Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
This is a ten-part crossover series written and created by Murder Mile and True Crime Enthusiast. Parts A to F (covering the murders that serial killer Patrick MacKay confessed or was suspected of) are available via Murder Mile, and Parts 1 to 4 (covering the murders he was convicted of, as well as his life, his upbringing and his trial is available via the True Crime Enthusiast podcast.
PATRICK MACKAY: TWO SIDES OF A PSYCHOPATH: This is Part F of F of Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath, about the killing of Ivy Davies. On the night of Sunday 3rd of February 1975, between 10:30pm and midnight, 48-year-old café owners and single parent of seven children Ivy Davies was brutally beaten to death in her own home by an unknown assailant. It has remained unsolved for 50 years. But was it British serial killer Patrick MacKay and one of the eight additional killings he was suspected of or confessed to? This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.
Part F of F by Murder Mile covers the murder of Stephanie Britton & Christopher Martin:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: In the lead up to his trial in November 1975, 23-year-old Patrick MacKay – the drunk, the druggie, the bully, and the pointless petty thief who many said would amount to nothing - had become a celebrity. Mackay was front-page news for almost a year; with his stage-managed photos under every headline, his confession of “I killed eleven people” printed in bold, his memoir repeated verbatim, his nicknames cementing his legacy, and his name preceded by maniac, monster, psychopath and now serial killer. What began as a petty and pathetic series of half-witted robberies to fund his alcoholism, culminated in an 18-month “campaign of violence and terror” with the bulk committed in the last two months. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t neat, and possibly spawned from the accidental killing of Isabella Griffiths in a short burst of rage (as any of the 23+ old frail ladies he robbed and assaulted could have been), the press bought the lie, as MacKay wasn’t a thug, but a bright, erudite storyteller who sought infamy. Questioned by Detective Superintendent John Bland at Brixton Prison in April 1975, MacKay admitted “all I want to do is to be frank and honest”, having admitted to three provable murders, “but before I start, I have got another murder I want to get off my mind” – being the drowning of a homeless man at Hungerford Bridge, and confessing or suspected of a total of eight, that took his tally to eleven kills. It was the moment which made him famous, but caught in a series of lies, he would also be forgotten. Title: Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath – Part F. His arrest record dating back to when he was 12 was hardly the stuff of legend; 1964, aged 12, he got 3-years’ probation for stealing garden ornaments and setting fire to a church curtain; 1966, a 12-month discharge for breaking a window; 1968, 2-years’ probation for GBH and 1 day’s prison for robbing a boy of a watch; 1973, three convictions, burglary (while drunk) and issuing a forged cheque, possessing an offensive weapon (while drunk) and damage to property (while drunk and disorderly), with his longest stretch being 4 months for burgling Reverand Brack’s vicarage where he stole nothing. Luckily for him, the newspapers were too distracted by the unprovable details of his alleged cruelty to animals and his so-called obsession with the Nazis to explore his paltry criminal past, or his confession. Of the eight murders he was suspected of or confessed to; Heidi Mnilk’s case was high profile, so parts he could recall, but still he got details wrong, and there was no proof he was there; he confessed to Mary Hynd’s, but had to be coerced by detectives; Stephanie Britton & Christopher Martin he denied killing, possibly to protect his legacy; Leslie Goodman he confessed only to the robbery, maybe to give his murders a sense of mystery; and Sarah Rodmell, he denied, perhaps owing to the sexual assault. Or, he could be innocent of all six of those murders, as there’s no solid evidence to convict him. As for the unnamed homeless man he supposedly drowned, MacKay said “I lost my temper. I grabbed him by his pants and neck, and heaved him over the edge… the water sprayed up. He must have gone under, and then I saw him come up. He started splashing… and went under again”. Police pulled three bodies from the river, none matched his description. But as a film fan who was inspired by the 1970s craze for serial killer movies, A Clockwork Orange was withdrawn from circulation in 1973 due to copy-cat violence, especially one scene where a homeless man is murdered. So was MacKay’s story a lie? It made perfect sense for MacKay to lie about killing ‘eleven people’, of which eight, he later denied. Of the killers who existed in his era or were popular in the crime books he read; George Chapman ‘The Borough Poisoner’, Trevor Hardy ‘The Beast of Manchester’; Ronald Jebson the ‘Babes in the Wood’ killer, John Straffen (who was Britain’s longest serving prisoner until MacKay) and Graham Young ‘The Tea Cup poisoner’, all had three confirmed kills, but are still largely forgotten by the general public. Whereas to be infamous and cement his everlasting legacy, three confirmed kills wouldn’t be enough; John George Haigh ‘the Acid Bath murderer’ had 6, John Reginald Christie of 10 Rillington Place had 8, Thomas Neil Cream and the Moors Murderers both had 5, Gordon Cummins ‘The Blackout Ripper’ had 4 but is mostly unknown due to the war, Jack the Ripper had an unprovable canonical 5 (although who needs proof with a sensationalist story), and with a new breed of killers – like The Zodiac with 5 and Edmund Kemper with 10 – by tomorrow, MacKay’s forgotten headlines could be used to wrap chips. MacKay would have known that his pitiful backstory lacked credibility, that his accusations of sadism were paper-thin, that his photos and quotes were clearly curated, that many detectives felt he was “an inveterate liar” who “lies about trivial matters, even when it is unnecessary”, and - with all three killings he was convicted of being manslaughters, not murders – his ploy could easily be picked apart. Since his release from Wandsworth Prison, having planned a “campaign of violence and terror”, across January to March 1975, there was a clear escalation in his attacks on wealthy elderly ladies across Chelsea, Belgravia and Finchley - with an erroneous attack on Sunday 3rd of February 1975 at Red Lion Square in Holborn where he violently robbed a lady on her doorstep of £25 and an ‘inscribed silver pen’. His robberies were an almost daily event, ending with the killing of Father Crean on 21st of March. When arrested at the Cowdrey’s home at 48 Grantham