Prisoner V48468 Scripps was given legal aid, and case #T910602 was held at Winchester Crown Court on 6 January 1991. Represented by Bruce Maddick QC, Scripps suddenly changed his plea to ‘guilty’ in an effort to gain leniency. Despite this ploy, he was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment. Amazingly, he spent just three years and ten months in jail before contriving another escape.
Scripps started his prison term at Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight and, during a six-week period, between March and April 1993, he was instructed in butchery, by Prison Officer James Quigley.
‘He was shown how to bone out forequarters and hindquarters of beef, sides of bacon, carcasses of pork, and how to portion chicken,’ James Quigley said, adding, ‘He was a quick learner, and very fast on picking up on how to slaughter, dismember and debone animals.’
What the authorities could never have guessed was that, while they were training an inmate in butchery skills, they were also equipping him to slaughter and dismember humans, the gruesome calling to which he subsequently set his hand.
Scripps’s ultimate odyssey began on 28 October 1994, when he failed to return to the Mount Prison in Bovington, Hertfordshire, after four days’ leave. Throughout the week before he walked out of the open prison gate, he had been openly selling his possessions to finance his escape. He had even bragged to fellow inmates that he was going on the run. This was picked up by the prison staff, who failed to act on it.
When he failed to return, the Governor, Margaret Donnelly, said, ‘He was no longer considered a risk. He had no history violence. He was quiet and reserved.’
What, it appears, the Governor did not know, was that Scripps had absconded from every home leave he had ever been granted. And, far from being quiet, reserved and no longer a risk, the smooth-talking drug-dealer, was about to become a vicious serial killer.
After absconding, Scripps embarked on a globetrotting, three-nation murder rampage. His first port of call, before the killing started was Holland, where he met a former drug-dealer whom he had encountered, while on remand, in Winchester Prison. He travelled next to Belgium and Spain and reached Mexico in late November, where he attempted a reconciliation with Maria Arellanos. He told her that he had been released from prison on a technicality, and that he was returning to Thailand to buy silk clothes and wanted them both to set up a boutique in Cancun. He told her that he was now a deeply religious man and, to convince her, became a devotee of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Mexico’s patron saint.
To finance this venture, Scripps befriended Timothy McDowell, a British backpacker who was holidaying in Belize and had travelled to Mexico in 1994. It is believed that he beat the 28-year-old Cambridge graduate and management consultant to death, dismembered his body and dumped it in an alligator-infested river. Shortly after the murder, the victim’s bank account was milked dry to the tune of £21,000; the money being transferred to Scripps’s account in London. This sum of money was later moved to another account, in the United States, under the name of Simon Davis, one of Scripps’s many aliases.
* * *
Thirty-three-year-old Gerard George Lowe arrived at Singapore’s Changi airport on the morning of 8 March 1995. Dressed casually, in khaki Bermuda shorts and an orange T-shirt, he was indistinguishable from all the other international travellers as they stumbled wearily off the plane and on to the moving walkway. He was just another tourist, and that was the point. Travelling alone in a strange country, Lowe was looking for a friendly face. And, as people do in airports, when they are trying to establish their bearings, he found himself talking to a complete stranger. The tall, soft-spoken Englishman, in his thirties, politely introduced himself as Simon Davis. As they chatted, Lowe explained that he was a South African brewery design engineer who was on a shopping trip to Singapore to take advantage of the low cost of video recorders and cameras. When Scripps caught sight of Lowe’s gold credit card, he knew he had found another victim.
It was apparent to Scripps that his new acquaintance was thrifty, so he suggested they share an hotel room. The River View Hotel was suggested by Scripps. This is a middle-class businessman’s stopover, with a greying marble reception area and a tacky boutique selling plastic orchids and ‘Hong Kong Girl’ perfume. The hotel was full and the two men had to wait several hours before they were given a room. ‘They seemed very normal,’ as Roberto Pregarz, the hotel’s manager, later testified at Scripps’ trial. ‘They were smiling and laughing together. There was nothing strange.’
