Doctors Who Kill

by Davis, Carol Anne; Davis, Carol Anne

  The final murder victim

  Reggie met his final victim, 26-year-old Hectorina MacLennan, in a cafe and found out that she was looking for a flat, but he was disappointed when she showed up with her boyfriend. He persuaded her to come back to the house alone and attempted to gas her but she rushed into the hall. Grabbing her, he choked her unconscious, murdered her and violated her corpse. Afterwards, he stowed her away in the alcove with the other bodies, using blankets and gags to soak up the liquids the corpses released.

  By mid-March, as the temperature rose, the smell in the house became unpleasant and Reggie had substantial rent arrears. He knew that he had to get out of there. With his usual cunning, he managed to sub-let the flat, even though he had no right to do this. The new tenants gave him three months’ rent in advance and Reggie disappeared into the night.

  His landlord was annoyed to find out what he had done, moved the new tenants out and began to clean up the dilapidated building. Looking into the alcove, he saw a naked corpse and called the police. They investigated and found three bodies in the recess, Ethel Christie under the floorboards and two more female bodies in the garden, which had already been partially dug up by Reggie’s dog.

  When the newspapers broke the story, Reggie was staying in a men’s hostel. He heard the news on the radio and fled, walking aimlessly around London, although he propositioned one pregnant young lady and told her he was a doctor. He spent his days in cafes and his nights sleeping rough. After a few days, a policeman recognised him, cold and hungry, leaning over the embankment near Putney Bridge. The officer spoke to him gently, and the killer seemed relieved that it was all over and agreed to accompany him to the nearest police station to make a statement. He later said that he was very well treated by the police.

  Restored to health

  Ironically, the serial killer blossomed in prison. He gained weight, slept well and became Brixton’s chess champion. The doctors who had to interview him, however, found him to be a hypocrite with an air of bogus gentility. He said that he found masturbation disgusting and that he also hated pubs – yet he had gone to bars to pick up prostitutes.

  He admitted to murdering seven women but said that the prostitutes had made passes at him and wouldn’t take no for an answer, causing him to go berserk. In contrast, the respectable women – namely Mrs Evans, Mrs Eady and Mrs Christie – had died whilst he was trying to alleviate their suffering. (He said that his wife had begun to have convulsions after taking an overdose of barbiturates and that he’d strangled her to put her out of her misery.)

  He refused to admit to killing baby Geraldine as this conflicted with his view of himself as a respectable man. Cleaning up the streets was one thing but murdering a fourteen-month-old child was something else. The doctors found that his facility for self-deception was unparalleled and that he was a pathological liar.

  Reggie’s trial opened at the Old Bailey on 22nd June 1953, almost four years after he had helped to condemn Timothy Evans. The defence said that he was suffering from an abnormality of mind and didn’t know what he was doing, whilst the prosecution claimed that, although he was highly abnormal, he knew both what he was doing and that it was wrong. The judge agreed with the latter’s appraisal and sentenced John Reginald Christie to death. On 15th January 1953, he was hanged.

  PART SEVEN

  UNBRIDLED LUST

  John Reginald Christie, in the Paper Masks section, pretended to be a medic in order to subdue women and enjoy necrophiliac sex with them, but in the following instances, the men were qualified medics and paramedics who allegedly abused their positions of power. Most of these men had controlling personalities, often hidden behind a superficial charm. Ambulance driver Francis Fahey concealed his angry desires until he was alone with his vulnerable victims, whilst Dr Joseph Charalambous was willing to arrange for the contract killing of a teenage girl whom he had inappropriately kissed. Anthony Joyner was an outwardly friendly young man who sexually assaulted and killed the elderly women in his care and Dr Dubria was a respected medic who allegedly raped, and inadvertently took the life of, a female friend. Radiographer Bobby Joe Long was mild-mannered until he had his victims cornered, whereupon he became a vicious and relentless predator. A combination of nature and nurture had left him with a prodigious sex drive, coupled with a deadly rage.

  30 Francis Fahey

  Although this ambulance driver had mental health problems for years, it seems that he only became a bondage killer after he lost his job and built up massive debts.

  Psychiatric problems

  At first sight, Francis Michael Fahey was a very ordinary man – a slightly overweight ambulance driver and stretcher-bearer who lived in Queensland, Australia. In the early 1990s he married a woman with three daughters and initially seemed to cope with family life but, as time passed, he became increasingly moody and sometimes ferociously angry with his wife and stepdaughters. Over the next few years he spent time as an outpatient at various mental health facilities. He told psychiatrists that he’d often contemplated suicide.

  Francis eventually pretended that he was incapacitated and claimed Au$88,000 in sick pay that he was not entitled to. When this was discovered, he was ordered to pay it back and sentenced to fifteen months in jail, but he only spent a week in prison before being bailed on appeal. He lost the appeal but the paperwork went missing so he wasn’t returned to custody.