Road in Stockwell, MacKay was sat on the sofa, hungover, and when asked what he would do that day, he said “dunno, probably get pissed again”. By then, MacKay had killed three people; so why did he stop, why did he then confess to killing eight more, and then, withdrew his confession? Of those he either confessed to or was suspected of - they were all as similar in method and motive as they were dissimilar, and as provable in evidence as they were disprovable - but unlike the first seven killings, the eighth had one thing that the others lacked… …DNA evidence. Ivy Lillian Davies, known to her customers as ‘Aunty Ivy’ was a 48-year-old café owner from the seaside town of Westcliff-on-Sea on the south-east coast of England in the county of Essex; 50 miles west of MacKay’s hunting ground of Chelsea and Belgravia, and 28 miles north of his hometown of Dartford. Born on the 30th of December 1926, little was reported about her early years, but described as a well-liked and popular woman with a bubbly personality and a “good morning” for everyone, there was a great pain in her heart and an intense loneliness she would hide from her few friends and customers. In her early twenties, having met and married a soldier whose surname was Slark, Ivy had lived a very unsettled life being bounced between Army bases over the UK, as the Cold War slowly heated up. As a squaddie’s wife, she had just one purpose, to bear children, and from the late 1940s, eight would follow; Patricia, Ivy Junior, Susan, Victor, David, Stephen and Carol, with Karen dying aged 3 months. With no money, no freedom, and a husband who was physically violent and mentally abusive to this small dark-haired woman with thick-rimmed glasses, for the sake of her children, Ivy sustained more than a decade of torment and torture at the hands of a brute, by taking the beatings to protect them. In 1960, plucking up a gallon of courage, Ivy divorced him, and moving from Yorkshire in the north of England, she fled from his fists to the seaside town of Westcliff-on-sea to start again, as a single mother of seven young children, who – when and if she had a second to herself - earned money as a waitress. Her whole family needed a fresh start, and although an old fashioned and impoverished poor part of the country whose main income was furnished by a throng of tourists in the summer months, its sandy beaches, crisp sea air and seaside fairs made it a good place for a young family living on benefits. But always seeking love, the next man in Ivy’s life came with a complication none of them had anticipated. Again, being a soldier, this time based in nearby Shoeburyness, he loved Ivy and wanted to marry her, but being transferred to Colchester, he flatly refused to raise another man’s child, and Ivy had seven. Why she made this decision is something we can never know; maybe she was terrified of loneliness, was bullied by another brute into making a bad choice or was traumatised by the abuse she’d suffered, but with the exception of her two eldest daughters – Patricia and Ivy Junior - her five youngest children were put into care at the Seaview Children’s Home in Shoeburyness, with Vic’, her eldest of three sons, ending up in foster care, where he suffered abuse, which changed the course of his life for the worse. Vic later said “she wasn’t the angel they made her out to be”, she was ‘cold’ to those the children she had abandoned, and with the relationship with the soldier lasting just eight months, although she tried to get Susan, Victor, David, Stephen and Carol back from foster care, Social Services had said no. This was the side of her life that she hide from her customers, with her face always bright and bubbly… …when her heart was plagued with guilt and regret. Despite her past, Ivy made the best of her present in Westcliff-on-Sea, an old fashioned seaside town full of hotels, B&Bs, a golden mile of arcades and fairs with a famous pier, and in the Orange Tree, a ‘greasy spoon’ café – on the Western Esplanade and built into the railway arches – since 1968, she’d worked for Ernest Hasler as a waitress, but in 1972, having saved up enough, she became the owner. Nicknamed ‘Aunty Ivy’, she was a popular and well-liked face in Westcliff. With the café far from busy off-season, she made ends meet by working part-time as a school cleaner, she had a small but close circle of friends who she played bingo with, and plagued by loneliness, she had started dating again. And although she had fought to rebuild her life, she was haunted by her past. In 1965, when her son Vic’ was just 8 years old, he tried to rekindle a small hint of a relationship with his estranged mother. It’s something this young boy would do for almost decade, even though it was strained and frosty. But by the January of 1975, with Vic’s life having hit the skids and descended into a petty theft, aged 18, when Ivy found out that he had been locked up in a Young Offenders Institute in Northampton, she wrote him a letter. He recalled “it was a ‘Dear John’ letter… she said she was disgusted with me, and told me she never wanted to see me again”. For the second time in his life, his mother had rejected him, and with her brutal murder just days away, as much as he would want to, he never saw her again. Sunday 3rd of February 1975 was a typical late winter’s day being mild with a little drizzle. At 6am, as was her routine, 48-year-old Ivy opened up The Orange Tree café. Being off-season, it was quiet except for the usual crowd ordering fry-ups, scrambled eggs, beans on toast and mugs of tea. It was an unexceptional day, just as the week and month prior had been, with no incidents or strangers. At 5:30pm, the sun-set as Ivy locked-up the café, and although a business owner, as women couldn’t have their own a bank accounts until later that year (thanks to the Sexual Discrimination Act of 1975), wearing a blue-green dress, she was seen by her friend, Ernest Hasler, carrying the day’s takings – and although that moment would have been the perfect opportunity for a thief, nobody robbed her. By 6pm, again as was typical, she returned home, alone, to 21A Holland Road, a little bungalow neatly hidden behind a set of two-storey Victorian houses - a place you could only find, if you knew about it. That evening, she had planned to meet up at Palace Bingo in Southend with Margaret Jewry, a friend and fellow café owner who was the mother of the pop star Alvin Stardust, who looked remarkably like her, but instead, she stayed at home, made a cuppa, and having hidden the takings in her oven (which she did every day, as she didn’t have a safe), having got into her nightdress, she watched the telly. On ATV, at 7pm was ‘Master Of Melody’, at 7:25pm was ‘Sunday Night At The London Palladium’, at 8:20pm was ‘Once Before I Die’, a 1966 war drama starring Ursula Andress, with the news at 10:15pm, and