ Home Secretary Jack Straw declared the 25-year minimum sentence too lenient and ordered Arkwright to serve a whole life term.
A retired senior detective who worked on the Arkwright case said: ‘From the day we brought him in for the Marcus Law murder to the day he was jailed, Arkwright seemed genuinely proud of what he had done. He expected everyone to revere him, to be fascinated by him. He was a messed-up kid, desperate for attention. In his defected mind he chose murder to get the attention he craved. He’s the most dangerous person I ever met in 25 years on the job – he should never get out.’
The son of a miner, Arkwright was born and bred in the small mining town of Wath. He was the middle child of five and took it very badly when his mother walked out on him and his siblings. Throughout his formative years and into his teens, the young Arkwright displayed the traits of a boy who felt rejected and unwanted. He was in frequent trouble for fighting, stealing and vandalism. Eventually he was expelled from school and served time in a borstal. Child psychiatrists were unable to get through to him and he ended up spending several stints in prison.
During his last jail stretch for burglary, he boasted to fellow inmates that he would one day become a famous murderer. He used the prison library to read up on Jack the Ripper and Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe. He expressed his admiration for Sutcliffe and told friends he planned to enjoy the same notoriety.
But the name Anthony Arkwright has never made it into the public consciousness and his sadistic actions failed to achieve the public impact he desired. However, for those whose loved ones were killed by him, the memories remain raw and strong, and he has wrecked thei
r lives. In 2002, 14 years after the murders, Marcus Law’s father Tony committed suicide because he was haunted by his son’s hideous death. The 62-year-old poisoned himself with car exhaust fumes. His wife Norma, Marcus’s mother, said: ‘No parent could ever come to terms with something as traumatic as that. What happened to Marcus preyed on Tony’s mind. He kept having nightmares Marcus was screaming for his dad, but he just couldn’t get to him. We moved for a fresh start, but Tony couldn’t escape the memories.’
The inquest into Tony Law’s death revealed that Marcus was the couple’s only surviving son after their firstborn killed himself in 1973, aged 13. Coroner Peter Brunton said: ‘This man was badly affected by the violent deaths of his two children. This is the most tragic set of circumstances I have ever come across.’
‘THE BODY-IN-THE-BAGS KILLER’
‘Have you found the body yet? There will be four more. This is The Ripper.’
Green (to 999 operator)
Name: Malcolm Green
Crime: Murder
Date of Conviction: 31 October 1991
Age at Conviction: 44
In the early hours of 21 June 1971, crane driver Malcolm Green left a nightclub in the docks area of Cardiff and came across street prostitute Glenys Johnson. Only Green knows whether she went willingly with him to waste ground at Wharf Street in the area’s Butetown, but once there, he killed her by slashing her throat with a broken bottle.
He then tore her clothes open and frenziedly slashed away at her body. When Green had finished with Glenys, she had more than 20 gaping wounds to her neck, chest and abdomen. Such was the ferocity of the attack that her head was almost severed from her body.
Life Means Life Page 21