Life Means Life

by Nick Appleyard

  The following month, a 22-year-old woman was dragged into the back garden of a house in Highgate, North London, but she was saved when the couple living there turned on the garden lights, forcing the rapists to flee.

  On 15 July 1984, they dragged two Danish au pairs, both 18, into bushes on Hampstead Heath. The terrified girls were stripped and raped.

  Their eighth victim was a German au pair, who they raped in Brent Cross, North-West London, on 26 January 1985. Just five days later, the rapists were back on Hampstead Heath, where Mulcahy grabbed a 16-year-old and asked her if she was a virgin. She said afterwards: ‘The short man [Duffy] looked up and said something to the effect of, “Come on, I told you, none of that. Let’s forget it.”’

  Next, they attacked a 23-year-old in South Hampstead, but she somehow used her wits to escape. She recalled: ‘My mind was frantically searching for something which would put him off, so I told him I had AIDS.’

  On 2 February 1985, they tried to rape another 23-year-old in South Hampstead, but she scared them away. The French au pair recalled: ‘I had screamed so hard I couldn’t speak any more.’

  The following night, they stalked a solicitor’s clerk as she walked on Hampstead Heath. She was blindfolded and raped by both men on a park bench. She later said: ‘I kept begging them to stop – I couldn’t stop crying and this seemed to annoy them.’ She said the taller man told her not to look at him, ‘or I will tear your eyes out.’

  Duffy and Mulcahy had become an efficient partnership, working in unison like a pair of wild animals, stalking their prey. One victim described them as ‘Two bodies with one brain – they didn’t tell each other anything.’ She added: ‘They seemed to be able to communicate without words, just by nodding their heads.’

  On Sunday, 29 December 1985, the prolific rapists graduated to murder. Alison Day, 19, was the only passenger to alight from her train at Hackney Wick, East London. She was going to meet her fiancé nearby, but Duffy and Mulcahy pounced from the darkness and dragged her at knifepoint to the banks of the River Lea. Duffy raped her first, then his friend. After her ordeal, Alison got to her feet and staggered around in the darkness, falling into the ice-cold river. Duffy hauled her out and laid her on the floor. Then she got back to her feet and tried to run away, but Duffy stopped her. Mulcahy, angered at the victim for trying to escape, pulled off her trousers and raped her again. At some point, Alison saw the men’s faces and Mulcahy decided it was too risky to let her live. Duffy later said in court that Alison pleaded for her life: ‘Please, it’s only the moustache I have seen. I will not tell anyone, don’t hurt me.’ Her pleas ignored, Mulcahy tore a strip from her blouse and twisted it round her neck. He then ordered his friend to tighten it further and hold it until she died. Two weeks later, her body was found in the river, weighed down with blocks of granite. The friends were now killers together, their bond stronger than ever. Furthermore, after the buzz of killing, rape alone was no longer enough.

  Maartje Tamboezer, 15, was on her way to buy sweets when she was snatched from her bike on a path through woods parallel to the railway line in Horsley, Surrey, on 17 April 1986. Duffy won the coin toss and was the first to rape the Dutch girl in a nearby copse. Her hands were tied behind her back; she was beaten about the head with a stone and finally strangled with her own belt. Her neck was broken after death, possibly by a karate blow. Maartje’s body, partially burned to destroy evidence of rape, was found the following morning.

  Newly-wed Anne Lock, 29, became Duffy and Mulcahy’s 15th known victim on 18 May 1986. Anne, a secretary with London Weekend Television, had parked her bike in the railway station shed at Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire. She was frogmarched with a knife held at her side to a field and raped. Duffy went first and when he had finished, Mulcahy took his turn while his accomplice went and sat in the car. When Mulcahy arrived at the car, he laughed as he told his friend that the latest victim would not be identifying them. Two months later, her body was found in thick undergrowth on a railway embankment, a few hundred yards from her home.

  Early into Duffy and Mulcahy’s violent crime spree, police set up Operation Hart, the largest investigation in the UK since the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. The pair, like hundreds of suspects, were brought in for questioning several times but because the investigation did not have the facility to collate information from different police teams, they were always released.

