Secrets of a Serial Killer: An absolutely gripping serial killer thriller that will keep you up all night!

by Rosie Walker

  ‘Don’t worry though; I’m sure they’ll still need a security team for a long time yet,’ she says. Helen supposes his job might be threatened once the redevelopment begins.

  They walk across the grounds towards the driveway, where grass pokes up through cracks in the tarmac. He glances at her occasionally, and then over his shoulder back to the hospital.

  ‘Well, at least they’re not knocking it down,’ he says. ‘It’s an important building.’

  ‘Yeah, that really would be a tragedy. So many people love this place; it’s a bit of the town’s history. The whole county’s history, really.’ She looks back. Bushes grow along the front of the hospital at either side of the entrance. The grounds were once a huge open space where patients got fresh air and exercise, but after years of neglect the whole area is tangled with brush and thistles. ‘It’s great to be involved in its future and imagine what could be done with it.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ the man asks. ‘To me it’s the building’s past which is more interesting.’

  ‘The architecture, you mean?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No. The old mental hospital. There’s still some old wheelchairs and beds kicking around the corridors, things they just left behind when they locked it up. There’s an old ECT machine down in the basement.’

  Helen’s mouth drops open. ‘I thought they stopped doing that.’ In Helen’s mind, electro-convulsive therapy belongs with trepanning and lobotomies in the category of ‘barbaric treatments from centuries ago’. Perhaps ECT isn’t so far in the distant past after all.

  He shrugs. ‘The machine looks pretty old, probably hasn’t been used since the sixties. Interesting to see, while you’re on patrols.’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘Just a box with buttons and dials, and two metal things.’ He points at his temples with a grin, demonstrating where the electrodes would go. ‘It’s part of history but that stuff will all get chucked away soon, I guess. Modernisation and sanitisation.’

  She nods and smiles over at him. ‘It’ll never be lost though. There’s some interesting videos on YouTube, nurses talking about working at the hospital before it closed. A typical day in the life kind of thing.’ She remembers the petty arguments at her office in recent weeks about flat sizes and light. ‘You’re right that they’ll strip a lot of the old features out. Still, it’ll make beautiful flats. Even better would be a school, or a fantastic hotel, like what Urban Splash did with the Midland in Morecambe.’

  He continues as if she hasn’t spoken. ‘There were some interesting patients locked up in here too. Clever people who just didn’t fit society’s mould.’

  They reach the narrow drive, which slopes downhill through the trees and out of sight. She expects him to leave her and return to his office, but he continues to walk beside her.

  Alexander looks at his watch. ‘We don’t get many people up here at this time of the morning. This shift is usually very quiet.’ He looks right into her eyes, and Helen wants to hold his gaze but has to look away. He pushes his hands into the pockets of his black fleece. ‘Don’t go inside the building again without an appointment. It’s not safe.’

  Helen nods and glances back up the drive at the building. Through the trees she can just see the slate roof, tinted gold with the autumn sun. They have reached the end of the driveway and the main road into the town.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ he says.

  A red car slows and turns into the drive, the driver’s face obscured by the peak of a black baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. The car rolls past and up the driveway towards the hospital; the driver raises a hand in greeting. Helen nods, and the guard waves back.

  ‘That’s Paul, come to start the day shift,’ Alexander explains. The red car has pulled up outside the old gatehouse. The driver gets out, gathering a bag from the passenger seat. ‘He’s worked here since he left school. Knows the whole place inside out.’

  Helen and Alexander watch as Paul enters the office, leaving the door open. He crouches at a mini fridge, unloading his lunch and getting ready for the start of his shift.

  ‘How many in your team?’ she asks, wondering how many guys will lose their jobs when the building sells.

  ‘There’s another full-timer called Bruce. Bit of a creep.’ His grin and quick shrug indicate this might be an in-joke at Bruce’s expense. ‘Then some contractors come in for holidays and sick cover. It’s pretty solitary work, a bit like being a lorry driver I suspect.’

  ‘It was nice to meet you, Alexander.’ Helen smiles and walks away with Alfie towards the road. ‘Enjoy the rest of your day.’ She turns back before she rounds the bend in the lane, taking a last glance at the building.

