He told the court how they had their first contract to kill within two months: they were paid £1,800 by Leonard Thompson – known as ‘Big Lenny’ – to kill haulage contractor George Brett. Thompson held a grudge against Brett because he had given evidence against him in a court case after the two men had fought. Thompson had received a suspended prison sentence for malicious wounding.
They hatched a plan to lure Brett from his home to the church hall on the pretext that Childs, calling himself ‘Mr Jennings’, wanted some haulage work done. Childs said he went to Brett’s home on 2 January 1975, dressed as a City businessman, complete with bowler hat, and Brett agreed to follow him in his car. When his car would not start, Brett got a rope to tow it and, tragically, it provided an opportunity for his 10-year-old son, Terry, to go along for the ride.
On arrival at the hall, Childs said he gave young Terry a teddy bear to hold. MacKenney brandished a stengun and twice shot Brett, 35, through the back of the head. As he did so, Childs held the boy with his hand over his mouth. The court heard how MacKenney then put the gun to the boy’s head and killed him with a single shot.
Childs described how he and MacKenney had rowed over Terry’s ‘heartless and unnecessary’ killing. He told the court: ‘Had I had a gun when MacKenney killed that young boy I would have shot him to pieces. Afterwards it was too late – we were in schtuck.’ He turned to the jury and said: ‘As God is my witness that is right. I would not willingly become a child murderer.’
The court heard that Pinfold was summoned to the factory and asked to deal with the disposal of Brett’s Mercedes. The two bodies were taken to the compressor shed at the back of the factory, where MacKenney sawed Brett’s legs off. Both bodies were put in dustbins and transported to Childs’ flat in his van. Childs said that before the bodies were removed from the hall, he had smeared Pinfold with blood to symbolise his involvement in the killings. Once at the flat, they laid plastic sheeting, where needed, and dismembered both bodies, burning them in the grate. The ashes were emptied into a canal. Childs said MacKenney kept one of Brett’s eyes as a souvenir. He told the court: ‘He washed it in my sink, then wrapped it in toilet paper.’
Next to die, in January 1975, was Robert Brown, an ex-wrestler who was on the run from Chelmsford Prison. He was living on a camp bed at the factory and he had seen all the blood after the murder of Eve. Childs told the court that he had been asking too many questions and that he and MacKenney agreed he needed ‘taking out’. Childs said he lured Brown to his flat, where MacKenney shot him twice in the back of the head. But the bullets did not kill him and so they hacked away at him with axes. When even that failed, Childs said that he had ‘unsheathed a short sword stick and stabbed him in the belly, running the blade up into his heart.’
According to Childs, the fifth killing was commissioned by builder Paul Morton-Thurtle in July 1978. (The jury later found him not guilty of procuring the murder trio’s services.) Childs said Morton-Thurtle had hired him and MacKenney to kill Frederick Sherwood because he owed Sherwood money and was finding it difficult to repay it. He told the court that they agreed to kill Sherwood for £4,000, with payment being made by a deposit of £1,500 and then fortnightly instalments of £500.
After learning that Sherwood was trying to sell his car, Childs told him he wanted to buy it and arranged to make the purchase at MacKenney’s home. When Sherwood arrived, Childs hit him across the head with a 21b hammer, and then MacKenney shot him.
The final victim was, according to Childs, murdered for a different motive. He said MacKenney was having an affair with Gwendoline Andrews, the wife of his friend Ronald. Childs told the court: ‘MacKenney explained to me what a nice house she had and that altogether her and the money were an attractive parcel. He told me he intended to kill the woman’s husband.’
Childs said he was paid £400 by MacKenney to assist in the killing in October 1978. He claimed that MacKenney told Andrews that he suspected his wife was having an affair and recommended a private detective who could check on her. Childs posed as the detective and Ronald went to his flat to meet him. Childs said: ‘I offered him a drink and he sat down and was shot in the back of the head by MacKenney with a revolver fitted with a silencer.’ He said they put the body in the bathroom and later MacKenney expressed grief at the killing. Childs testified: ‘He said, “Ron forced me to kill him by not walking out and giving me his wife and his house.”’
