Afterword
This is my third book about murder and the men and woman who commit this most foul of all crimes, and I am as certain as I can be that it will be my last. There is only so much brutality and ugliness that any imagination can take, and I have had more than my fair share. To relive the tragedies contained in these pages in detail was sometimes almost too much to bear. Murder affects not only the victim but also a far wider circle, including, of course, their families and friends. It stains the world forever, and no amount of scrubbing will ever rub out its memory.
The only reason that I embarked on the stories of the group of individuals who earned the greatest penalty the law in England and Wales can provide – a whole life period of imprisonment – was that the subject seemed to me to have been all but ignored in the discussion of the crimes themselves. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that the steady increase in the number of these sentences has happened almost without anyone noticing, or considering its implications for a civilized society.
My old friend legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg was kind enough to agree with my argument and to point me in the right direction, and I must also pay tribute to a number of members of the British judiciary who offered me their opinions freely, on the simple grounds that I never identify them. I thank them all, just as I must thank Richard Whittam QC, the First Senior Treasury Counsel, who was consistently helpful in ensuring that I was working from the right documents in cases that came before the Court of Appeal.
My editor, Dan Bunyard, was as enthusiastic about raising the issue as I was, and has given me extraordinary support throughout the process, for which I am profoundly grateful. His assistant Fiona Crosby has been equally generous, not least in assembling the plates of pictures, as have their colleagues Martin Higgins in the sales department and Ellie Hughes in publicity. The manuscript was meticulously copy-edited by Fiona Brown.
I also owe special thanks to my excellent young researcher Sahyma Shaid, who trawled through mountains of material to unearth the precise details of some of the darkest crimes ever committed in this country, and did so with consummate skill, no matter how testing the task may have been. I am every bit as grateful to my own assistant and great supporter, Diana Fletcher, who bore, with great strength and dignity, the burden of ensuring that I did not submerge completely beneath the tidal wave of tragedy that sometimes threatened to engulf me.
None of these admirable people are responsible for my conclusions, however. Those are mine alone.
1. Jeremy Bamber: Convicted of murdering his adoptive parents, adoptive sister and her 6-year-old twins in 1986. He is the only lifer to still maintain that he is innocent of his crimes.
2. Letter from Jeremy Bamber: A never-before-seen letter sent to me by Bamber just last year from his cell.
3. Joanne Dennehy: Serial killer found guilty of stabbing three men to death in the ‘Peterborough Ditch Murders’. Dennehy was the first woman sentenced to life in prison by a judge.
4. Ian McLoughlin: Committed murder while on day release from prison, where he was already 21 years into a life sentence for a previous murder.
5. Lee Newell: Was serving life for a killing when he and another prisoner, Gary Smith, strangled a fellow inmate to death.
6. Sidney Cooke: The convicted paedophile nicknamed ‘Hissing Sid’.
7. Danilo Restivo: The hair fetishist who killed Heather Barnett in 2002 and comforted her children once they found her body.
8. Charles ‘Salvador’ Bronson: A high-security lifer known as Britain’s ‘most violent criminal’.
9. Kenneth Regan: Along with an accomplice, murdered three generations of the same family in a bid to steal their business.
10. Ian Huntley: A school caretaker sentenced to life for the ‘Soham murders’ of pupils Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
11. Mark Bridger: Abducted and murdered 5-year-old April Jones in 2012.
12. Roy Whiting: Serving life for the murder of 8-year-old Sarah Payne in 2000.
13. Peter Tobin: A serial killer and sex offender serving life for the murder of three women.
14. Harry Roberts: The notorious police killer who served 48 years in jail before his release, age 78, in 2014.
15. Dale Cregan: Committed four murders, including of two police officers, as well as three counts of attempted murder.
16. David Bieber: An American fugitive who murdered PC Ian Broadhurst and attempted to murder two other policemen before his capture.
17. Fred & Rose West: The infamous couple who together murdered at least 12 people.
18. Arthur Hutchinson: Crashed a wedding reception before murdering the bride’s mother, father, brother, as well as raping her sister.
19. Anthony Rice: A sex offender who committed murder after being released from a life sentence.
20 & 21. David Mulcahy and John Duffy: The ‘Railway Killers’ who attacked numerous women at train stations, murdering three.
22. Steven Wright: The ‘Ipswich Ripper’ who murdered five sex workers.
23. Rahan Arshad: Murdered his wife and their three children after discovering she was having an affair.
24. Mark Martin: Known as the ‘Sneinton Stragler’, he was sentenced to life for the murder of three homeless women in Nottingham.
Picture Credits
1. (Bamber): Alamy EMNNWM © Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix / Alamy Stock Photo
2. (Bamber letter): Jeremy Bamber
3. (Dennehy): Alamy DTA0Y5. Geoffrey Robinson / Alamy
4. (McLoughlin): Rex 2659241a. REX Shutterstock
5. (Newell): Rex 3032766a. REX Shutterstock
6. (Cooke): Rex 288507b. REX Shutterstock
7. (Restivo): Rex 1153704a. IPA/REX Shutterstock
8. (Bronson): Rex 553601a. Cherri Gilham/REX Shutterstock
9. (Regan): Rex 532433a. Rex Shutterstock
10. (Huntley): Getty 51792974. AFP/Getty Images
11. (Bridger): Rex 2312166a. Rex Shutterstock
12. (Whiting): PA 1503939. PA / PA Archive/Press Association Images
13. (Tobin): Rex 1204538a. Rex Shutterstock
14. (Roberts): Rex 4218038a. Rex Shutterstock
15. (Cregan): Rex 1860615b. Gavin Rodgers/REX Shutterstock
16. (Bieber): Getty 51814689. West Yorkshire Police / Getty Images
17. (Wests): Rex 227355c. Rex Shutterstock.
18. (Hutchinson): PA 14822941. PA / PA Archive/Press Association Images
19. (Rice): Rex 586993a.
20. (Mulcahy): Rex 331955p. Rex Shutterstock
21. (Duffy): Rex 331955s. Rex Shutterstock
22. (Wright): Rex 630844a. Rex Shutterstock
23. (Arshad): Rex 647401f. Rex Shutterstock
24. (Martin): Rex 576020d. Rex Shutterstock
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2016
Copyright © Geoffrey Wansell, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover ph
otograph © Spencer Lowell / Trunk Archive
ISBN: 978-1-405-91955-5
Lifers Page 41