Within minutes of booking in, the two men made their way to room 1511. After unpacking their cases, Lowe settled down at a small, round table, from which he could admire the panoramic view of Singapore and, picking up a pen, started to compile his shopping list.
Scripps chose this moment to steal up behind Lowe and brought down a 3lb camping hammer on his victim’s head in a single, crushing blow. After his capture and subsequent detainment in Changi Prison, Scripps said of the murder, ‘I think he [Lowe] was a bit surprised when I hit him. At first he thought I was mucking about. That made me mad with him because I thought that he was a homosexual. I threw him against the wall and he started to fall down. He was shaking and then he pissed himself. I knocked him about a bit, and got him to tell me his bank card PIN number. When he was in the bathroom, he was conscious. There was water dribbling from his mouth. He gurgled, or something like that.’
Without a trace of emotion, Scripps added, ‘Well, I cut his throat an’ left him to bleed to death like a pig.’
The following exchange between John Scripps and myself took place when he was in prison and under sentence of death:
CBD: ‘So, let’s get this right, John. You smash this innocent man against the wall of the room, then beat him half-senseless, or something like that. Then you drag him into the bathroom, lift him into the bath, forcing his head down to his knees. You turn on the taps, and cut through the back of his neck to paralyse him. Then, you stab him in the neck, or whatever, and let him bleed to death. Did he know what was going on, John?’
JS: ‘Do you want the fucking truth?’
CBD: ‘Yes.’
JS: ‘Yes.’
CBD: ‘Yes, what?’
JS: ‘Do you want blood out of a fuckin’ stone?’
CBD: ‘Did Mr. Lowe know what was going on?’
JS: ‘Yes! He pissed and shit himself. It made a stink. He was shitting himself. Yeah. Right. Oh, fuck it. Yeah. Really, I can’t say about it. It wasn’t good and I spewed up. He really shit himself, but he couldn’t do much about it, could he?’
CBD: ‘I suppose not, John. What did you do after you’d killed him?’
JS: ‘I cut him into parts so’s I could dump the body.’
CBD: Is it true that you used the little saw that went with your Swiss Army knife?’
JS: ‘That’s bollocks. I have a knife like that for camping. But, anyone will tell you can’t use a little saw like that for cutting carcasses.’
CBD: ‘Okay. What did you use?’
JS: ‘A six-inch boning knife. I was taught how to look after knives, you know.’
CBD: ‘Now, I know you’re telling the truth. Go on.’
JS: ‘Well, after the blood had been washed away, I took his head off. Just like a pig. It’s almost the same. You cut through the throat and twist the knife through the back of the neck. There ain’t much mess if you do it properly … I cut off his arms at the elbows. Then, I cut off his upper arms at the shoulders. You just cut through the ball and socket joints. You don’t saw anything.’
CBD: ‘And?’
JS: ‘Well, the legs. Um, on a pig you have the legs, and you have to use a saw to make … I think it’s called a “square cut”. But, honest … I just stuck the knife in and twisted and cut until the legs came away at the hip joint, I suppose. When I got to the knees, I just cut through and they snapped back so’s I could fold them up. Fuckin’ heavy stuff, right?’
After packaging the body parts in the black bin-liners Gerald Lowe had brought with him to wra
p up his duty-free purchases, Scripps deposited the bundles in the room’s only wardrobe. He liberally sprayed Lynx deodorant around the room in an attempt to mask the smell of his own vomit: It proved inadequate, for a couple who stayed in room 1511, in the days that followed, reported a strange fishy odour lingering around the room. Finally, Scripps washed his hands and cleaned up the bathroom. Again, he was not absolutely thorough and missed a few tiny spots on the shower curtain, door and toilet bowl. These traces were to provide crucial evidence when he was eventually brought to court to answer the charge of murder.
Murder, committed in this meticulous fashion, can rarely be a crime of passion. It is an eminently practical business, carried out with the studied objectivity of a professional. It requires thought, planning and an ability to attend to every detail with cold-blooded efficiency. Scripps may have left traces of his butchery in the bathroom, but he demonstrated a clinical, unhurried persistence after the event. He started by practising the forging of his victim’s signature on tracing paper.
