The Bus Stop Killer: Milly Dowler, Her Murder and the Full Story of the Sadistic Serial Killer Levi Bellfield

by Wansell, Geoffrey

  Bellfield’s belief that he was free to treat any woman in his life in any way he chose was gathering its own terrifying momentum. Bellfield would demand sex whenever he was in the mood: if Becky refused him he would simply hold her down and rape her. Yet at no point did Becky Wilkinson consider leaving her brutal and sexually aggressive partner, explaining to her friends that she was still ‘petrified’ of him. No matter how bad things might get, she felt powerless, because her belief was that he would only find her again and make her pay.

  And so, in spite of the violence and the repeated sexual demands, in spite of the fact that she found herself pregnant again, Becky Wilkinson didn’t finally leave Bellfield until a brutal fight broke out in June 1992. That night Bellfield raped Wilkinson at knifepoint.

  A breaking point had been reached, and Wilkinson reported the rape to the police in a thirty-six-page statement; yet tragically she was to withdraw the charges. Meanwhile, although she moved herself and the children out of the flat, the trauma was far from over. It wasn’t long before Bellfield had tracked her down. Breaking into the new home where she was staying, he waited for her return. Once more, Bellfield raped her, explaining it was ‘to teach her a lesson’.

  The couple struggled along together – on and off, although rather more off than on – over the ensuing years, and Bellfield’s uncanny ability to hypnotize her into obeying his every demand remained, but he began to spread his net ever wider in his search for women to control.

  A decade later, when Colin Sutton’s double murder squad were investigating the murder of Amélie Delagrange, they asked Becky if she would be prepared to go to court to repeat her version of her relationship with Bellfield between 1989 and that June evening in 1992. Despite admitting that the thought of him made her shake with fear, Wilkinson bravely decided to help the police. It was her accusations of rape against Bellfield, alongside those of Emma Mills, that were to help the police keep their suspect in jail at the end of 2004, as they investigated the murder of Amélie Delagrange.

  Becky Wilkinson may have been one of Levi Bellfield’s first victims, and one whose abuse was committed under the very noses of the local police. She was not to be his last.

  5. The Master and His Slaves

  There are some solitary wretches who seem to have left the rest of mankind, only, as Eve left Adam, to meet the devil in private.

  Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects

  No matter how terrified and alone the women in Levi Bellfield’s life may have felt when he beat them, abused them, locked them in their houses, kept them without money and controlled every aspect of their waking lives; they still continued to do everything in their power to remain his partner.

  Becky Wilkinson put up with fifteen years of relentless abuse, bearing Bellfield no fewer than four children and accepting the violence that he rained down on her with barely a flicker of anger. For his part Bellfield kept the willing young barmaid who had become the mother of his children on a string – charming at one moment, monster the next, keeping her off balance so that she could not decide what she truly felt about him from one moment to the next. This was a man who was capable of beating her to within an inch of consciousness at one moment, but who also went out and had the word ‘Becky’ tattooed on the lower part of his left leg.

  Bellfield’s mind games with women were to become the signature of his adult life – a brutal, heartless and deliberate process to make sure that they obeyed his every command and were never not under his control. He insisted that they should not see other men, but that was only the excuse, a cover for his determination that each and every one of them should be his creature. He was to be their master, they were his slaves.

  Though Bellfield kept the women in his life separate and usually alone with their children, he himself was nothing if not gregarious. He was no hooded loner stalking the streets of west London – quite the opposite. He liked nothing more than the company of his fellow bouncers at whatever nightclub he happened to be working at, as well as the men he worked with laying tarmac, building fences or cementing crazy paving. He was not a man who shut himself away from ordinary society, harbouring dark fantasies in the privacy of a solitary room. When he felt like it – which was often – Bellfield also took pleasure in being a cheerful family man who enjoyed the company of his children and who liked to take them to Toys ‘R’ Us to buy them presents. This was a man who knew only too well how to fit in and preserve his place as a member of the local community.

  After all, that was what travellers had always done. They were loyal to fellow travellers, sought out their company, did their best to protect each other from what they saw as the criticisms of ‘ordinary’ society and felt themselves to be a part of a distinct community, one with its own traditions, rules and behaviour. It was attitude that each and every traveller accepted without question. Bellfield was no exception.