  By early 2002, the 51-year-old ambulance driver had been dismissed from his job; he now had difficulty sleeping and showed clinical levels of depression. His mood swings also worsened. He told a psychiatrist that he had seen too much illness and death as a result of his ambulance work, but the psychiatrist wasn’t convinced that this was the true reason for his malaise. Francis claimed that he had post-traumatic stress disorder and he took medication for this but it didn’t seem to help.

  Jasmin’s murder

  On 8th August 2002, Francis went out in his four-wheel-drive and picked up 41-year-old prostitute and drug addict Jasmin Crathern. He drove her to a quiet location, tied her up and stabbed her fourteen times with a bayonet. One stab wound to her back was delivered with such force that it went all the way through to her chest, whilst another knife wound pierced her throat. Afterwards, he dumped her partially clothed body in a vacant lot at Hendra in Brisbane before washing her blood from his body with bottles of mineral water and returning home to his wife and stepfamily.

  The body was found the next day and immediately yielded clues as there was semen on Jasmin’s black blouse and the earth around her body showed tyre tracks from a rare type of imported tyre.

  Julie’s murder

  Francis relived the murder over and over and fantasised about what he would do the next time – or so he would later tell the police. On 26th February 2003, he went out driving in the early hours of the morning and picked up prostitute Julie McColl. A drug addict who had hepatitis C, she looked older then her forty-two years.

  The ambulance driver told her that he was looking for ‘something different’ and, when she asked for more details, said that he wanted to tie and blindfold her. She offered to tie him up but he explained that this wasn’t his thing. Seeing her hesitate, the ambulance driver said that he was a happily married man with kids but had this one little kink that he didn’t want to bother his wife with. When he offered Julie Au$500, she agreed to his demands. She had no idea that a bayonet, still bearing his first victim’s dried blood, was lying under the driving seat.

  Francis drove for ten miles to a picnic site at Deep Water Bend, a dark area in Brisbane. Unknown to him, two fishermen had seen his distinctive vehicle – and, at 3.30 a.m. they heard a woman scream.

  Meanwhile, the lust-filled driver had stripped his victim naked and bound her feet and hands, circling the rope around her breasts and back. He also blindfolded her and gagged her with a strip of gauze. When she was lying trussed-up on her stomach and completely vulnerable, he stabbed her in the back and shoulders again and again. His blade pierced her body t
wenty-four times, and one wound to the breast pierced a major artery, after which she quickly bled to death. Dumping the body, he returned to family life.

  The one that got away

  Police appealed to the local prostitute community to tell them about any clients who had requested bondage, and 24-year-old Jacinda Horne came forward. She said that a man driving a four-wheel utility vehicle – she described it in impressive detail – had picked her up earlier on the night Julie died. She’d got into his vehicle and he’d said that his name was Mike (it was indeed his middle name) and had asked to bind and blindfold her. He’d been really persuasive and offered big money but she’d declined and hurriedly left the cab. Shortly afterwards, it seems that he’d picked up Julie, with fatal results.

  Detectives studied CCTV footage taken in the red light district on that night and found the suspect vehicle, a Mitsubishi Trident. They used the vehicle registration to trace its owner, Francis Michael Fahey. At this point, the ambulance driver had no idea that he was under surveillance or that his arrest was imminent. Taking DNA from discarded cigarette ends in his cab, forensic experts matched it with the sperm found on Jasmin’s blouse, proving that the man named after two saints was far from saintly. His tyres also matched the tyre marks found at the first murder scene.

  Francis was visibly surprised when detectives arrested him on 7th May 2003, as he was sure he’d covered his tracks. At first he denied everything. His wife was also convinced they’d got the wrong man, but a search of their house turned up ropes similar to those used on Julie McColl, and dried blood on the bayonet proved to be from both victims. Shortly afterwards, the double murderer confessed, telling detectives, ‘I’ve spent all my fucking life saving lives. Now I’m taking them and I don’t know why.’ He added that he was glad that he hadn’t killed any of his own family. Psychiatrists thought that he probably had a puritanical attitude towards prostitution, that he saw himself as cleaning up the streets.

  Trial

  At his trial in 2006, the prosecution said that the first sexual murder had whetted Francis’s appetite, that he’d put more planning into the second. The defence, in turn, tried to blame the couple’s lodger, as he’d also had access to the four-wheel-drive, the murder vehicle.

  The jury took just four hours to find the former ambulance driver, now aged fifty-three, guilty of both murders, and he was sentenced to twenty-five years. His wife said outside the court that his ambulance work had robbed him of his vitality and contributed to his psychiatric problems. She subsequently divorced him.

  In 2006, Jacinda Horne, whose detailed account of Francis’s vehicle had led to his being traced by police, was given a Au$100,000 reward by the Queensland government.

  31 Dr Joseph Charalambous

  Unhealthily drawn to under age girls – he often said he’d rather date two fifteen-year-olds than a thirty-year-old – this Canada-based GP had one of his teenage patients murdered to prevent her testifying against him.

  Early influences

  Josephakis was born on 5th April 1952 in Cyprus, the second child of Petrou and Eleodoros Charalambous. He was close to his mother but hated his father, a strict disciplinarian. The couple went on to have a third child, moving the family to Canada when Joseph (his name was soon shortened to this) was eight years old.

