Ten months after he was jailed, Hutchinson failed in an appeal against his conviction at London’s Court of Appeal. Lord Justice Watkins said he had been convicted on ‘devastating evidence.’ He had, the judge said, been convicted of ‘outrageous and almost unbelievably horrid’ killings.
For two decades after his incarceration, owing to his mindless brutality, Hutchinson – a martial arts fanatic with an obsession for knives – was feared by fellow inmates. One officer at Wakefield Prison where he is held described him as ‘like a bomb about to reach the end of its fuse.’
He is in his late sixties now and not the physical force he once was, but his twisted nature has not changed. His half-brother Dino Reardon, whom Hutchinson once tried to shoot, told the News of the World in 2004 that he has been plagued with threatening phone calls from the killer, hinting he’d hunt down the surviving Laitners if he ever got out. Taking the threats seriously, Dino said: ‘I know he would go for them first and me afterwards. He has regularly made threatening calls to me, leaving coded or cryptic messages. What I can’t believe is that his calls are not vetted. The really frightening thing is that he’s hinted at going after the surviving Laitners. He never forgets a grudge. No matter how old he is when he comes out of prison, I know that he will still be coming after me.’ Hutchinson’s sentence was increased from the judge’s minimum recommendation of 18 years to a whole life tariff by Home Secretary Leon Brittan, meaning Dino need have no such fears.
‘THE GAY SLAYER’
‘He was unable to stop killing – he was under a form of compulsion. He was not in control. He was on a roller-coaster – it was becoming easy for him.’
Ireland’s Defence Barrister, Andrew Trollope, QC
Name: Colin Ireland
Crime: Serial murder
Date of Conviction: 20 December 1993
Age at Conviction: 39
The burly, bull-necked man with the military haircut was careful to avoid the CCTV camera as he walked into The Coleherne pub on Old Brompton Road, Kensington, South-West London, on 8 March 1993. He looked cautiously round the well-known gay haunt and caught the eye of Peter Walker, a theatrical director and choreographer. Peter – a regular at the bar – had no idea the rucksack carried by the tall stranger contained a murder kit comprising gloves, duct tape, a knife, lengths of sailing cord and a change of clothing. The stranger’s name was Colin Ireland, a warped survival fanatic, soon to be nicknamed ‘The Gay Slayer’ by the tabloid press.
Ireland, 39, walked over to his admirer and they got chatting. During the course of their conversation, Peter admitted that he liked being beaten up during sex. Unfortunately for him, he was being picked up by a man at the start of a carefully prepared mission to kill gay sadomasochistic men.
‘I had gone there [the pub] with the idea that if someone approached me, something would happen,’ Ireland later told police. ‘It would be some kind of trigger.’
With two failed marriages behind him and the recent loss of his job, Ireland was disgruntled and bitter about life. He wanted to ‘be a somebody’ and made the decision to be a serial killer. He read the FBI handbook, The Crime Classification Manual by Robert Ressler, and learned that to be recognised as a serial killer he had to murder ‘one over four’ people. Peter Walker was about to be the first.
The pair finished their drinks and caught a taxi to Peter’s Battersea flat. As they walked towards the building, Ireland carefully pulled on a pair of gloves. Once inside, 45-year-old Peter shut his two dogs, a Labrador and a German Shepherd, into the living room and led his new acquaintance into the bedroom.
With his consent, Peter was tied naked to his four-poster bed. As he lay there, spread-eagled, Ireland slapped and punched him with gloved hands and whipped him with a dog lead. He then fetched a plastic bag from the kitchen, placed it over his victim’s head and began to suffocate him. But he pulled the bag off at the last moment as Peter thrashed his head about, gasping for air. Later, Ireland told police: ‘I took the bag away and told him how easy it was to end it all. It was a fate thing and he said to me, “I’m going to die.” And I said, “Yes, you are.” I think in a way he wanted to die – there was a lack of desire to carry on; he was quite controlled about it. In the end I killed him with the plastic bag.’