When Childs finished giving evidence, defence counsel Michael Mansfield called IRA prisoner Patrick Guilfoyle to the witness box. Guilfoyle told the court that Childs had admitted to him in prison that the men in the dock were innocent. He added that Childs had told him that he feared the police would charge his wife, Tina, with murder and said that he had ‘botched it all up’. He said Childs had told him that his wife was the ‘best butcher in London’. Guilfoyle said Childs often spoke about hating Henry MacKenney and that he had told him that the people he had ‘squealed’ on were innocent.
A second prisoner, Philip Cartwright, who was inside for theft and wounding, said Childs had indicated to him that MacKenny was innocent and that he was naming the wrong people involved in the killings.
Cross-examined by Mr Mansfield, Childs denied that since being in custody he had told fellow prisoners that he wanted to ‘do Mr MacKenney down’ or that he had delighted in telling people about the cutting-up and burning of bodies. In his closing speech, defence counsel said: ‘The case against MacKenney rests almost entirely upon the word of one man, Childs, a man who is maniacally obsessed in thoughts and actions by violence.’
Despite the defence witnesses casting grave doubt on Childs’ evidence and the absence of any concrete evidence, the jury believed much of what they had heard and found MacKenney guilty of murdering George Brett and his son Terry and of killing Frederick Sherwood and Ronald Andrews. He was found not guilty of the murders of Terence Eve and Robert Brown. Mr Justice May sentenced him to concurrent terms of life imprisonment on each murder, with a recommendation that he should serve 25 years.
Pinfold was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of murdering Eve. He was found not guilty of killing George Brett and Mr Brown and of helping to assist in the disposal of the body of Terry Brett. Paul Morton-Thurtle was found not guilty of murdering Mr Sherwood, and as he walked from the dock, MacKenney patted him on the back. Leonard Thompson was found not guilty of the murder of George Brett and his son.
At the Court of Appeal on 30 October 2003, Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf was told that after giving evidence at the original trial, Childs changed his story on numerous occasions. David Somekh, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, said Childs suffered from personality disorders. During the three-day hearing, it emerged that attempts to tell the trial jury about Childs’ mental state were blocked. The court also heard revelations about the trial: although Pinfold was found guilty of having procured MacKenney to murder Eve, MacKenney was acquitted at the Old Bailey of having committed the murder. It didn’t make sense.
It also emerged that before their trial, there were doubts within the Metropolitan Police about whether Eve had been murdered at all. James Harrison-Griffiths, a retired Detective Chief Inspector, said that he had attempted to investigate Eve’s disappearance in 1976, but was warned off by Commander Bert Wickstead, Head of the Serious Crimes Group. Mr Harrison-Griffiths said: ‘There was a conflict between senior officers. My Chief Superintendent was encouraging me and Commander Wickstead was discouraging me. There was politics involved.’
He added: ‘Commander Wickstead told me that Terry Eve was living under an assumed name in South London. He told me that the future of the CID would be short-lived if I didn’t stop this inquiry.’ It was also revealed that Eve had every reason to disappear because there was a warrant for his arrest in connection with the hijacking of £75,000 worth of stereo equipment. Eve was facing five years in jail. Lawyers for MacKenney and Pinfold said the credibility of Childs as a witness would have been ‘shot to pieces’
had the jury had heard this evidence at the original trial.
Edward Fitzgerald QC, for MacKenney, called psychiatric evidence to show that Childs, who had since retracted his accusations against the pair, was a skilled fabricator and ‘highly intelligent psychopath’ who would ‘say anything, at any time, when it suited him’. Mr Fitzgerald added: ‘The jury did not know he was a person who suffered from a serious psychotic personality disorder. No one should be convicted on this man’s word.’
Even his own confessions of murder were thrown into doubt by the evidence of Eve being alive after his supposed death.