  In August 1986, Duffy was arrested for beating up his wife. He was interviewed and his name added to the Hart computer system, along with his fingerprints and details of his rare blood group. As detectives caught up with the huge volume of evidence gathered over three years of investigation, they found that blood matching Duffy’s group was found at several crime scenes. He was arrested and two rape victims identified him. When officers searched his home they found his rape kit of tape, knives and a matchbox containing tissue paper and eight matches.

  Mulcahy was also brought in, but because of a quirk in his biological make-up, it was impossible to link him forensically with any of the crimes. Criminologist Professor David Canter, who helped with the investigation, said: ‘It was before DNA and Mulcahy was what is called a non-secretor. Even if he left tell-tale bodily fluids these couldn’t be distinguished in the blood typing process, then used. Effectively Mulcahy was invisible.’

  Furthermore, seven victims were unable to pick him out at identity parades and when they searched his home, police found nothing that linked him to the crimes. Although the obvious suspect as Duffy’s accomplice, there was insufficient evidence to charge him. The only person who could bring Mulcahy down was Duffy, his best friend, but the playground pact made as schoolboys that they would never ‘grass each other up’ was strong. As one investigating officer said: ‘Duffy was terrified of Mulcahy. They had this pact and he was scared. He didn’t trust anyone. He stayed quiet.’

  At his trial in February 1988, Duffy denied any involvement in the rapes or murders, claiming amnesia in his defence. But the weight of evidence against him meant that he was convicted of five rapes and two murders. On the judge’s direction he was acquitted of Anne Lock’s murder due to insufficient evidence. Handing Duffy seven life sentences with a recommendation that he serve at least 30 years, Mr Justice Farquharson told him: ‘You are obviously little more than a predatory animal. The horrific nature of your crimes means 30 years is not necessarily the total you will serve. It may well be more.’ Home Secretary Douglas Hurd increased the sentence to a whole life term. When Duffy was convicted, Mulcahy told the Daily Mail: ‘I don’t believe John was capable of doing all these things. He has always been a mummy’s boy.’ Holding his wife’s hand, Mulcahy said that he planned to sue police for wrongful arrest, adding,‘and also for destroying my reputation.’

  In November 1997, after more than 10 years in custody, Duffy told prison psychologists of intense nightmares he was having, in which he chased a girl down a canal towpath. Dr Jenny Cutler, a therapist at top-security Whitemoor Prison, Cambridgeshire, was called in and over the months that followed, she coaxed details of his crimes from him. After many hours of therapy, he gave her the name of his accomplice, David Mulcahy. Duffy told her he felt ‘self-hate inside’ and that he ‘wanted to get things off my chest.’ He said: ‘I’ve been in custody for many years and have had a hard time coming to terms with what I’m in for – rapes and murders. I feel a lot of guilt for what I’ve done and want to make a clean slate.’

  Detective Superintendent Andy Murphy, who re-opened the case, remarked: ‘Duffy had been in jail for 11 years and had had plenty of time to think things over. He’d decided it was time to do the right thing and put the record straight. We spent weeks debriefing him – he’d never spoken about his crimes before.

  ‘We took him back to all the murder scenes. They were very moving moments. Some of the places had changed since the murders, but he described them exactly how they’d been. When we checked against original maps and plans, we could see every word was true.’ Duffy also confesse
d to the murder of Anne Lock, for which he had been cleared. In all he confessed to 25 sex attacks, telling officers: ‘We considered it a bit of a joke, a game.’

  Because of advances in forensic science, police were able to match Mulcahy’s DNA to samples found on underwear belonging to one of the Danish au pairs who was raped on Hampstead Heath in 1984. Experts also identified a fingerprint on tape used to gag and blindfold another victim as Mulcahy’s.

  The smirking killer who thought he could not be caught had been proven wrong.

  After painstaking work to build up a case against Mulcahy, police were finally able to arrest him. In the early hours of Saturday, 6 February 1999 the sex killer was dragged from his bed by police as his sons slept upstairs.

  For 14 days, in January 2001, Duffy gave evidence against his friend at the Old Bailey, giving grim details of the crimes that sent shivers down the spines of all who heard them. On 2 February Mulcahy, 41, received life for three murders and a total of 258 years for seven rapes and five charges of plotting to rape.