closedown at 10:30pm. We’ve no idea what she watched, or who she may have watched it with… …but right there, on the rug, it’s likely her killer had left his DNA. At 10:30am the next morning, when Madeline, a friend of Ivy’s daughter Pat noticed that the café was still locked, with the help of Ivy’s neighbour Stella Zammitt, they gained access to the bungalow with her own keys, and Madeline screamed as Stella ran out crying “oh god, there’s blood everywhere”. Ivy had been brutalised by a ‘maniac’, and her killing sent shockwaves across this small seaside town. With the investigation headed up by Detective Chief Inspector Peter Croxford of Southend CID, motive was key to establish. Ivy was described as “a gentle lady who wouldn’t hurt a soul”, and “a very lonely person who didn’t have any real friends”, but with no signs of a break in and the door locked from the outside, Vic’ stated “she wouldn’t open the door to anyone”, so it’s unlikely she had let a stranger in. As for theft, DCI Croxford said “jewellery was left on the television set… and £20 in cash nearby”, a red or white purse was missing, and £1800 (or £19,800 today) was found in the oven where she’d left it. The rooms hadn’t been ransacked, but then maybe this was a kill for thrills, or a robbery gone wrong? No break-in, no theft, a superficial ransacking, and no clear motive – but was it MacKay? Found slumped on her living room settee, dressed in her nightdress, although her killer had attempted to strangle her with an unstated ligature, Ivy had been brutally bludgeoned about the head by “a heavy object with considerable force”. Blood had spattered up the walls, across the ceiling, over the floor, and with her skull smashed open, someone had attacked her with a hatred, or a short burst of rage. With detectives keeping the weapon a secret to snare the killer when questioned, the press wrongly claimed it was “an axe” - which is why it may have been linked to Father Crean’s killing - when it was a 20-inch-long, 3lb pry bar made of high tensile steel, used by mechanics in factories with gear wheels. It didn’t belong in the house, yet it had been dumped in a curtained alcove, not far from the body. The crime scene was strange, but this wasn’t the oddest detail about Ivy’s senseless killing; as with Dr Cameron the pathologist putting her time of death at ‘around midnight’, with the TV schedule finishing 90 minutes before, her killer may have put the telly on to obfuscate his true intent, and although, no sexual assault was detected on this semi-clad woman, on the rug before her, lay a semen stain… …but being two decades before DNA was used in modern policing, it was missed by forensics. In total, 3000 people were interviewed, 300 friends, family and associates were fingerprinted, a false sighting of Ivy at Palace Bingo in Southend turned out to be her doppelganger, Margaret Jewry, and – of the Police’s likely suspects – her son Vic’ had a cast iron alibi being in prison, a PhotoFIt of a late 30s man with greying sandy blond hair pointed to an innocent café regular, a “tall, dark-haired man in his early 30s” (similar to the man thought to be MacKay, as previously seen as The Mercer’s) was spotted near the train station, and although – after his confession – Detective Superintendent Simon Dinsdale stated Mackay “was a figure in the investigation… but as some kind of vagrant, he was ruled out”. Detective Chief inspector Ray Newman confirmed, “he wasn’t seen as a likely or a possible suspect”. On the 7th of April 1975 at Southend Coroner’s Court, after just five minutes, the jury returned a verdict that she was “murdered by person or persons unknown”, and although the investigation continued, soon every lead would be exhausted. Ivy Davies was buried at Sutton Road cemetery on 17th of April… …and until further evidence or a confession presented itself, the case had stalled. Over the years, many theories and sightings have been presented. In 2017, a former waitress at the café claimed Ivy was killed by was an escaped patient from Runwell mental hospital posing as a doctor who said his name was Patrick MacKay. Ivy’s son, Vic, also said detectives told him “Mackay had signed on the dole in Southend”, which proved he was nearby during the week of her murder. But this could be Police coercion as seen in Mary Hynds’s murder, as we know where he was the night Ivy was killed. In the unreliable book, Psychopath, it states “MacKay said he knew the café and admitted that he had contemplated robbing Mrs Davies… but he had not been in Southend since 1972”, even though there no provable origin for this quote, coming from the source who said MacKay had visited ‘The Mercer’s. Several newspapers also state “MacKay had bragged in Brixton Prison about Ivy’s murder”, but again, there’s no name, no date and no origin for this quote, and although sensational and feeding the legacy MacKay crafted, it also lets her real killer walk free, having never been punished for his heinous crime. In 2025, Vic, Ivy’s son told tabloid newspaper The Sun: “the way she was killed was his MO. She was ripped apart on one side of the body. Whoever did it had undressed my mother, put her in a nightdress and put her on her bad side, then turned the TV on”. Details which don’t appear in any other reliable source, but also (if true) facts which point to this not being a killing by MacKay, but by a sexual sadist. On an unspecified date in May 1975, after his infamous (but shaky) confession, MacKay was driven in a police van to the Orange Tree café in Westcliff-on-sea and Ivy’s home at 21A Holland Road. He stated he didn’t recognise either, and wrote in his memoir, “I was never charged with this and I would think not too. It certainly wasn’t me they wanted”. Which makes sense as it’s unlikely he was even there. On the night of Sunday 3rd of February 1975, after Ivy had locked-up her café and headed home, Patrick MacKay – a 6 foot 2 inch, stoutly built, mixed race man with a soft voice, who never disguised his face in any of his attacks – robbed an elderly lady on the doorstep of her home in Red Lion Square, Holborn in London. He stole £25 and an ‘inscribed silver pen’, and she later identified her robber as Mackay. Why would he kill a stranger in a place he barely knew, and how could he be in two places at once? The most likely theory was that, being lonely and dating again, Ivy had invited a man back to her home. In 2005, 30 years after her murder, with this cold case being re-investigated, Police discovered that when Ivy’s bungalow was cleared out, a neighbour had kept her bloodied rug. It hadn’t been touched in decades, and with advances in forensic technology, on it was not only Ivy’s blood, but a semen stain. As a convicted murderer, Patrick MacKay’s DNA had been retrospectively added to the database after it was set-up in 1995, along with his