  As a boy, he had a desperate need to control his environment and was full of nervous energy, understandable for someone growing up in an abusive household. Neighbours often heard screams coming from the house.

  By his teens, Joseph was ashamed of his seamstress mother and watchmaker father; he wanted to enter the professional classes and decided to become a doctor. He did well at school and also studied karate in his spare time, determined to compensate for his slim build and small stature. The youth was determined to become a man as quickly as possible, to exert control, and he succeeded, becoming so good at martial arts that he was able to throw his drunken, womanising father out of the house.

  Joseph went to medical school, where many of the other students found him to be arrogant and domineering. However, there was worse to come. In December 1977, he asked a woman out and she rebuffed him. Enraged, he punched her in the face and was so incensed that she feared for her life. He was taken to court the following summer and placed on probation for a year.

  In January 1979, he got into an altercation over a prostitute and fired a warning shot from his rifle, slightly injuring a man’s hand. Incredibly, he still wasn’t expelled from the university. Nor was he penalised that summer when he paid a prostitute to fellate him in his car, then suddenly hit her about the head. She called the police, but they let her violent client go, reluctant to besmirch a promising medical career.

  Joseph Charalambous graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1981 and began work as an intern. He had sacrificed much of his youth to study medicine, but, by adulthood, the sacrifice was paying off and the young doctor bought himself a house and later a surgery in Coquitlam. He earned a good salary but spent freely on the horses, poker and even the lottery, chalking up large debts. He’d sometimes stay at the casino all night and arrive at work looking worn-out.

  Even after a tiring day, he didn’t like to be alone, so taught karate in the evenings (he was a black belt) and sometimes brought his students back to party until the early hours.

  Seduction

  In 1984, Joseph hit his live-in girlfriend and she left him. Around about the same time, one of his childhood friends got back in touch and he beat and attempted to rape her. The traumatised woman called the police but Joseph managed to persuade them that she’d suffered a psychotic episode.

  The following year, he became obsessed with a fifteen-year-old patient called Shelley Joel. He originally counselled her after she was raped, but soon progressed to asking her out. He had sex with her whilst she was still a minor and, when she turned sixteen, she moved in with him despite the fact that he was twice her age.

  Shelley’s mother and stepfather protested, only to find that someone had set fire to their car. They continued to beg their daughter to leave the controlling doctor, whereupon someone poured acid over their other vehicle. By now, Joseph was beating Shelley and it was obvious that she was miserable and afraid. He also told her that he would kill her mother if the older woman continued to intervene.

  Determined to free her impressionable daughter from the doctor’s clutches, Shelley’s mother, Jacqueline, filed a complaint, but Joseph persuaded Shelley to marry him, knowing that the medical school would look ridiculous if they barred him from medical practice for sleeping with the young woman who’d become his wife. Shortly after the wedding, the teenager became pregnant and, nine months later, gave birth to a baby girl.

  Finally, college officials came back with their verdict and gave the doctor a hefty fine plus six months’ suspension from duty. At the start of 1989, he was forced to remortgage his house yet still continued to lose large amounts of money on the horses. After his six-month suspension, he also continued to flirt inappropriately with his younger patients. By now, Shelley had given him a second child – a son – and he was finding her less desirable. He lusted after young, inexperienced flesh.

  Another complaint

  Joseph regularly behaved inappropriately, asking his female teenage patients about their sex lives. Young women who turned up with hay fever were surprised when the doctor insisted that they strip and undergo a full breast examination. There wasn’t a nurse present during these intimate examinations.

  Two years after his suspension period ended, Joseph kissed two of his teenage patients, sisters Katie and Sian Simmonds, on the lips and phoned them later to ask how they were. Concerned, the girls told their father and he put in a formal complaint to the British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. Later, the doctor phoned them and tried to persuade them to drop the charges. They refused.

  The doctor told Shelley that the only way to silence them would be to kill them. He also talked about murdering the entire panel. Shelley, w
ho had by now given her husband a third child, another girl, said little, terrified of enraging him further and of receiving another beating at his hands. Remembering that he’d threatened to kill her mother, she didn’t take these new threats seriously.

  Chillingly, Joseph began to drive past the apartment where the girls lived, checking up on their movements. In early 1993, he persuaded David Schlender, a biker with a drug problem whom he knew through his karate class, to kill one of the girls. The man had previously left a drug dealer for dead and was badly in need of money. The deal was arranged through an intermediary, Brian West.

  David knew that the girls had a red jeep so he deliberately ran his keys along the paintwork to create a long, deep scratch, then knocked on the downstairs door and asked the woman who answered if she owned the vehicle, explaining that he’d accidentally damaged it. She said no, that it belonged to the girls upstairs. David then knocked on the Simmonds’s door and told Sian the same story. She hurried out to her vehicle and became visibly upset, but David got her to go back into the house by asking to use the bathroom whilst she looked over his insurance documents.