His next move was to visit a computer shop, where he told the sales assistant he was Gerald Lowe and he wanted to buy some lap-top computers. By 9.00pm, he was back in the hotel’s River Garden Restaurant, sitting down to a plate of fillet steak and a bottle of white wine. It was a balmy evening. The string of multi-coloured lights around the patio reflected in the waters of the nearby Singapore River. John Scripps was at peace with the world.
The next morning, Scripps informed the hotel receptionist that his companion had checked out and that he would settle the bill when he left. He then went on a spending spree in Singapore’s glittering shopping malls. He threaded his way from one air-conditioned shop to another, using Lowe’s Gold card again and again. His first purchase was a pair of Aiwa speakers, and then came a pair of Nike shoes and socks, as well as a video recorder, which he arranged to be sent to his sister in England.
On the morning of 9 March, Scripps used the credit card for another shopping bonanza. He also drew S$8,400 in cash from a local bank and made a telegraphic transfer of US$11,000, to one of his accounts in San Francisco, in the name of John Martin. He used the Gold card to buy a S$30 ticket to attend the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, where he heard a programme of Brahms and Tchaikovsky. Finally, in an extraordinary whimsical but callous bid to maximise his gains, he bought five Big Sweep lottery tickets.
Later that night, he packed the dismembered body parts into a suitcase and caught a taxi to Singapore Harbour where, under the cover of darkness, he dumped the gruesome contents into the waters swirling around Clifford Pier. The next day, flush with cash, he flew to Bangkok.
* * *
Sheila Damude, a 49-year-old school administrator, from Victoria, British Columbia, had flown into Bangkok for a two-week stay with her son who was on a ‘gap’ year tour of the world. 22-year-old Darin had broken his leg while travelling with friends, and she wanted to give him some motherly attention. They had decided to take a tourist trip to the Thai ‘Paradise Island’ of Phuket.
On 15 March, mother and son arrived at Phuket Airport and were collecting their thoughts, in the usual arrival turmoil, when Scripps sidled up to them.
‘I was on the same plane as you. Do you have a problem?’ he enquired.
Within minutes, Scripps gleaned the information that Sheila and her son wanted to get to Patong Beach, but they were not sure how much to pay for a taxi.
With his marauding instincts fully attuned, Scripps, ever the experienced traveller, told them about ‘Nilly’s Marina Inn’, where a room would cost them about US$18 a night. The small luxury hotel lay on the quiet southern end of Patong Beach, one of the most popular beaches on the island. He suggested that they share a taxi with him which would give them all a cheap ride. Mother and son exchanged glances and nodded their agreement. They were clearly very impressed by this helpful young man and soon they were on their way along the dusty roads to Patong Beach.
Scripps signed himself in, at Nilly’s Marina Inn, as Simon Davis, a shopkeeper from London. No one noticed, in a revealing slip of the pen, that he had inadvertently signed his name ‘J’ Davis. The consummate traveller, he had stayed there before, always drawing admiring looks from the pretty female staff who deferred to him as ‘Mr John’.
The Damudes caught the lift to the second floor and were shown into a spacious deluxe suite overlooking the bay, a Miami Vice view with jet-skis and speed boats swooping on to white sands. Scripps took a nearby room, just across the corridor, which overlooked scrubland at the back of the hotel.
The Damudes had two king-sized beds, a well-appointed mini-bar, IDD telephone, colour television, air-conditioning and a kitchen area. There was a separate bathroom and shower and even a safe, in which they could store their valuables.
If the room was quite luxurious, especially at the low cost, the view from their window was priceless. Situated across from a long, sandy beach and a narrow road, was the crystal clear water of the Andaman Sea. Looking out from their balcony, two tall palm trees grew out of the sandy soil, where two of the local girls were breaking open the coconuts. The girls looked up and when they saw the handsome young Darin, they broke into giggles. At that moment, the Damudes thought they had found Heaven but, as the next day approached, they would be pitched into Hell.