Once Peter was dead, Ireland burnt his pubic hair to see what it smelled like. Then, while rifling through his victim’s belongings, Ireland came across a letter informing him that he was HIV-positive. This disgusted him into further defiling the man’s body. He stuffed knotted condoms into Peter’s mouth and nostrils, and arranged two of his teddy bears next to the body in the ‘69’ position.
All night long, Ireland stayed at the flat watching TV and eating from the dead man’s fridge. He meticulously cleaned away all evidence of his visit and left during the morning rush hour to be less conspicuous. For his next four killings, he followed the same pattern. Later, he said: ‘After killing Walker, I walked down the road and thought that anyone who looked at my face would be able to see I had just murdered somebody. I thought they would be able to tell just by looking at me. I remembered losing my virginity and I remembered the same feeling – you’re always buzzing.’
Two days after the first murder, he phoned the news desk at the Sun and said: ‘I have murdered a man.’ He then told the reporter where the body was located. In his gruff London accent, he continued: ‘I am calling you because I am worried about his dogs: I want them to be let out – it would be cruel for them to be stuck there.’
For a few moments he was silent, but then he added: ‘I tied him up and killed him, and I cleaned up the flat afterwards. I did it. It was my New Year’s resolution to kill a human being. He was homosexual and into kinky sex. You like that sort of stuff, don’t you?’
The paper contacted the police, who went round and found Peter dead on his bed. Detectives also discovered his cash card was missing and that £200 had been withdrawn from his account after his death. Despite a detailed forensic search of the flat, they had no clues as to the identity of his killer.
More importantly, the police inquiry involved a sub-group of the gay population who indulged in what many regarded as bizarre practices. In a twist that was to hamper the investigation, the day after the body was discovered, the Law Lords ruled that sado-masochistic practices between consenting adults were illegal in what became known as the notorious ‘Spanner Case’. Gays were concerned that, by co-operating, they could be prosecuted.
Almost three months later, police had the body of another tied-up gay man on their hands. On 30 May, Christopher Dunn, a 37-year-old librarian, was found dead by a colleague who was concerned that he had not turned up for work.
The previous evening, Christopher met Ireland at The Coleherne, where he confided to the killer that he liked to be dominated. The ever-charming Ireland was soon at Christopher’s flat in Wealdstone, North-West London, drinking wine and watching an S&M video.
Christopher was found bound and gagged, wearing a black leather harness and belts. Before strangling him with a nylon cord, Ireland asked him for his bank PIN number. To ensure he told him the right one, he set fire to his genitals with a lighter. He then stole £200 from the dead man’s account. Again, he spent the night with the deceased before leaving the next morning.
Speaking of the hours he spent alone with the bodies of his victims, Ireland later told police: ‘It’s strange but now I remember overwhelming things… death and what it smells like. When people have been strangled, they break wind; that’s what it smells like. I think if I had just killed these people and gone, I wouldn’t have been affected mentally so much, but sitting with these bodies like five or six hours on some occasions, watching them gradually blotch as they go cold… it wasn’t something I think I could cope with, quite honestly.’
Detectives investigating Christopher’s death concluded that he died accidentally during an extreme sado-masochistic sex act. They believed the burns to his genitals were caused in the process. As such, no connection
was made with Peter Walker’s death and inquiries into the second murder ceased.
Next to die was Perry Bradley, a 35-year-old American sales director, who was again a regular at The Coleherne. The pair met at the pub on 4 June and after a brief flirtation, both men went to Perry’s Kensington home.
Perry was wary of being tied up but after Ireland explained that he could not perform sexually unless there was sado-masochism, he relented and agreed to it. Ireland told the trussed-up Perry that he was a thief and that he intended to torture his PIN number from him. The killer later revealed that the American simply replied: ‘I’m quite happy to give you anything you want to know.’ Ireland did not kill his latest victim straightaway. Instead, he told him: ‘It’s going to be a long night – I suggest you get some sleep if you can.’
