Hours after the murder, police received a phone call from a man who asked the operator: ‘Have you found the body yet? There will be four more. This is The Ripper.’
Glenys Johnson’s mutilated corpse was found shortly after dawn, by which time police had traced the call to a nearby steel factory where Green was working the early morning shift. Detectives were quick to arrest the 24-year-old, who colleagues described as a ‘weird loner’. He had turned up, sweating and shaking, shortly before the time of the call.
When arrested, Green denied any involvement in the prostitute’s murder, but there was much forensic evidence linking him to the crime. Spots of the prostitute’s rare blood group were found on his boots. He also had several cuts to the palms of his hands, which he put down to falling over on his way to work. In reality, Green had cut his palms on the shards of glass that he used to hack at his victim and his blood – also a rare grouping – was found on her body.
When police searched his flat, they found a crude dummy of a man that he had made from a rolled-up carpet, dressed in a buttoned-up shirt and suit jacket. A knife was stabbed through the left pocket of the jacket.
Despite the evidence against him, Green denied the murder and after a seven-day trial at Glamorgan Assizes, Cardiff, he was jailed for life in November 1971.
After 18 years in prison, psychiatrists were convinced that Green, by now apparently a placid and affable 42-year-old, was fit for release into the community. In October 1989 he walked free from Leyhill Open Prison, near Bristol. During his time at Leyhill, Green took several academic courses aimed at improving his chances of getting a job on the outside. He was allowed to leave the prison to attend classes at Bristol’s nearby Filton Technical College, where he excelled in A-level Human Biology. The knowledge he learned on that course enabled him to commit his final gruesome crime.
On his release, Green moved into lodgings at 11 Luxton Street, Bristol, where travelling New Zealander Clive Tully also rented a room. Green took the 24-year-old under his wing and they became close friends. He allowed Clive to spend Christmas with him and his girlfriend Helen Barnes, whom he had met in his biology classes.
Green would later say of Tully: ‘He was lonely. I was possibly his best mate while he lived over here.’
Three months into their friendship, Clive got itchy feet and decided to visit Spain for a few weeks of winter sun. Green drove him to catch the ferry from Plymouth and waved him off. According to Green, Clive returned ‘penniless’ one night in mid-March and asked if he could stay at his place for a few days. He said he agreed to let Clive sleep on his sofa while he went to stay at his girlfriend’s house in Bristol’s Fishponds area. He claimed he never saw his friend again.
Police believe that at some point that night, Green smashed his friend’s skull to pieces with a hammer. He then neatly sawed up Clive’s body – dismembering his head, arms and legs. Green also removed his victim’s hands.
Two days later, two sports holdalls were found in a lay-by of the A467 bypass near Newport. One contained Clive’s torso, the other his arms and legs. The head and hands were missing. Three days later, a farmer found the missing remains in a nearby field. They were wrapped in a bloodied sheet and the farmer at first thought the package was a red and white football.
Because of the state of Clive’s remains, it took police weeks to identify him as the victim of what the tabloid press called ‘The Body in the Bags Killer’. Once he was identified, detectives established that Clive was a friend of recently-released killer Malcolm Green and were soon knocking on the door of the ground-floor flat at 11 Luxton Street. After his arrest, Green told police: ‘I know nothing about Clive Tully’s murder, although I do know Clive Tully.’
As with his previous murder, Green left more then enough forensic evidence for police to charge him. As he awaited trial, psychiatrist Dr Arden Tomison, from the Fromeside Clinic, near Bristol, interviewed him. He found him to be: ‘…a cold, sadistic killer, who has killed for a second time, but is nevertheless capable of forming relationships’. Dr Tomison added: ‘He has a high tolerance of stress and frustrations, which means he is not a psychopath. He is a very dangerous man.’
Opening the case against Green at Bristol Crown Court in October 1991, prosecution barrister Paul Chadd, QC, said: ‘In March of 1990 in the sitting room of a ground-floor flat at 11 Luxton Street in Easton, the accused struck Clive William Tully on the head about a dozen times with something like a hammer, killing him.