  Alexander stands at the end of the drive watching Helen leave, his hand raised in a motionless wave. At this distance, his face seems finely sculpted, almost beautiful.

  Zoe

  Dane grumbles and turns over in bed, pulling Zoe into his arms. He kisses the back of her head, mumbling ‘Morning Zo’ into her hair.

  She smiles. ‘I’ve been awake for ages.’

  ‘Mhmmm,’ Dane replies, clearly still half asleep.

  Zoe reaches for her phone, pulling out the charging cable. Abbie’s added loads of Instagram posts overnight, mainly filtered selfies and elaborate poses taken in her bathroom mirror. She looks amazing in all of them, of course, and Zoe raises an eyebrow at Abbie’s attention-seeking hashtags: #doilookfat and #balletdancer. The comments are unbearable.

  A Facebook message pops up from Max, Abbie’s boyfriend. As Zoe clicks the notification, Dane rests his chin on her shoulder, peering at her phone. He smells of shampoo, and a faint tang of the outdoors. ‘What’s Max saying?’

  Zoe skims the message. ‘Nothing really.’ She locks her phone and puts it on the bedside table, next to her old Simpsons alarm clock.

  She feels Dane’s muscles tense.

  ‘Aw, you jealous?’ She giggles. They’ve only been together four months, so another boy messaging her overnight must make him nervous. She turns over to look at his face. Light filters through her thin curtains, illuminating two tiny frown lines etched on his otherwise smooth forehead. A faint dimple on his left cheek tells her he’s not too worried about Max’s text. ‘It’s only Max. You’ll meet him tonight, in the pub with Abbie. He’s really sweet, crazy in love with Abbie, and obsessed with serial killers. And comics. And trespassing in derelict buildings.’ She shakes her head. ‘Not my thing at all.’

  His dimple deepens as a grin spreads across his face. ‘Sounds like we’ll have a lot to talk about.’

  She nods, and points at her phone. ‘He sent me another message about weird murder stuff. Freaks me out a bit, but it’s classic 2am Max.’

  Dane rubs his face with both hands, then digs his fingers into the corners of his eyes. He shrugs. ‘You could ask him to stop.’

  ‘I’ll definitely tell him tonight. He’s an insomniac, stays up all night creeping around weird sites. Dark web stuff sometimes, true crime and murder blogs, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Sounds pretty normal to me.’ Dane sits up, leaning his bare shoulders against the headboard. He lifts his knees and pulls the quilt up to his chest. ‘The dark web’s harmless really. Not much going on.’

  Zoe gapes at him. ‘You’ve been on the dark web?’ Even though she’s creeped out by Max’s obsession with true crime, she feels a thrill of excitement thinking about this network of people whose interests are so illegal that they have to make their own illicit underworld to pursue them. ‘What’s it like?’

  He shrugs again. ‘Dunno really. There’s a lot of stuff that’s pretty similar to the normal web. And a lot of people who like to think they’re doing something illegal, but they aren’t really. To be honest, I’ve seen worse things on the normal internet.’

  ‘Places to buy drugs and stuff?’

  ‘All sorts. Lots of data, like people selling stolen logins and credit card details. That’s what we were there for, me and my friend Niall. You can buy
a pre-paid Netflix account for a tenner.’

  Zoe’s transfixed. She doesn’t want to visit the dark web, ever, but she also somehow wants to know everything about it. ‘What about the murder stuff that Max finds?’

  Dane’s mischievous grin disappears. ‘We didn’t see any of that sick stuff. We weren’t looking for it. But, I mean, it’s probably there. Everyone’s into that kind of thing these days. Murder podcasts and DIY detective stuff.’

  ‘I just think it’s creepy. Melanie – Dad’s wife – she’s really into it all too. Keeps trying to get me to listen to some podcast about a teenage girl that got murdered. I just don’t want to know.’

  ‘Fair enough. I think it’s all quite interesting, serial killers, but only when they’ve been caught. What’s interesting about a mystery where you never find out the answer?’