Ireland recalled to police: ‘I just sat and listened to the radio and he actually went to sleep.’ Around an hour later, as Bradley slept face down on his bed with his hands trussed behind his back, Ireland killed him. He said: ‘I put a noose around his neck and tied it to something. I sat there, thinking, and at one point I thought of letting him go. Then I thought, “It’s easier to kill him.” My plan was to kill. He hardly struggled.’ He stole £100 from the dead man’s wallet and later withdrew £200 from his bank account.
Despite the money being stolen from the bank accounts of the dead men, police had still not managed to link the three killings. Each death was investigated by different local teams of detectives and there was no co-ordination between them.
Three days later, on the evening of 7 June, Ireland was back in The Coleherne, where he met Andrew Collier, a care worker in a nursing home. A similar pick-up pattern ensued and the men were soon at the 33-year-old’s flat in Dalston, East London. Andrew readily agreed to being tied up and was soon dead by strangulation. While rifling through his belongings, Ireland discovered his latest victim was, like Peter Walker, HIV-positive and decided to express his disgust at not being told of his condition when sex was clearly on the cards.
Furious, Ireland hanged Andrew’s pet cat, Millie, using a rope thrown over the bedroom door. He then draped the animal over the dead man’s naked body: he put Andrew’s penis in the cat’s mouth and the cat’s tail in the victim’s mouth. Both the tail and the penis had condoms pulled over them. Later, he told detectives: ‘I was the killer and he had AIDS; that annoyed me. He never told me – he thought there was going to be a normal sexual encounter. I wanted him to have no dignity in death.’
Ireland admitted the obscene ritual with the cat was ‘part anger and part of an increase in the thrill of killing.’ He said: ‘I wanted to know how you would react when you came across the scene: you’re not thinking normally when you do something like this. But it was almost like a signature, to let you know I’d been there. I was reaching that point, you know, where you feel you have to step up a stage at a time.’
Ireland stole £70 from Andrew and left the next morning, but by then he had made his first mistake. During the evening, he and Andrew looked out of the window when they heard a police siren and he left a fingerprint on the frame that escaped his later, usually meticulous, cleaning efforts.
On the afternoon of 8 June, Ireland rang the police at Kensington to claim responsibility for all four murders. He said: ‘If you don’t stop me, it will be one a week. I pissed myself when I read that I was an animal lover. I thought I would give you lot something to think about, so I killed the cat.’ Hours later, he called Battersea police and asked: ‘Are you still interested in the death of Peter Walker? Why have you stopped the investigation? Doesn’t the death of a homosexual man mean anything? I will do another.’
It was the murder of his fifth victim, Maltese chef Emmanuel Spiteri, which led to his capture. On the evening of 12 June, Emmanuel was in The Coleherne with a handkerchief hanging from his rear pocket, a telltale sign on the gay scene that he liked to be dominated.
Ireland bought him a drink and, via two trains, they went to the 41-year-old’s flat in Catford, South-East London. Once there, he handcuffed his victim to the bed and tied his feet together with sailing cord. He then put a noose around the bald man’s neck.
The killer takes up the disturbing tale: ‘I bound him, but he was becoming suspicious. The word had got around about the gay murders and he was getting a bit worried. By then it was too late, but he was a very brave man. I told him I wanted his PIN number. He refused to give it to me, even though I threatened to kill him. He said, “Do whatever you are going to do. You will just have to kill me.”’ Ireland’s police statement continued: ‘He was a very brave, strong-minded man, but I couldn’t allow him to stick around and recognise me so I killed him with the noose.’
As usual, Ireland – now officially a serial killer – stayed the night, but he changed his pattern by setting fire to the murder scene before he left. Shortly afterwards, the fire went out. Asked after his arrest why he had started the fire, he told police that he used to be a fireman, adding: ‘There’s a bit of arsonist in all firemen. There’s an element in me that’s highly destructive, very cold. In some moods I’d be quite happy to burn the world down.’