‘Whether on the floor of that room, or whether in a bathroom on the first floor, the Crown says that this man dismembered the body. He cut it up into pieces. It is a fact that up the stairs was found a trail of bloody drips. It is a fact that pieces of the body were parcelled in plastic bags and deposited where they would quickly be found alongside two highways in Wales.’
As Cardiff-born Green sat in the dock making notes, counsel continued: ‘This particular dismemberment was neatly done. It was a dismemberment that had to deal, as you will appreciate for a moment if you reflect on the human body, with joints, with muscle. One of the holdalls left by the roadside in Wales belonged to the accused. The accused and the deceased appear to have been friends. Perhaps I have said enough to show that ordinary motive does not arise in this particular case. It is a case with unusual features. I emphasise that when interviewed by police, the accused denied any involvement. The Crown says that the evidence leads inescapably to him.’
Home Office pathologist Dr Stephen Leadbetter told the court: ‘The cause of death was multiple blunt head injuries caused by something like a hammer.’ He said the head was ‘removed neatly by cutting through the soft tissue of the neck and through a part of the voice box.’ He added that the separation of the lower arms, legs, hands and torso was similarly ‘neat’ with little damage or tearing to soft tissue.
Mr Chadd introduced the prosecution’s chief witness, florist Robert Clarke. Mr Clarke told the jury of seven men and five women that he was ‘100 per cent’ sure that he had seen the accused in the lay-by where the torso and dismembered limbs were found. The florist said he was driving along the A467 bypass from Newport to Risca on 21 March 1990 when he noticed a man standing beside a small ‘light-coloured car’.
He thought the man had broken down, but reckoned the large holdall beside the car was a strange way to carry tools. Mr Clarke later picked Green out at an identity parade. He said: ‘When I first went in, I was pretty certain I recognised him, but when I asked him to turn to the left, I was 100 per cent sure. I had a mental picture in my mind of this chap.’
Summing up the evidence against Green, Mr Chadd said that although the case was an ‘oddity’, the jury simply had to apply common sense to convict him. Turning to the testimony of florist Robert Clarke, he told the court: ‘Firstly, he happens to have identified a man with regular access to a light-coloured Metro. Secondly, he happens to have identified a man who admits to have been using a light-coloured Metro that very day, 21 March 1990.
‘Thirdly, he happens to have identified a man who admits to the police he was at Avonmouth on the motorway that very day. Fourthly, he happens to have identified a man in whose house the victim Clive Tully was battered and butchered. Just think about that when you consider the validity of Mr Clarke’s evidence.
‘Fifth, Mr Clarke happens to have identified a man who, as far as we know, is the last person to have seen Mr Tully alive. Sixth, he happens to have identified a man whose fingerprints appear on a white plastic bag used by the killer to contain the two forearms left in a maroon holdall by that very lay-by. Seventh, Mr Clarke happens to have identified a man whose fingerprint was on a black carrier bag, which contained a head left in a ditch. Credulity is now being stretched beyond common sense and beyond possibility.
‘Eighth, he happens to have identified a man who owns one of the holdalls in which parts of the victim’s body were found in a lay-by. These eight matters not only support Mr Clarke, they combine in each other to form an overwhelming case.’
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The jury reached a unanimous guilty verdict at the end of the trial which had lasted – like Green’s first – seven days. Passing sentence, Mr Justice Rose told him: ‘You are intelligent, cold-blooded, sadistic and a liar. It is impossible for anyone but you to know why you killed him and why afterwards you behaved as you did. What is clear from the horrific circumstances of this offence, from your attitude to it and from a psychiatrist’s report on you is that you are a very dangerous man.’ Twice during the judge’s speech, Green interrupted, stating calmly: ‘I did not kill Clive Tully.’
Mr Justice Rose said he would recommend to the Home Secretary that he should serve at least 25 years. As he was led away from the dock, Green turned and yelled at the jury: ‘You are wrong!’ But the Home Office thought the judge’s 25 years minimum sentence was too lenient and ruled he must die behind bars.