fingerprints. A comparison was made, but it didn’t link to him. In November 2006, Essex Police arrested a 68-year-old unnamed man from Basildon who lived near Ivy at the time, and according to John Lucas’ reliable book on MacKay: “when Ivy rebuffed his advances, he lashed out with the pry bar. Covered in blood, he crept back to his own house… confessed to his partner, and she returned with him to Ivy’s house to make the scene look like a burglary”. But lacking sufficient evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge him, and he was bailed. MacKay was charged with two of the eight additional murders, only this was not one of them… …but that’s also part of the problem with his legacy as a serial killer, that he’d made his name as a liar. While incarcerated, MacKay was approached by an associate of Stanley Rogers, who was awaiting trial for the murder of 10-year-old Alison Chadwick whose body was found in a sack. MacKay was offered £15,000 and £20 per week for 15 years to confess to the killing, but tried to blackmail Rogers instead. MacKay was “an inveterate liar”, everybody knew it, and although he’d told Detective Superintendent Bland that he was “relieved that at last I was telling someone what I had done”, he later said, “I deny any killings other than the three I admit. I can’t recall any incident categorically linking me to these”. Tried at the Old Bailey on Friday the 21st of November 1975 in Court Two, this minor celebrity wouldn’t get the attention he desired or required to fully cement his legacy, as with his legal team fighting to get him convicted of ‘manslaughter by diminished responsibility’ and not ‘murder’ to ensure he would be sent to a psychiatric hospital rather than a prison, his confession to killing eleven was dismissed. In a short and perfunctory trial, MacKay was declared sane, and diagnosed with a ‘severe psychopathic disorder’ but not a mental illness, convicted of the manslaughters of Adele Price, Isabella Griffiths and Father Anthony Crean, Justice Milmo sentenced him to a minimum of three life sentences to be served concurrently, and held on Her Majesty’s Pleasure, he was warned that he many never be released. The killings of Heidi Mnilk, Mary Hynds, Stephanie Britton, Christopher Martin, Leslie Goodman, Sarah Rodmell, Ivy Davies and the unnamed homeless man (if he existed) remain unsolved. Of those, MacKay stated “I’m glad I wasn’t done for those others”, and although unprovable, Scotland Yard said “we are satisfied that he is responsible for 10 killings” with the only one they didn’t think was him being Heidi’s. MacKay was never sent to Broadmoor – alongside the likes of Peter Sutcliffe, Robert Maudsley, and later Peter Bryan and Daniel Gonzalez – instead, being sane but volatile, he served his time in Category A prisons, where as “one of the most violent prisoners”, he attacked staff and held a teacher hostage. In March 1995, at the end of his minimum term, an Independent Parole Board declared “his risk is too high to be safely managed in the community”, so he remained behind bars, later making him “the UK's longest-serving continuous prisoner”. But growing older and passive, since 2017 he has been housed at HMP Leyhill, a low-security men’s open prison, and has been seen on monitored day trips in Bristol. Now aged 73 and changing his name to David Groves, it is uncertain whether he will ever be released. He’s the man that the law is too terrified to release, that society doesn’t want back, and with the truth about his crimes barely known to the wider public, as Vic’, Ivy’s son sums-up "everyone knows he did more. He hasn’t shown any remorse" – even though there no hard evidence to prove that he had. So, why isn’t Patrick MacKay as infamous as other killers like Shipman, Christie or Haigh? (End) Like his life, his legacy had no consistency. As a boy, his early crimes were nothing more than random acts of robbery to fund his alcoholism, with the sadistic cruelty (he was later famous for) only were there to gain attention. He was lost, alone, confused, angry, and bounced between institutions which didn’t care about him, being told that he was worth nothing, and diagnosed as a psychopath aged 11, he was ignored, except when he was bad. Like his robberies, his killings were unplanned. The first, Isabella Grffiths, was a rage-fuelled robbery which went wrong; the second, Adele Price, was similar (as many others could have been); Father Crean’s killing was personal, and then MacKay quit, as he couldn’t commit to anything, even murder. And that’s the problem, not only did he repeatedly lie, not only did he fail to provide proof, but also, in all of his murders - whether he was convicted of, confessed to, or suspected of - all are inconsistent. In his own memoir written before his trial, MacKay acknowledged “my life was wasted. I now realise that it is now wasted forever to rot… when I look at myself, I could put a bullet through my head for the kind of bloody life that I have had, but I do not know who would do me that service. I have often thought to myself, whenever I am alone, that it would be the best thing I could ever have done”, as all he brought to the world was pain and misery to others – like his father – and his legacy was ruined. With just three confirmed kills to his name, MacKay has been usurped in the pantheon of serial killers; as Nilsen had 12, Sutcliffe had 13, Dahmer had 17, Bundy had 20, and Shipman had 218 confirmed. If he had really killed 11, he would be infamous, but being convicted not of murder but the lesser charge of manslaughter, not being ‘wilful murders’, his manslaughters make him ineligible to be a serial killer. As a late decision to make something of his life, MacKay had pushed his luck just a little too far… …so now, he’s not remembered as a infamous serial killer, but as a serial liar. That was the final part of Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath by Murder Mile UK True Crime. Parts 1 of 4 (covering in detail the killings of Father Crean, Isabella Griffith and Adele Price, as well as MacKay’s life, crimes and trial) are available now via as part of this cross-over series with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast, with all six parts by Murder Mile available now also. Just search ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’, or click on the link in the show-notes. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
48 Ash Grove in Hackney (far right) before demolition
This is a ten-part crossover series written and created by Murder Mile and True Crime Enthusiast. Parts A to F (covering the murders that serial killer Patrick MacKay confessed or was suspected of) are available via Murder Mile, and Parts 1 to 4 (covering the murders he was convicted of, as well as his life, his upbringing and his trial is available via the True Crime Enthusiast podcast.