  Whether it was drinking in one of his favourite pubs, of which there were many across west London, working together or even committing crimes together, Bellfield perpetually felt himself to be one of a group. ‘Lee was always one of us,’ one of his fellow bouncers would remember later. ‘He liked to be liked, and he was. There was a smile, and the odd rude comment, and he liked the company of men. He didn’t have much time for women – except to shag them.’

  It was that sense of belonging to an all-male ‘community’ that he commemorated by covering himself with a set of tattoos, as if to prove his membership but also to underline his power. Two of his tattoos hinted at the devil in him. On the upper part of his right arm, Bellfield had a tattoo of a devil wearing a pair of boxing gloves and another of a similar devil wearing boxer’s shorts with the name ‘Levi’ embroidered across the waistband. For good measure he also had a tattoo on the same right arm commemorating his favourite football club, Tottenham Hotspur. Not unlike some of the more extreme football hooligans, Bellfield liked nothing more than to belong to an exclusively male society and bathed contentedly in the testosterone-driven machismo and potential violence that it offered. It reinforced his feeling that all men were superior to women – except when it came to their mothers. He was always in awe of his mother, Jean.

  But Bellfield’s delight in the company of men who weren’t afraid of violence meant that he usually associated with men whose attitude to women could be both exploitative and abusive. They confirmed and accepted his desires, and that, in turn, fuelled his escalating habit of stalking young women. His stalking provided his friends with sexual conquests too. If young girls were ‘begging for it’ then there could be nothing wrong in satisfying their desires, even if they didn’t know he and his friends were doing so. In Bellfield’s mind the provision of young women for the sexual gratification of his male friends was simply an extension of his providing them with drugs – which had become one of his sidelines during his years with Becky Wilkinson.

  Bellfield’s interest in drugs did not end with cannabis, cocaine or heroin, however, for he was also well aware that the ‘date-rape’ drugs GHB and Rohypnol (always known as ‘roofies’) were also readily available and had their uses, especially when it came to sexually abusing naive and innocent young women.

  What could be more natural for a bouncer at a west London nightclub than to know that drugs of all kinds were available and could easily be provided? For Bellfield it was just another opportunity for a ‘deal’ in the twilight, illegal world that made up his life, another opportunity to tie his male friends ever closer to him and to manipulate any young woman who came across his bows.

  The more Bellfield succeeded in making himself ‘indispensable’ to his male friends, the more secure he became. But the ‘services’ he provided to some of his friends didn’t stop at providing them with sex, cannabis, cocaine, GHB or ‘roofies’. There was also the offer of violence. If ever any of his friends were intimidated they knew only too well that Bellfield would be only too happy to provide a little muscle to fight back against anyone who tried to frighten them. ‘Lee was a t
errific enforcer,’ one fellow bouncer admitted later. ‘He could terrify the wits out of almost anyone, and wasn’t afraid to use violence to make a point. He loved a fight.’

  Bellfield also had an appetite for weapons. He liked to brag about a brass knuckle-duster that he kept in the glove box of whatever car or van he happened to be driving that day, just as he always kept a baseball bat in the boot. That wasn’t all. There were also guns, notably a shotgun, as well as a machete and a samurai sword. Bellfield’s appetite for weapons almost matched his enthusiasm for drugs – for they both contributed to ensuring that he remained the alpha male within his group of friends, the man who could ‘sort things out’ or ‘get things done’ when the going got a little rowdy or violent.

  Throughout his twenties, Bellfield was establishing his reputation as a local ‘Jack the Lad’. As one of the girls he came across was to say, ‘Levi had this reputation for being a drug-dealer and a gangster,’ and he loved the image he had created – even to the extent of getting his own personalized number plate, LEV 135V, which had been attached to a white Ford Escort van, but which he transferred to a black and then a white BMW.