By the time Emmanuel’s body was found later that morning, the Metropolitan Police knew they had a serial killer on their hands. Although they had Ireland’s fingerprint left at the scene of the fourth murder, there was no one to compare it to. They traced Emmanuel’s movements from The Coleherne the previous night and obtained CCTV footage of him walking out of Charing Cross station with a tall, bulky man with cropped hair. Detectives released the video to the press.
Fearing the ‘Gay Slayer’ would strike again, Detective Chief Superintendent Ken John appealed to him directly on national TV news. He said: ‘I need to speak to you. Enough is enough – enough pain, enough anxiety, enough tragedy. Give yourself up.’
Seeing his CCTV image, albeit blurred, made Ireland panic. For a few days, he pondered his situation, then on 19 July, he walked into a solicitor’s in Southend, Essex, where he admitted that he was the man with Emmanuel. However, he claimed that he left the victim alive with another man, who must have been responsible for his death.
Within minutes of interviewing Ireland, police knew they had their man. He let slip the detail about Andrew Collier’s dead cat – something that had not been made public. Furthermore, his fingerprints matched those found at the flat. Faced with the case against him, he confessed to all five murders.
On 20 December 1993, Colin Ireland appeared at the Old Bailey for sentencing, having pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing. Prosecution counsel John Nutting told the court: ‘These murders were premeditated and meticulously planned. It would seem the defendant set out to be a serial killer. He told others that in order to be so classified he knew he would have to commit at least five murders. He chose a vulnerable group as his intended victims – homosexual men who indulged in sadomasochistic sex, thus enabling him to tie them up with no resistance from them before killing them.’ He added that at no point was Ireland under the influence of drink or drugs during the murders.
Andrew Trollope, QC, defending, said: ‘Ireland himself advances no mitigation or offers any kind of excuse or justification for what he did. He accepts total responsibility for his thoughts and actions during the weeks he was committing these killings.’ Mr Trollope stated that Ireland was neither insane nor suffering from diminished responsibility and offered no medical excuse for his actions: he had simply chosen homosexuals as his target because he could ‘readily prey upon them’. The barrister added: ‘He was unable to stop killing – he was under a form of compulsion. He was not in control; he was on a rollercoaster – it was becoming easy for him. He reached a point where he wanted to be caught. These calls to police were not taunts, they were acts of a perpetrator asking to be arrested.’
Ireland yawned frequently, stretched and played with his bottom lip as Mr Trollope told how he had ‘bitterly resented’ the loss of his job as a relief manager at a night centre: ‘That occupation was his
last attempt to lead an ordinary, stable life. Once the killings began, there was an excitement and that drove him on.’
Passing sentence, Mr Justice Sachs told Ireland: ‘In my view it is absolutely clear you should never be released. To take one human life is an outrage, to take five is carnage. No one who had read the papers or listened to today’s hearing can be anything other than revolted by your wickedness, which is almost beyond belief.’
He added: ‘By any standards you are an exceptionally frightening and dangerous man. In cold blood and with great deliberation you have killed five of your fellow human beings. You killed them in grotesque and cruel circumstances. You expressed a desire to be regarded as a serial killer – that must be matched by your detention for life. In my view it is absolutely clear you should never be released.’
Ireland acknowledged the judge’s words with a nod, accepting that he was going to die behind bars. As he said to police after his arrest: ‘I wasn’t forced to do it. I should be placed where I can’t inflict harm on others.’
‘THE SHOPPING SPREE’
‘I didn’t intend Peter any serious harm. I was later shocked to hear that he had died.’
Smith (to police)
Name: Michael Smith
Crime: Murder
Date of Conviction: 15 May 2007
Age at Conviction: 52
In August 1975, Michael Smith met Sheila Deakin at a party and he could not believe his luck when she agreed to go out with him. He was 21, and had spent much of the previous decade in approved schools and borstals; Sheila was 18, and in his eyes the prettiest girl in Stoke-on-Trent. From the start, he was besotted, but two days before Christmas that year, Sheila burst the bubble and ended up dead.
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