  ‘Max sent an article he’s written for a creepy website, Urban Dark Reporter. Not on the dark web though.’

  Dane smiles. ‘Oh, I’ve heard of that site. It’s pretty good.’

  Zoe’s surprised. Dane seems a lot cooler than Max, so she thought he’d just laugh. ‘What is it?’ she asks, picking up her phone again and clicking the link.

  ‘It’s like cool local weird news; they write articles about mysteries, hoaxes, conspiracies and some urbex stuff too. I’ve heard that most of the contributors are anonymous – they don’t even know who each other are. Even though they’re all from around Lancashire.’

  ‘That does sound cool.’

  ‘Yeah, but the comments section is always full of really dark stuff. Those kind of subjects really bring out the weirdos.’

  Zoe shudders and hands him her phone. ‘I think I’ll give that one a miss, then.’

  He glances at the headline and pulls her to his side. ‘Read with me, this one’s not too bad.’

  Lancaster’s Predator Professor: Investigating Leonard McVitie

  By Urban Dark Reporter

  New details reveal insight into the mind of our city’s twisted genius, who ended his days in Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum.

  Leonard McVitie was born in 1923 and lived a life of identity theft and serial murder until his incarceration in Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum at age thirty-six.

  Until his capture in 1959, McVitie exploited his unique ability to impersonate and assimilate his identity into that of others, who often were accused and convicted of the crimes McVitie himself had committed. It is estimated that he was directly responsible for the incorrect incarceration of at least seven men who were found guilty of McVitie’s crimes, while the criminal walked free to select up to 48 suspected victims.

  McVitie is now famous for his meticulous approach and the detailed planning of his crimes. He carefully selected a ‘false suspect’, often a similar height and build to McVitie himself. He would then observe them for months, entering their homes and stealing small personal items he could plant at a crime scene or in a victim’s home to connect the ‘false suspect’ to a killing. He would even disguise himself as the false suspect and introduce himself to people, blending his life into theirs until the two people were virtually indistinguishable. It seems he particularly enjoyed selecting people who worked ‘behind-the-scenes’: porters, caretakers, and cleaners – people with low levels of job responsibility who also hold the master keys.

  Some of McVitie’s false suspects include:

  Colin Redpath, aged twenty-five in 1948 at the time of his guilty verdict: Thought to be one of McVitie’s first framings, Redpath was a porter at Cambridge University where McVitie studied. After observing Redpath’s movements for over a term, McVitie began introducing himself to students as Redpath and even managed to take on some of Redpath’s portering tasks without detection. By the time the body of Maureen Blast (eighteen) was found in a University porter’s lodge, McVitie was long gone to another life, and Redpath was hanged.

  Phillip McNeil, aged twenty-five in 1952 at the time of guilty verdict: McNeil was a cleaner at Royal High School, Edinburgh, arrested for the murder of four teenage girls (ages fifteen to seventeen) whose bodies were found on Calton Hill on the morning of 1st May 1951.

  After his eventual arrest and imprisonment in the lunatic asylum (later renamed Lancaster Lune Hospital, after the River Lune which flows through the centre of the city), McVitie turned his attentions to study and correspondence. He gained a reputation for his sharp intellect, often contributing to local presses in a similar manner to W.C. Minor’s contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary. He died in the asylum in 1985.

  Manchester’s John Rylands Library holds the archives of his correspondence, donated after the Hospital closed in 2010. The archives have now been fully catalogued and are available for registered readers to view by appointment.

  Comments:

  rogersmith52: Check your facts. I think you’ll find that McVitie was born in 1924, not 1923 as you wrote. I do hope this site gets more careful with accuracy if you’re going to write about historical killers. Please email me if you have any questions; I have a very extensive knowledge of such people.

  Phoneguy: I’m intrigued by this approach, with an added twist: why not frame the victim themselves? Make it look like a suicide, or slowly erase all evidence that they ever existed – by the time you’re done, there’s no victim left for the police to find. No victim, no crime. Job done.