  Bellfield’s sense of being an ‘outsider’ was then overlaid by his mother’s intense interest in him. What is not in doubt is that, during Bellfield’s adolescence, his rapidly developing sexuality was almost certainly encouraged by his mother Jean’s proud nurturing of him and his ego. This, in turn, fanned his self-belief into a form of narcissism. Bellfield came to believe that women – other than his mother – were no more than playthings, to be taken for granted, used and abused, but never to be treated as human beings. Many years later he memorably told a fellow prison inmate that they were no more than ‘pet dogs’, adding: ‘You feed them, you keep them, you can do what you want with them.’ It was the response of a man whose psyche was still rooted in his narcissistic adolescence: a man who would go on to attack young schoolgirls.

  One young woman who witnessed that at first hand was Johanna Collings, a keen young horsewoman from Strawberry Hill, west London – barely half a mile from Twickenham Green – who first encountered him when he was working as a bouncer at Rocky’s nightclub in Cobham in the spring of 1995.

  Collings was twenty-three and living with her mother in a comfortable suburban house, while Bellfield was twenty-six and flitting between addresses – including his mother’s house, the flat he still, notionally, shared with Becky Wilkinson and their children, and the flats and houses of his other friends. Collings had known Becky as one of the local girls since she was eighteen. They had met at a local nightclub in Twickenham then known as Cellars, where Bellfield worked as a bouncer. She was also well aware of his reputation with women – and his appetite for violence. However, none of that knowledge put Collings off embarking on a relationship with Levi Bellfield.

  Small for her age, at just 5 feet 3 inches, with muscular arms and dirty dyed blonde hair, Collings fitted Bellfield’s preferred sexual stereotype – blonde, a little naive, still lived at home. She even looked a little like a schoolgirl.

  Inevitably, Bellfield ensnared his latest victim as he did so many others – by flattering her while she waited in line to get into the nightclub he happened to be doorman for at the time. In fact this time he acted as her ‘Prince Charming’ – in her words – comforting her when she was crying in the car park outside the club after being dumped by a current boyfriend. In her heart she may have known it was a line, but her vulnerability trumped the suspicion.

  Whatever Bellfield’s motive, the two hit it off, and he moved in with her almost straightaway. The prospect of living in a comfortable suburban villa in Strawberry Hill rather than a cramped flat clearly must have appealed to the peripatetic bouncer, even if it did mean sharing it with her recently widowed mother, Sheila, who was then fifty-nine.

  Within a short time of Bellfield’s moving into her mother’s house Collings realized that she was pregnant with a child, but as soon as that happened his attitude towards her changed dramatically. Just as it had done with Wilkinson, her pregnancy and the thought of fatherhood seemed to enrage him.

  Bellfield would kick and punch her on a very frequent basis, Collings was to explain, regardless of whether he was drunk or sober, and without any provocation. It was a pattern that was to repeat itself time after time, yet out of fear for her life Collings did not report the assaults to the police. Despite the degradation, humiliation and pain she could not bring herself to tell anyone.

  The pattern of their relationship and Bellfield’s power over the young woman who was to bear a daughter, in February 1996, was fixed in stone, and it would never change. He made sure the surname was Bellfield on the birth certificate.

  Sheila Collings watched her daughter’s ordeal at Bellfield’s hands from close quarters, and it horrified her, yet there was nothing that she could do. Her daughter was in thrall to the mountainous nightclub bouncer who could seduce a woman without apparent difficulty, even if he was then revealed as a violent abuser almost before they could blink. As so many women were to confirm after Bellfield’s arrest, he could ‘charm the birds from the trees when it suited him’.

  That was Bellfield’s good side. In the months after their daughter’s birth Collings saw the bad, as he would hit her for absolutely no reason. As with his other partners, sometimes Bellfield could display remorse. He could be apologetic and possibly buy Collings flowers but on other occasions he would hit the bruises he had given her.

  Bellfield conducted a systematic, sustained campaign to intimidate and control the young horsewoman who had become the mother of a daughter. Like Becky Wilkinson before her, Collings was raped repeatedly by Bellfield. She was even to tell the Sun newspaper that he had effectively made her his ‘sex slave’ for two and a half years of their relationship. As she later revealed to the press, ‘Usually he would wrap his belt round my throat and choke me and rape me. He would make me do whatever he wanted. I’d be told to “be a good little slut”. Levi used lit cigarettes on me, beat me with pool cues and ashtrays, threw me down the stairs and even once took a claw hammer to my body.’ Johanna said she became so terrified of Bellfield that just hearing his key in the front door made her wet herself. She added: ‘Until you’ve known that sort of fear, you can’t understand what I went through.’