  The Recorder of London, Judge Michael Hyam, told him that the killings were ‘acts of desolating wickedness in which you descended to the depth of depravity in carrying them out.’

  Detective Superintendent Les Bolland, who visited Duffy in jail, said: ‘Mulcahy is now in prison simply because Duffy became very annoyed that he was going to die inside while Mulcahy remained a free man.’

  ‘MY CHINA DOLL’

  ‘I still can’t talk about what I saw in that room – it was worse than any Stephen King film or book.’

  Boyfriend of victim

  Name: Mark Hobson

  Crime: Quadruple murder

  Date of Conviction: 27 May 2005

  Age at Conviction: 36

  Early on Sunday, 18 July 2004, George Sanderson drove to his daughter Claire’s home to check that she and her twin sister Diane were all right after they’d failed to get in touch, as planned, the night before. Together with Diane’s boyfriend, Ian Harrison, Mr Sanderson arrived at the flat in Camblesforth, near Selby, North Yorkshire, at 8am to find the front door unlocked and an overpowering smell emanating from the property. When they entered the flat they found the 27-year-old twins’ naked corpses on the bedroom floor. Claire had been dead for a week, her decomposing body wrapped in bin-liners. Her head had been hit 17 times with a hammer and a plastic carrier bag was placed over it. Forensic examination of the flat, which had been partly washed and cleaned with bleach, would later show that Claire had been beaten in the living room before being dragged, bleeding, into the bedroom.

  Diane was lying nearby. Her naked body was on top of a large plastic bag and she had been subjected to a violent sexual attack. Tests later revealed that she had been subjected to a sustained assault and had received several blows to the head. Like her sister, she had been beaten with a hammer and a plastic bag covered her head. She had been killed the previous night.

  Describing the shocking discovery Diane’s boyfriend Ian said: ‘I still can’t talk about what I saw in that room. It was worse than any Stephen King film or book; it was absolute horror. I was physically sick and was shaking like a leaf. The scene was so appalling that the policeman who first attended had to go off work sick because of the stress of seeing what he saw.’ Describing the moment when he spotted the bags, the twins’ dad George said: ‘I knew Claire was inside. I looked at Diane and wanted to cuddle her.’

  There was no sign of the man responsible for the scene of horror – Claire’s boyfriend Mark Hobson, an alcoholic drug addict, who beat her up so often he nicknamed her ‘Eight Ball’ because she was always black and blue. Hobson had been with Claire for 18 months, but weeks earlier he had told a work colleague that he’d picked the wrong sister, that he fancied Diane and was intent on having her. Hobson – who often drank 20 pints of lager a day while smoking strong cannabis – started plotting to kill Claire a week before her murder on 11 July. Later, he told police that he talked to her body as it lay rotting, calling her ‘My china doll’. By the time Claire’s father and boyfriend found her body, it was so decomposed that it was impossible to tell whether the hammer attack had killed her, or if she had been asphyxiated from the bag over her head.

  After killing Claire, ex-binman Hobson, 35, washed her blood from the walls and set about luring Diane to the flat. A chilling note headed ‘2 do list’ found at the flat said: ‘Text Di, use Claire’s phone. Tell Di to come down. Disable all. Use and abuse at will.’ He intended to tempt Diane to the flat and kill her, using Claire as bait. A misspelt shopping list found alongside his to-do list revealed his preparations: ‘Big bin liners, tape, tie wraps, fly spray, Nutrodol.’

  A week after killing Claire, Hobson rang Diane at her parents’ house in nearby Snaith village and asked her to come round to visit Claire, who he said was ill. Minutes later, Diane left the house, telling her parents that she was going to call in to see her sister before meeting Ian in the Cricketers Arms pub in Selby. She left at 7.15pm on 17 July and was not seen alive again.

  Within moments of her arrival at the flat, Hobson brutally attacked her. For 10 minutes, neighbours heard screams but they thought little of it because violence was so commonplace there. Hobson rained blows on Diane and then trussed her up, tying her feet to her hands behind her back. As she lay dying, he methodically cut off her clothes and carried out a sadistic sexual attack. She had ligature marks on her neck and died of strangulation.