PATRICK MACKAY: TWO SIDES OF A PSYCHOPATH: This is Part E of F of Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath, about the killing of Sarah Rodmell. On the night of Saturday the 21st of December 1974, 92-year-old Sarah Rodmell, a spinster who had lived in Hackney all her life, went to her local pub (The Temple Bar Tap) at 5:30pm, and having left at 11:15pm, she arrived back at 49 Ash Grove, just shy of midnight. She was brutally beaten to death on her doorstep for the £7 in her handbag. But was this one of the additional eight murders that British serial killer Patrick MacKay was suspected of or confessed to? This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.
Part E of F by Murder Mile covers the murder of Sarah Ann Rodmell:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: If Patrick Mackay had killed eleven people as he confessed to, he would be one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers after Harold Shipman, Dennis Nilsen, Peter Sutcliffe and Fred & Rose West. Only he didn’t. Of the eleven, three he was convicted of, eight he was suspected of or confessed to, only two of those he was ever charged with, and all eight he later denied - perhaps at his lawyer’s insistence. But why did he confess to eleven, and why were the detectives so certain of his guilt in those crimes he denied? A nameless detective told tabloid newspaper The Sun “we thought we had a mass murderer… it looked as if we were going to clear our books of almost every outstanding murder in London. An oddball like MacKay… he was one of the most terrifying killers to be walking around London for a long time”, and as a drunk psychopath with a bad memory and inconsistent methods, it was easy to pin any ‘maniac’s murder on MacKay, as he’d willingly confess to every killing, within reason, even if he was innocent. By the summer of 1974, it’s confirmed that he had committed one provable murder – Isabella Griffiths, but being elderly, infirm and likely to have been a robbery which (in a short burst of rage owing to his warped moral code) this killing could easily have been an accident, as there’s no hint of premeditation. Of the eight; he may have admitted to Heidi’s killing, as being a high-profile case, it gave him exposure. Mary’s fitted his MO with the police coercing him to confess, but unless he broke out of prison, it’s unlikely to be him. He may have denied Christopher Martin’s killing because – being a boy - he didn’t want to be as hated as the Moors Murderers. Or by partially proving his guilt as with Leslie Goodman, did he want his crimes to have a sense of mystery, with his victims uncertain, just like Jack the Ripper? As an unwanted nobody and a certified psychopath, his only chance to become someone important, famous and maybe even admired, was by becoming not just a killer, but a serial killer. The problem was, by that summer; he’d only killed one in possible a rage-fuelled mistake, his crime spree was both petty and pathetic, and when it came to achieving any goals, MacKay was chaotic and inconsistent. It’s likely, unless his next killing was truly shocking and hideous, that Patrick MacKay would be entirely forgotten. So why, if Sarah Rodmell, the eighth victim he was suspected of, so neatly fitted his method and motive, did he again deny murdering her, when this killing was impossible to prove it wasn’t him? Title: Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath – Part E. Throughout his life, in the same way he had no consistency where he stayed, how he earned, and who he saw as a role model, Patrick MacKay lacked commitment. Across the early 1970s; he lived in hostels, hospitals and remand centres, occasionally his mum’s, the Cowdrey’s, and often Reverand Brack’s, but he had no focus or goal, and as he aimlessly wondered the city, drunk or drugged, he achieved nothing. Having quit his job sweeping up leaves not far from the crime scene at ‘The Mercer’s and leaving his pleasant lodging with Mr & Mrs Whittington, now unemployed, broke and heavily drinking, on the 7th of July 1974, one month after the murder of Leslie Goodman, MacKay did something truly unusual. That night, having previously had a falling out with Reverend Ted Brack (the other priestly mentor who had let him lodge at his vicarage in East Finchley on many occasions), MacKay called him and asked to meet up, perhaps to apologise as he was often plagued with remorse and had few good father figures. When the priest left, MacKay didn’t meet him as planned. Instead, he broke into the vicarage, he made himself a hot meal (as if he owned the place), he didn’t search the drawers for things to steal (as far as we know), and in the bedroom which was once his, he hid underneath the bed, waiting not only for Ted to return home, but for him to go to his bedroom, undress, switch out the lights and fall asleep. Hours later, MacKay crept across the hall, into the priest’s room, and – eight months before his sadistic and brutal killing of Father Crean, his other priestly mentor – he didn’t strangle, stab or bludgeon him to death, instead, as he soundly slept, MacKay went through the priest’s pockets looking for cash. It was something he could have done at any time on any day, yet he chose to do it then. But why? Ted awoke, in the darkness, he asked “Pat? Is that you?”, and although MacKay would kill others for reasons less than that, he fled and having already been seen, MacKay was arrested just two days later. Again, it was a crime without a clear motive; so did MacKay do it to scare him, was he drunk, on drugs, was it a botched robbery by a coward who was yet to learn that his perfect victims were frail old ladies in the wealthier parts of town, or as a psychopath who had achieved nothing, had the seed of an idea about ‘leaving a legacy’ as a serial killer spawned in his mind, and was this was a failed murder? Having sabotaged his bail conditions on a suspended sentence for chasing a homelessman with a metal pole and defrauding Father