  Though she didn’t recognize it at the time, these outbursts of domestic rape and violence were a clear sign that Bellfield’s desire to harm women was escalating rapidly. He was becoming ever more prepared to ignore the law, or the conventions of society, in his desire to take his form of revenge on the female sex.

  Yet, remarkably, both Collings and Becky Wilkinson were aware of his reputation before they even embarked on their relationships with him, and both tried repeatedly to sustain those relationships even when they knew he had moved on to a new partner. Throughout her time with Bellfield, for example, Collings repeatedly put up with Wilkinson coming to her mother’s house in Strawberry Hill, searching for Bellfield. On one occasion Bellfield even started giving Wilkinson a ‘battering’ when she came to find him at Collings’s house. The spell Bellfield cast over both women saw them unable to shake free of his grasp – even though both knew – from bitter experience – exactly the violence he was capable of.

  The truth remains that Jo Collings and Becky Wilkinson put up with the fact that they knew of each other’s existence, and that Bellfield was having a sexual relationship with both of them at the same time, as well as relationships with other women. Both were trying desperately to cling to a man whose only apparent interest for large periods of the time was to abuse them – and the means they used to hang on to Bellfield was to bear him more children.

  Becky Wilkinson’s second daughter, Levi-Jane, was born shortly before Bellfield started a relationship with Collings, but while he was having an affair with one of her friends. Wilkinson’s third daughter, Hannah, was born after Bellfield started his relationship with Collings, and her fourth, Jacqui, while he was still in the relationship w
ith Collings. Meanwhile Collings’s first daughter was born before the birth of Wilkinson’s fourth daughter with Bellfield, while her son, Henry, was born after Bellfield had embarked on a relationship with Emma Mills, who was pregnant at the same time by him.

  The bleak reality is that both Collings and Wilkinson were prepared to pay almost any price to cling on to the 20-stone nightclub bouncer – and they were only too prepared to bear his children. And the reason Bellfield made sure to keep in touch with both women was straightforward – to sustain his sense of control over them, but, even more importantly, to make sure that they didn’t tell the police exactly how vicious and abusive he’d been towards them.

  When Collings’s son Henry was born in July 1997, Bellfield was present at the birth, but – as usual – paid little or no attention, beyond ensuring once again that his name was on the birth certificate. He was proud of his parentage, even if he despised the mothers of his children.

  As Jo Collings was finally to admit years later, ‘Levi kept on saying, “I hate blondes, I hate women. You’re all cunts. You’re not worth a bolt.” ’ They were words that she was to remember all too clearly in the light of the other things Bellfield confessed to her in months to come at the house they shared in Strawberry Hill.

  6. The Alleyway Stalker

  ‘The only shame is to have none.’

  Pascal, Pensées

  At the bottom of the garden of the house that Johanna Collings shared with her mother and Levi Bellfield in the mid 1990s in Strawberry Hill, west London, runs a secluded footpath that stretches from the local railway station down beside the tracks towards a set of railway sidings and the next station at Teddington. It’s an ordinary enough alleyway, covered in dark tarmac, with a mesh wire fence on one side – to prevent its pedestrian users from risking the dangers of the tracks – and wooden fences on the other, protecting the gardens of the houses on Strawberry Hill Road. It runs for about 600 yards, wriggling both left and right. Bright, light and harmless enough during the day – with boys on bicycles using it as a shortcut and mothers walking their dogs – it nevertheless becomes distinctly more threatening as darkness falls. For the few street lights are sometimes as much as 40 yards apart and do little to illuminate its spectral shadows, enclosed as the alleyway is by the trees and shrubs of the gardens and the undergrowth that lines the tracks. If you walk down it at dusk there is no denying that it brings a faint shiver to your spine, for there is something unsettling about its verdant secrecy, hiding as it does at the end of the gardens of a row of supremely respectable Victorian villas.