  When they’ve finished reading, Zoe stands up and picks up some crumpled clothes from the heap on her bedroom floor. She pulls an old t-shirt over her head and smiles at Dane, who’s grinning at her from the bed. ‘Can’t believe that weirdo lived so close to here after he was caught. If he was still alive and stuck in there—’ She points in the direction of the old asylum, just half a mile down the road. ‘—I’d be terrified he would escape and break into my house or something.’

  Dane nods and runs a hand through his sleep-tousled hair. ‘What an interesting guy though. I’ve never heard of a serial killer stealing people’s identities before, and getting away with it for so long.’

  She loves seeing him from a distance like this, five or six feet away. They’re usually sat next to each other or lying down together, and that close up you can only see individual features: a nose, the eyes, teeth. But from this distance she can see the whole of him, head to toe in detail, and he’s so striking. He looks a bit like Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You: he’s got the same wild curly hair and cheeky smile.

  ‘You said Max is into urban exploring stuff. You ever been tempted? My Dad’s got an old Canon we could take and get some sick photographs inside some of the old buildings around here.’ He pulls back the quilt to reveal his legs, and swings his feet to the floor.

  ‘Wait a second,’ she says. He looks up at her, puzzled. ‘I just want to look at you for a minute.’

  He grins. ‘Perve.’

  She stares at his legs with their dusting of dark hair, tanned up to the thigh where he wore shorts to work all summer. ‘Have you ever considered getting a statue commissioned?’

  Dane looks confused.

  She laughs. ‘You know, a naked one like Michelangelo’s David.’ She keeps giggling and crosses the room to wrap her arms around him. She’s standing next to him as he sits on the bed; she pulls his head to her chest and kisses the top of his curly hair. ‘You’re smoking hot, is all I’m saying.’

  He raises his face to hers and kisses her on the lips. ‘Come back to bed then?’

  She looks in his eyes, and for a moment she’s tempted. She could so easily slip back beneath the covers and into Dane’s arms. It’d be so nice to feel the remains of his touch against her skin during her morning college classes.

  This could be the day they go all the way. She’s been waiting for the right time, and everything’s going so great between them. He almost said ‘I love you’ last night. He stopped himself at the last minute and changed it to ‘I like you so much.’ She smiles thinking about it, how nice it feels to have that expectation, and know it’s going to happen soon. She’s about to rem
ove her t-shirt, but then she hears the front door open and close.

  ‘No luck, Mr D. Mum’s back from her walk.’

  Dane doesn’t argue. He never does; he lets her set the pace and just goes with the flow. Not like guys her own age, who’re always push push push.

  He stands up and pulls on his trousers. He searches around the room for his shirt, finally finding it under the bed. He pauses with it halfway over his head, arms lifted up. ‘Zoe?’

  ‘Mmm?’ she looks up from her phone where she’s typing a reply to Max. ‘Your Mum doesn’t know I stayed over, does she?’

  Zoe gives him her best wide-eyed, innocent face. ‘Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ she lies, and picks up her hairbrush. Her phone buzzes.

  Dane glances at the screen. ‘Max again.’

  She groans and sets her hairbrush down. ‘What does this one say?’

  Dane opens her phone and reads Max’s message aloud: ‘Please, Zo: I think I’ve found something big. Talk tonight?’

  Helen

  ‘Zoe? You home?’ A dull thud indicates that her daughter is in her room.

  Helen steps into the hall, dropping her keys into the basket on the table. She toes off her muddy shoes by the door.

  Alfie runs past her, straight into the kitchen to lap at his water bowl. She pauses, listening to the house. There’s no sound except for Alfie’s collar clinking against the bowl.

  Five minutes later, Zoe pads into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes, hair sticking out in all directions. Zoe’s a beautiful girl, brown hair down to her waist and blue eyes, with a mouth that turns up at the corners. A mole on her left cheek reminds Helen of the beauty spots that Hollywood silent film starlets would draw onto their faces to look more sophisticated.

  ‘What are you up to? Don’t you have class?’

  ‘Hey Mum,’ she mumbles, sitting down at the pine table. ‘Got a free period first thing. Not been up long. I see Alfie enjoyed his walk.’ She looks down at the dog’s muddy paws.