Meanwhile, after a short walk to Patong’s exciting nightlife, the Damudes spent the evening exploring the shops for silk garments. Scripps hired a high-powered 450cc Honda motorcycle, and ended up on the seafront at The Banana Bar. Throbbing with music, the place was full of good-time girls, who would sell their young bodies for less than the price of a meal. He danced the early hours away and had sex with a young woman on the beach before retiring for the night. The Tourist Police admired his yellow and green motorcycle parked on the double-yellow lines outside the hotel and decided it was not good policy to issue a parking ticket to a holiday-maker.
During the next morning, Sheila and Darin came down for breakfast, which they ate in the sunshine. After the meal, they searched the rather dismal fish tank for signs of life, and Sheila flicked through the postcard rack for something suitable to send to her husband back home. This was the last time they were seen alive. It is believed that they returned to their room to make plans for the day ahead.
At about 11.00am, people wandering about outside the small hotel next door noted a large flood of red-coloured water flushing down an open drain that led from Nilly’s Marina Inn to the sewer under the road.
Because John Scripps has never been charged with the murders of Sheila and Darin Damude, he refused to discuss the case with me. Nevertheless, using the known evidence, it is possible to reconstruct what happened when the Damudes returned to their room at the Inn.
Scripps knocked on the door and entered their room on some pretext and, within seconds, he had stunned them with a stun-gun. Such a weapon was found in his possession when he was arrested. With his victims immobilised, he took out his hammer and beat them to death – swabs from his hammer matched bloodstains on the carpet in the room occupied by the Damudes – after which he dismembered their bodies, using the butchery skills he had learned so adroitly at Albany Prison.
After stealing his victims’ travel documents, passports and credit cards, he went on yet another shopping spree. The skulls, torsos and several limbs, belonging to the Damudes, were found between 19 and 27 March, scattered around the local countryside. Also, during this time, a Thai woman, out walking her dog in the area, found other gruesome remains, partially tipped into a disused tin mine shaft. The identity of the victims was later confirmed using dental records.
The Western world has become hardened to this kind of cold-blooded multiple murder. The gruesome details of the killings perpetrated by, for example, Kenneth McDuff, Harvey Carignan and Peter Sutcliffe, have become all too familiar. When the latest sensational murder case features in the headlines, we have the feeling that we have read it all before. Dismembered corpses, anonymous victims, apparently motiveless crime and bizarre
acts of violence have become common currency.
But this is not so in Singapore where violent crime and murder are unusual. In this draconically ordered City State, where even the pavements seem to have been scrubbed clean and where the glass of the skyscrapers sparkles spotless in the sun, crime comes in rather more sanitised forms.
Famously harsh punishment awaits those who dare to drop litter or carelessly discard chewing gum. Here, taxis are fitted with a warning bell, which rings automatically if the driver exceeds the 50mph speed limit. It is not that Singaporeans have not encountered murder before. They have their share of domestic homicide, averaging fewer than 50 murders a year in a population of two-and-a-half million. Murders committed in the heat of the moment always seem to be more understandable.
It fell to Acting Superintended Gerald Lim to lead the investigation into the crimes committed by John Scripps. At the time of Lowe’s murder, he was the senior investigating officer with the Special Investigation Section of the CID, and his work began on 13 March 1995, in Singapore Harbour, with the discovery of a pair of feet, which were poking out of a black bin-liner and tied up with a pair of large, blue, Woolworths underpants.
A boatman made the next discovery, for, bobbing among the pleasure boats, off Clifford Pier, were two thighs – white, hairy and bound with strips of orange fabric.
Finally, on 16 March, a plump, male torso was retrieved from the water. These gruesome remains belonged to the same male Caucasian body but the head and arms of the body have never been recovered.
Lim had dealt with fatal fights between immigrant building workers and he had come across domestic murder, but this was something completely and horrifyingly different. He examined the green-tinged, rotting flesh and wondered at the person who could be responsible for such cold and calculating destruction of another human being. And this body was not just headless and armless, it was nameless.
Talking with Serial Killers Page 9