Crean’s cheque, on the 31st of July 1974 at Highgate Magistrates Court, the burglary at Ted’s vicarage saw him sentenced to four months. Held at Wormwood Scrubs prison, MacKay later stated it was here that, upon his release, he planned “a campaign of violence and terror”, resulting in the 23+ robberies he would confess to, and the murders of Father Crean and Adele Price. For four months, he was locked-up with nothing to do but seethe, fester and to dream of the heinous levels of cruelty he would inflict, as the name ‘Patrick MacKay’ became synonymous with serial killing. Released on the 22nd of November 1974 - being broke, unemployed and homeless (as his mother had disowned him, he’d fallen out with the Cowdrey’s, and Reverend Brack wouldn’t have him back) – he spent that Christmas in a bail hostel at 38 Great North Road in Barnet, with the bulk of it blind drunk. On the night of Saturday the 21st of December, 92-year-old spinster Sarah Rodmell was robbed on her doorstep for a few pounds and brutally bludgeoned to death. Described by detectives as “the work of a maniac”, it had many hallmarks of MacKay’s crime-spree and Sarah was his perfect victim… …but was this the first killing in his “a campaign of violence and terror”? Born on the 14th of June 1883 in Mary le Bow in East London, 92-year-old Sarah Ann Rodmell would be the eldest and frailest, but also one of the poorest of MacKay’s victims - if indeed he was her killer. As a toddler, being raised barely a half a mile from the killings of Jack the Ripper, her early years were riddled with poverty, disease and fear, as the mortality rate for a working-class child was low and even lower for those who struggled to make-ends-meet. As the eldest of four siblings to Frederick, a railway porter and Sarah Ann, a pieceworker, as was typical in that era, her siblings quickly followed; with Alice in 1886 in Whitechapel, Frederick in 1887 and Ada in 1888, both born in Mile End, further east. Crammed in a small two-roomed lodging on Shoreditch High Road, in 1894 with all four children barely in their teens and the youngest barely school-age, their mother died aged just 37, leaving the family devastated. As was his need, although still grieving, Frederick remarried, Frances became their step-mother, in 1896, their half-sister Lily was born, and they also adopted a young girl called Frances Ray. Time were hard, money was tight, poverty was endemic, but for the Rodmell’s, family was everything. By 1901, the family were living at 132 Corfield Street, a dirty-sodden industrial part of Bethnal Green, one street south of the pub where - 73 years later - she was last seen alive, yet her history is a mystery. For forty years, she almost entirely vanishes; she never marries, has no children, and although she can vote, as a woman, she can’t own a home or have a bank account. Then in 1939 and the outbreak of the Second World War, said to be working as a ‘kitchen hand’, records show she was living in a ground-floor one-roomed lodging at 49 Ash Grove in Hackney, with a widowed office-cleaner, Mary A Lock. Aged 56, with no savings - regardless of her age and infirmity - she lived a hand-to-mouth existence on the fringes of society as a forgotten woman who was reliant on her friends and family to survive. But fate is often cruel. In 1937, her father died, and as a poor man with no Will, she was left nothing. In 1941, her brother Frederick died, along with his love and his financial support. In 1963, her sister Ada died, followed by Alice in 1969, her half-sister Lily in 1970, and with Mary Lock, Sarah’s long-term friend and (possible) partner in 1974, she had survived so much, but now aged 92, she had no-one… …and she had nothing, except a cat, a cold dark room and a pitifully small pension. By the Christmas of 1974, Sarah had lived at 49 Ash Grove for more than 30 years. Later demolished to make way for a bus depot, by the 70s, being in it’s dying days, Ash Grove was the epitome of squalor; comprising of two lines of dilapidated Victorian terrace houses – with many derelict and squatted in – it was surrounded by an overhead trainline to the east, a canal and the Haggerston gas towers to the south, the GLC workshops to the west, and on the same street, J Bush & Co, a large chemical factory. It was noisy, dirty, rough, caustic, and riddled with violence and drugs. As a council-funded flat for only the most impoverished, Sarah’s lodging was so bad; the walls leaked, the floorboards were rotten, it ran rampant with rats, bed bugs and lice, and it didn’t have any heating or hot water. Sarah Rodmell was old woman who the council had left to rot, and when she died, their costly obligation would cease. But little would anyone know that it wouldn’t be the cold or hunger which would kill her. Saturday the 21st of December 1974 was typically damp but unusually warm for winter. As was her daily routine, being a lonely old lady who hated living in the dank isolation of a cold council flat, at 5pm, she left her lodging at 49 Ash Grove. Dressed in a tatty ‘flowerpot’ hat, a long black coat and a woollen skirt – the same clothes she’d always worn – wearing men’s slippers, she shuffled the 45 minute journey through the unlit backstreets, stopping every few minutes, as her back had a stoop. Described as grubby, ‘Old Sarah’ or ‘Ginger’ as she was known had lived a hard life, and being very old and incredibly frail, although she was still “a tough old woman” who was said to be direct and abrupt, neighbours said “(Sarah) was notorious for drunkenness… she has been banned for causing a nuisance from most of the pubs around”, with Ada Deighton, her neighbour stating “she always went out to the pub at five”, the one she wasn’t banned from, “and came back at midnight, usually worse for wear”. Drinking wasn’t just the highlight of her day, but also a necessity. Living off a State Pension of just £6 75p per week (£90 today), drinking was her one pleasure which gave her something she didn’t have. Her local pub