  When Diane failed to arrive at the pub, her boyfriend became concerned. At 9pm he rang her and Hobson answered the phone, explaining that Diane was not available to talk to him. ‘With a cool, collected voice he told me he needed to see me urgently as Diane’s dad had died of a heart attack,’ said Ian. Hobson and Ian met in the Cricketers Arms, where Hobson claimed that the twins had gone to the family home for the night after the news of their dad’s ‘death’.

  Hobson handed Ian a ring that he had ripped from Diane’s finger and told him that she had sent it. ‘He then invited me back to the flat after closing time at the pub,’ Ian recalled. When Ian commented on the stench inside the flat, Hobson said they had problems with the drains and that the toilet was blocked. ‘He actually followed me upstairs to the toilet. He stood right behind me, explaining why it stank – little did I know that in the next room were the bodies of Claire and Diane. We’d already had quite a few drinks and we had a few more at his place. He kept pestering me to stay the night and was desperate for me to crash on the settee; he had even rolled a sleeping bag out for me. At one point I put my feet on the settee and then as I got up, I noticed there was blood all over the back of my jeans. He said, “Sorry about that mate, Claire’s been having women’s problems.”’ A hammer and a knife were found under the settee the following day. Police later told Ian that had he stayed the night, he would not have left the place alive.

  Ian left the flat at around 1am. Six hours later, he woke and immediately went to see his supposedly grieving girlfriend. He said: ‘I rushed round to see Diane, but I was stunned when her dad George answered the door. I said, “I thought you were dead.”’ With Hobson’s lies exposed, the frantic pair drove to the flat, where their worst fears were realised.

  When Ian went home the previous evening, Hobson had made his way to the nearby house of his mother, Sandra, where he came up with more elaborate lies. He told her that Diane and Claire had been run over and were in York District Hospital, 20 miles away.

  Sandra agreed to drive him there. When they arrived, Hobson went in the hospital – he was caught on security camera at 2am – before returning to tell his mother that he was going to stay with the girls. The next day, he made his way to Strensall, near York, where he walked into the home of former World War Two Spitfire pilot James Britton, 80, and his wife Joan, 82. At 8.15am that day, a neighbour of the frail couple left them safe and well. Three hours later, the neighbour’s wife went to check on the Brittons and found them dead.

  Mr Britton had been attacked first. He had been beaten about the head s
everal times with his walking stick and then stabbed in the chest with a 12-inch kitchen knife. Hobson casually wiped the blade clean and then plunged it into Mrs Britton’s back as she hobbled into the room on her walking frame. She died from a stab wound, which entered her back and went through several organs, including her stomach and liver. The attack was so ferocious that the handle of the knife snapped off, leaving the blade still in her body. She too had been beaten about the head with a walking stick. According to their GP, both Mr and Mrs Britton would have fallen over ‘if they were hit with a feather duster.’ Hobson took another knife from the couple’s kitchen and went on the run.

  By 11.45 that morning, local police knew they had two double murders on their patch, but it was some time later before they were able to make a link after fingerprints matching Hobson’s were found on shoeboxes in the Brittons’ bedroom and on a door. The quadruple murders led to one of the biggest police manhunts in British history.

  The killer was on the run for eight days before he was arrested after being recognised at a garage shop on the A19 at Shipton-by-Beningbrough, 10 miles from Strensall, where he bought water, cigarette papers and matches. The owner of the garage recognised him from his picture in newspapers and on TV, and within eight minutes the area was surrounded by armed police with tracker dogs. Hobson, with the scent of a man who had not washed for more than a week, was found cowering between a septic tank and a hedge in a nearby field. On his arrest, he told police: ‘I’m a f**king murderer, aren’t I? Then I’ll take my punishment.’

  In a police interview, he told detectives that he had taken cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and alcohol, and could not remember anything about his girlfriend’s death. He claimed to have ‘lost a day and a half’ and come round with a bloodstained hammer in his hand. By that stage, more than 500 police officers from 12 forces had taken part in the hunt at a cost of £690,000.