Mr Fitzgerald revealed that Childs had admitted to more murders from prison, confessions which had been discredited. He said this showed him to be either a fantasist, who made up elaborate tales of gruesome murders for which he claimed responsibility and whose evidence should therefore be disregarded – or, if the confessions were true, the jury at the original trial had been ‘profoundly misled’.
The barrister said that Childs had written a series of letters to various people, including Pinfold, admitting he had perjured himself at the trial in order to secure early release from prison. Mr Fitzgerald also challenged Childs’ claim that he had disposed of victims’ bodies by dismembering them and burning them on his domestic grate. At the original trial, the prosecution sought to prove the claim by producing evidence of a police experiment in which a dismembered pig carcass was burnt on the grate, but Mr Fitzgerald said the experiment was flawed. It involved having to hold a board in front of the fire no fewer than 37 times to maintain a sufficient draught. Yet Childs had testified in court that incinerating the victims was easy and that he was ‘in a chair, having a drink, very relaxed’ while the body parts were burning.
Lord Woolf said that when he read Childs’ account of how he disposed of bodies,‘My common sense told me it was a pretty unlikely story.’ When their convictions were formally quashed on 15 December 2003, Lord Woolf said fresh evidence showed that Childs was a ‘pathological liar.’
Sitting with Mr Justice Aikens and Mr Justice Davis, the judge said they were ‘unable to say where the truth lies as to these terrible murders’ and that the evidence of Childs, although corroborated to some extent, was ‘not capable of belief.’
Outside court, Pinfold and MacKenney hugged everyone in sight. MacKenney said: ‘I’m shattered at the moment; I’m very relieved. It’s been a long time coming – it’s 23 years too late. The case should never have got to court in the first place. It was a fiasco.’
Pinfold said: ‘Childs gave his story, and looking at the evidence, he was proved a liar.’
‘I WAS MAD’
‘I wanted to get out of there in one piece. I was terrified and scared.’
One of Ayre’s victims, aged 10
Name: Stephen Ayre
Crime: Rape and murder
Date of Conviction: 26 April 2006
Age at Conviction: 44
On 9 September 1984, loner Stephen Ayre met his on-off girlfriend, Irene Hudson, at the Mississippi Nightclub in Shipley, West Yorkshire. Irene, who had severe learning difficulties, left the club with him at around 9.30 that evening. She was never seen alive again.
Ayre, 23, took the vulnerable girl, who was just 5ft 3in tall, to a nearby field for sex, but as they kissed, Irene laughed and pushed him away. Ayre lost his footing and went sprawling onto the grass. As he got to his feet, Irene pushed him over again, only this time he went tumbling into a ditch full of nettles and he lost his temper.
Seething, he climbed up from the ditch and pushed Irene, 21, so hard in the chest that she fell flat on her back. By the time she got to her feet, he had a metal bar in his hand and he hit her across the head with it. She fell back to the ground, where Ayre battered her at least 20 more times until her head was a pulp and the surrounding grass was submerged in her blood. Ayre’s white shirt was soaked red so he took it off, wiped his blood-spattered face with it and sprinted home to bed. Witnesses described seeing him running through the streets half-naked.
After his arrest, he recalled to police: ‘Suddenly, she gave me another push and I slid down the banking into the nettles and then I was mad. My hand was on the metal bar. I suddenly hit Irene on the head with the bar – I don’t know how many times.’
Irene, who had a mental age of 13, was reported missing when she failed to return home that night. The following day, her battered body was found dumped on a bridle path near Shipley railway station. Ayre was soon arrested. Several witnesses had seen him with Irene on the night of her murder and his blood-soaked shirt was found near her body.
Faced with the overwhelming evidence against him, Ayre pleaded guilty when his case came to court in March 1985. The judge heard how he had consumed a ‘vast amount’ of alcohol on the night of the murder and had told police: ‘I was mad. I wanted to hurt her, but not to kill her.’
Before sentencing him, the judge heard how Ayre had recently received a suspended prison sentence for having sex with an underage girl. In mitigation, his lawyer told the court that Ayre had a disturbed childhood that had left him with ‘a very low tolerance threshold and an extremely quick temper.’ He was sentenced to life with a recommendation that he should serve at least 13 years before being eligible for parole.