was the Temple Street Tap, a Charrington’s owned pub on the corner of Temple Street and Hackney Road, E8, just off Cambridge Heath train station, and although having a reputation ‘Old Sarah’ was limited by the places she could booze, this was an unusual haunt for a 92-year-old spinster. Or was it? From the outside, the Temple Street Tap was like any other pub; with a saloon bar, a dart board, sticky floors, and – with the clientele being exclusively men – it also had a foul-smelling loo. But inside, the waitresses served drinks as their bare breasts jiggled, and on a grotty stage, strippers shook their pale asses before baying crowds of ogling old perverts, as this – as it was known – was a titty bar. ‘Old Sarah’ didn’t care, she liked it. In fact, she was a regular. Described by landlady Laura Harris as “a sweet old lady” who was “like a mother to us all… all the customers young and old loved her”, and as she sat at the bar, every night, nursing two bottles of Guinness, it wasn’t just the occasional chat and companionship she liked, but being perched next to the electric heater, it kept her old bones warm. Whether she was gay or not – being a childless spinster who had lived with a woman for decades and frequented a strip club – is immaterial, as if this was what made her happy, who could deny her that? That night was special for Sarah, as with the government having introduced a £10 Christmas bonus for pensioners, although a ‘token gesture’, that night she would spend £3 on drink, and the rest she would save as part of her yuletide merriment. And although the landlady later said “the customers knew her, liked her, and had begun to chip in 50p each to buy her a turkey and some groceries for Christmas”… …she would never receive it, as by then, she would be dead. But was it Mackay? Her killing matched his method and she was his perfect victim, so why deny it? At 11:10pm, as per usual, the landlady aided a frail and drunken Sarah to the door, the barman Brynley Gregory helped her across Hackney Road, and she staggered her regular route home. Later recreated by WPC Daphne Robson for the police investigation, with the country still partially blighted by the energy crisis, she stumbled the unlit backstreets of gas towers and factories up The Oval, Andrews Road, over the canal, and – having stopped to rest – forty-five minutes later, she entered Ash Grove. She didn’t leave with a stranger, so whether someone followed her home along this dark half-mile walk is uncertain, but just shy of midnight, neighbours heard her staggering and fumbling for her keys. Ada Deighton, her neighbour later stated “I heard a thumping noise… but just thought she was locked out and was banging for the lady upstairs to unlock the door”. No-one paid any notice to the noise, as being a habitual drunk who many had fallen out with, Ada recalled “she sometimes bought drinking companions home with her… otherwise she had no visitors” – and that’s all they thought this was. With no screams heard, it’s likely she was attacked fast by someone a lot younger, and overpowered by someone taller and stronger - most likely a man who had no qualms about robbing an old frail lady. Stealing her black handbag, we can never know if her attacker knew about her £10 Christmas bonus, but then, some monsters are so callous, they would kill an old lady for a few pounds, or even less, but in this case, they also stole her pension book, her spectacles, a tin opener and a bent tin of cat food. Attacked on her own doorstep - even though a shove or a punch would have floored her - Sarah was repeatedly beaten over the head with something blunt, sustaining wounds that the detectives said was “horrific” and the “work of a maniac”, and although the press said “she was sexually assaulted”, we don’t know to what extent, but it was said that her stockings were “partially removed”. It was a killing as pointless as it was tragic. The next morning, Harriet Law, a 73-year-old widow living in the flat above, came down with a cup of tea for Sarah, but found that her bed hadn’t been slept in. Opening the communal door, it was then that she saw the body; cold and lifeless, her frail legs crumpled underneath her, her pale arms bent in unimaginable positions, her skull caved in, her hair matted, her brain exposed and swarming with flies. It wasn’t well reported, but it caused an uproar in this small patch of Bethnal Green. The pub’s regulars were stunned, many of the dancers cried, and with landlord Harry Harris stating “she didn’t have a decent death, but we’re determined to see that she gets a decent funeral”, a whip-round raised £160 for a coffin and a headstone, and he spent weeks using the pub’s PA system pleading for information. The investigation was headed-up by Detective Chief Superintendent John Cass of Hackney CID. Police conducted house-to-house enquiries but almost no-one heard or saw a thing, a reconstruction played out on Police 5 but resulted in no suspects, and a voicemail at the Hackey Gazette led to two credible tips of the first name and an address for the suspected killer, but the tape was so bad, it was inaudible. A black handbag was handed in but it couldn’t be confirmed as Sarah’s, the murder weapon was never recovered and its type (either a metal or wooden blunt instrument) was impossible to verify even by autopsy, and although one of the £1 notes given to Sarah in the pub as change had ‘Lou 1974’ written on the back in biro, this had never been handed in, and it was never found in MacKay’s possession. With no fingerprints, no witnesses, and no suspects, the case went cold. When questioned, MacKay denied murdering Sarah Rodmell; he made no confession, we don’t know if he was coerced by detectives, shown the crime scene photos or driven to the location, and with the evidence against him being slim, in his memoir, he simply wrote “I was never charged with that”. It’s the kind of crime that MacKay both committed and confessed to, and (as a possible wannabe serial