Exactly when and why Clive Tully met his death, only Green can say. Indeed, the experts can only speculate on the reason for Green’s bloodlust. Some psychiatrists have suggested his obsession with death and mutilation stemmed from seeing his younger brother decapitated under the wheels of a train when he was only 12.
In both murders, Green made it so easy for the police to find him that it appeared he wanted to be caught. In the Clive Tully case, police were baffled by an anomaly in the evidence in that although Green meticulously cleaned the bathroom, he left a large area of bloodstained carpet in the sitting room. He also dumped bags containing the body pieces in a lay-by on a busy bypass in the Newport area, close to where the victim had relatives.
One detective close to the investigation commented: ‘It is almost as if he wanted to be caught in both murder cases. In the Cardiff murder, there was the telephone call leading to his workplace. It seems inevitable that he would be traced and the dummy would be discovered in his flat.’ He added: ‘In the Bristol case, it was strange he dumped the bags at a spot where they would certainly be found quickly and lead back to him.’ Yet in both cases, Green strongly protested his innocence and claimed he was ‘fitted up’ as the suspect.
Kevin Hall shared a cell with Green at Leyhill Open Prison, where he served the last few years of his first murder sentence. He remarked: ‘To me, he seemed quite normal. I honestly thought the Home Office had got it right and he was alright.’ He said Green was due to be released in 1983, but was handed an extra six years for going on the run. Hall added: ‘If he was released in 1983, God knows how many people he might have killed. It makes my skin crawl to think I shared a cell with him.’
‘THE RAILWAY RAPIST’
‘We considered it a bit of a game. We were playing games with the police and generally making it fun.’
John Duffy
Name: John Duffy
Crime: Serial rape and triple murder
Date of Conviction: 28 February 1988
Age at Conviction: 29
In September 1970, one of the most despicable partnerships in British criminal history began when two awkward, friendless boys met on their first day at secondary school in North London.
Among the scores of children starting at Haverstock Hill Comprehensive that day, something drew John Duffy and David Mulcahy together. Mulcahy, a gangly youngster who counted the neighbourhood dogs as his only friends, had been a particular target of cruelty. At junior school, he was nicknamed ‘Slaphead’ because of his unusually large forehead. Alone with his thoughts, the oddball would roam the neighbourhood’s streets and parks.
Duffy was a very short kid, with an ugly, impish face that gave a bad first impression. If that was not enough, he had curly red hair that made him a target for ridicule. He perpetually wore a Parka with the hood up to hide his locks and keep taunts to a minimum.
An ex-schoolmate of the pair recalled: ‘I can remember Duffy as a short, ginger kid – I don’t think there was anything else about him. He was in the same class as me, but it was only the colour of his hair that made an impression. As for Mulcahy, I can’t remember him at all, not a thing.’
Bonded by loneliness and bullying, the pair became inseparable. They increasingly played truant from school, spending their time daydreaming about beating up their tormentors. Afternoons were often spent watching kung-fu films and practising the moves on each other. Violence became their mutual interest.
At the age of 13, Mulcahy was suspended from Haverstock for playing cricket, using a hedgehog as a ball and a wooden plank as a bat. As other children looked on horrified, he killed the defenceless creature by stamping on its head. In a taste of things to come, his friend and soul mate Duffy was laughing at his side as he did so.
Together they took up martial arts and practised survival techniques from underground manuals, which gave advice on how to silence, incapacitate and kill opponents. Calling themselves ‘Warriors’, they armed themselves with kung-fu flails and knives, and used the techniques they’d learned to stalk courting couples around Hampstead Heath. Sometimes they would masturbate together as they watched people have sex.
Soon they realised that it became even more fun when they donned Halloween masks and jumped out on the couples, scaring them half to death. After their escapades, they revelled in the feeling of control that their dangerous games gave them, then fed off each other’s excitement.