Ayre remained in prison for 20 years after his first four requests for release were refused. His eventual release in April 2005 proved to be one of the most controversial parole mistakes in British history.
After he was released, Ayre moved into a probation service hostel. Within weeks, he broke the terms of his parole when he was caught drunk and disorderly in a street outside the area he was permitted to enter. The factors involving alcohol in Irene Hudson’s murder seemingly ignored, he was given a conditional discharge.
He spent six months in the hostel and started work as a labourer at a Bradford factory in September of the same year. Peter Batty, works manager at the firm, said he was misled about Ayre’s past by a probation officer. He recalled: ‘I interviewed him and he came across as a nice, polite, quiet person. He told me he had served 21 years for murder. He said he had repeatedly hit his brother-in-law with a dustbin lid because the bloke was hitting his sister and he had died.
‘We contacted his probation officer, who confirmed what he had told us and said he was not a danger to our employees. We knew what he said he had done was wrong, but because the bloke had been beating up his sister and he said it wasn’t his intention to kill him, we didn’t see him as a cold-blooded murderer and decided to give him a chance for a future.
‘We employed him on 5 September and he was a very polite, obliging and hard-working employee. Everyone, including the women staff, thought he was a smashing fella.’
Such was Mr Batty’s confidence in Ayre that he gave him a reference and paid his deposit when the Probation Service deemed him fit to live in society. In early October 2005 he moved into a flat on Bingley Road, Saltaire, West Yorkshire. His landlady, who asked not to be named, said Ayre rang her after seeing an advertisement in the local paper. She added: ‘He seemed all right. He said he would take the flat and he came back with a reference from his employer, who paid the £200 bond and £330 for the first month’s rent. Ayre gave me his contact numbers and sister’s address, and everything seemed OK.’
The following February, Ayre took a 10-year-old boy to his rented flat, where he brutally raped him. Within hours he was back in police custody and he admitted that he had raped the youngster. He said he did it because he wanted to go back to prison.
Two months later, on 26 April 2006, Ayre appeared at Leeds Crown Court for sentencing. Prosecutor Gavin Howie told how Ayre – who had ‘a psychopathic disorder, but not a mental illness’ – spotted his victim playing in the street with a friend. He lured the child back to his place with the promise of a BMX bike. Mr Howie continued: ‘He prevaricated at first at the door of the flat. He then physically picked up the boy and dragged him into the flat.’
The court was told that during the 30-
minute ordeal the youngster was threatened with a Stanley knife. Throughout the horrific assault, the child was told that he’d have his throat slashed if he did not comply with his abductor’s demands. Ayre turned the volume up on his television to drown out the lad’s screams. The boy told police: ‘I wanted to get out of there in one piece. I was terrified and scared.’ After the attack, he ran back to his father’s house and told him what had happened. The sickened parent sprinted to Ayre’s flat to discover that he had fled.
At around 8.30 that night, Ayre handed himself in to police, telling them that he wanted to be back behind bars. He said: ‘If it hadn’t been that boy, it would have been someone else but I saw him and something fell into place.’
In mitigation, defence counsel Michelle Colborne said her client was deeply sorry for what he had done and had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity. Referring to the attack on the boy, she explained: ‘It was a way out of the depression and inability to cope with life as it was for him at that stage.’
Sentencing him, Mr Justice Tugendhat said that Ayre posed a particular risk to young people if he was ever allowed back into the community. The judge told him: ‘You have committed very serious offences. I have no doubt there is a high risk you will commit other serious and violent offences, if you were free to do so.’ He said that Ayre had used a degree of planning to lure the youngster to the flat where he had carried out the ‘gross indignities’, adding: ‘You do not understand the gravity of what you have done. You are extremely dangerous, and a particular risk to children and young people and other vulnerable people of both sexes.’ The judge told how he had taken into account all the aggravating features, including the fact that a knife was used, the age of the victim and the nature of the offences, to come to the conclusion that Ayre should spend the rest of his life in prison.
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