Duffy and Mulcahy had their first brush with the law in 1976 – the year after they left school without a qualification between them. They were caught shooting a powerful airgun at petrified passers-by and were arrested for actual bodily harm. Far from being deterred by their encounter with police, they were soon planning their first rape.
Mulcahy had been decorating a house in West London, but he fell out with the woman who owned it over the quality of his work. He wanted to teach her a lesson and told Duffy they were going to break in and rape her. They entered the house and lay in wait for her, but she did not return home that night.
Weeks later, they targeted another woman because Mulcahy thought she ‘looked stuck up’ and ‘needed to be taught a lesson’. They broke into her house in Notting Hill and hid in her bedroom, but fled when they heard her enter through the front door with a man. As they scrambled out of the window and down the street, they were howling with laughter. The excitement was addictive, like a drug.
On 24 October 1982, they raped their first known victim. The 21-year-old was walking home from a party in West Hampstead, carrying a teddy bear she had been given by a friend. Duffy and Mulcahy, both wearing balaclavas, grabbed her by the neck, put a plaster over her mouth and told her: ‘Don’t worry, all we want is your teddy bear.’ She was then bundled over a wall and raped by each of her attackers in turn. Duffy later described how they felt afterwards: ‘We were both very excited and said we should do it again.’
And so they did, many times, developing an obsession with savage violence and callous lust that would lead to a reign of terror, during which they raped and killed a string of victims, aged between 15 and 32. ‘We used to call it “hunting,”’ Duffy recalled to detectives. ‘We considered it a bit of a game. We were playing games with the police and generally making it fun.’
By the time of the first rape, both men were working for Westminster City Council, where Duffy was a carpenter and Mulcahy a plumber. They were both married and leading outwardly normal domestic lives. Mulcahy had married Sandra Carr, an Anglo-Indian shop assistant, in 1978. Duffy wed nursery nurse Margaret Byrne in 1980, three years after they met at an ice rink. But both men had sexual shortcomings that led them to rape strangers. Mulcahy was impotent unless violence was involved. Furthermore, his arousal depended on having sex against the woman’s will. Duffy had no such problems getting an erection but he had a low sperm count, meaning he was unable to father children. In his deranged mind, this fed his bitter resentment of women.
Their ‘hunting’ expeditions were planned with care. They carried a rape kit of balaclavas, knives and tape, and they stuffed matchboxes with tissue paper so that the matches would not rattle as they crept up on their victims. The tissue wa
s also used for wiping away bodily fluids, the matches to set fire to the tissues. Mulcahy stuck strips of tape to the inside of his jacket to blindfold and gag the terrified women. The pair were also careful never to go out hunting without the 50p coin they always tossed to decide who would rape the victim first.
After the first attack Mulcahy broke into a car and stole a tape of Michael Jackson’s album Thriller. It became the soundtrack to their crimes and they cruised around with it, playing on the stereo, hyping themselves up to the lyrics of the title track. Duffy would later tell police: ‘We normally travelled by car. We called them “hunting parties”. Part of it was looking for a victim, part of it was tracking her, and part of it was having her. We used to put Thriller on and sing along to it as part of the build-up.’
With each attack, the violence increased. On 27 March 1983, they grabbed a 29-year-old French woman from behind as she walked home from work at a restaurant in West Hampstead. But she fought for her life and bit Mulcahy hard on the hand, drawing blood. This sent him into a frenzy and he repeatedly kicked her as she lay curled in a ball on the floor.
On 20 January 1984, a 32-year-old American social worker was walking across Barnes Common, South-West London, when the masked pair jumped on her. ‘At some point he instructed the shorter man [Duffy] to gouge out my eyes, slice off my ears and slice off my nipples,’ the woman later said in evidence. ‘I believed I was going to be murdered, disembowelled, tortured.’ She was stripped and raped on the freezing cold ground.
Four months later, on 3 June, they cornered a 23-year-old woman in the waiting room of West Hampstead train station. With a knife at her back, she was marched to a dark spot under a railway bridge and raped: ‘There was a knife at my throat. They were very threatening. All I could say was, “Please don’t rape me.”’
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