killer with a ‘legacy to leave’, but only one provable murder under his belt), why did he deny this one? Unlike Heidi’s killing, it would have been impossible to glean any reliable facts from the papers as even the Hackey Gazette called the assailant the ‘£5 killer’, when in truth, £7 was stolen, and with the Daily Mirror callously calling her a ‘meths drinker’ implying she was a vagrant, victim shaming was rampant. But her killing does mirror MacKay’s method; as it was said he had begun “a campaign of violence and terror”, he spoke of exterminating “all the useless old people”, he was living in a hostel and was broke, he travelled to kill, he liked drinking so may have frequented the pub (even though nobody saw him), Father Crean was bludgeoned with a blunt instrument (as was Mary Hynds and Leslie Goodman, if this was him), and anti-Semitism was suspected in Leslie’s killing, so was Sarah killed if she was gay? Inconsistency runs rampant throughout all of MacKay’s proven crimes, and although it makes no sense for him to travel so far east to kill an old frail lady for the sake of £7, as a bag-snatcher who attacked pensioners without any remorse, it matches many of his 23+ confirmed robberies, it has similarities to his attack on 83-year-old actress Jane Comfort whose assault could have ended in her death, and even his approach or attack on the doorstep matched other victims like Adele Price & Isabella Griffiths. The difference is Sarah was poor, but Adele & Isabella were not. So, if this murder was MacKay, is this the killing which changed his crime spree, and made him focus on frail old ladies who were wealthy? Four days after Sarah’s murder, MacKay spent Christmas Day drunk at his hostel in Barnet. By Boxing day, being broke, while prowling Wilton Street in wealthy Belgravia, he conned his way into the home of Lady Becher, he grabbed her throat, pulled a knife, snatched her bag containing £115 and an £85 medallion and fled. Four days later, he committed a similar robbery on Tite Street in affluent Chelsea. By the new year, his crime spree had ramped up; on the 20th of January 1975 he robbed an old lady in Finchley, another held at knifepoint in Chelsea on the 28th, he snatched a bag on the 29th, and on the night of Sunday 3rd of February - having carried her bags as a so-called ‘good Samaritan’ - he robbed another at Red Lion Square in Holborn. Across January to March, he stole roughly £600 (£8000 today) in cash, gems and trinkets, and with increasing levels of violence, Chelsea CID were mapping this unfolding crime spree, with DS John Bland who later interviewed MacKay on the hunt for a thief… …who just weeks later, murdered Adele Price and Father Anthony Crean. Unlike his earlier ‘pathetic and petty’ crimes, this “campaign of violence and terror” was written about in the newspapers and bought him the infamy he craved, and even though detectives were yet to link the robberies or murders to MacKay, this was the start of his legacy as a thief and a serial killer-to-be. Through his childhood, his adolescence and into his early adulthood, by then, aged just 22, MacKay had failed to commit to anything – a job, a home, friends, family, sobriety or reforming his bad ways – but now, he had goal, a future and something he could actually commit to. When arrested, the Press feverishly picked apart every detail from his past to prove he was a psychopath; whether true, a lie or unprovable; like the animals he tortured, the fires he started, he quotes he spoke, or his Nazi ideology. Everything he’d done was a cry for attention, and now, as a killer, he’d get everything he’d desired. By the trial, with Patrick MacKay synonymous with serial killing and branded with nicknames like ‘The Beast of Belgravia’, ‘The Devil's Disciple’ and ‘The Psychopath’, his legacy was forged by three pieces of his own fabrication to cement his place in criminal history; first was his confession “I killed eleven people”, which every newspaper printed in bold, but failed to report when the truth was uncovered. Second, his 40-page prison memoir; a biased narrative with himself as the only living witness, which was read out in court, sealed his fate, and – as a pure piece of sensationalism – was reprinted verbatim. And thirdly, as a part of his legacy which became more infamous than his crimes, the four photobooth snaps he had taken just after Father Crean’s murder, which many like Michael, Mary Hynds’s nephew, state “I think Mackay was mad. Look at the photos of him, you can almost see it in him”. But is it? Think of it logically. MacKay didn’t walk into a photobooth and candidly capture four images of himself in a state of mania. No, he travelled to his mother’s home in Kent to collect a chicken he had her roast for him, he then took it to a train station (possibly at Charing Cross or Waterloo), he went into a booth, he pulled out 10p, he popped it in the slot, and having planned out the shots – because as we know, with four photos taken every five seconds in a blinding flash, three will be terrible and one passable – yet he somehow created four shots which perfectly typified Patrick MacKay the serial killer; with one ripping part flesh, one having devoured it, one in a pained mental state, and one gripped in pure rage. It's a perfect piece of stage management, and for the sake of entertainment, the world bought it. Patrick MacKay was front-page news across 1975, he was a poster boy of cruelty, his past was debated in full, and yet, it all may have begun by accident when the robbery of Isabella Griffiths went too far? So, with MacKay already a certified serial killer, why did he deny killing Sarah Rodmell? (Out) It’s crime which matches his method, being broke he had motive, he travelled to steal money, and with many of his robberies being violent - and with his victims both old and frail - sparked by a short burst of rage owing to warped morals, each could have easily have turned into a murder, like Sarah’s. Detectives admitted “we thought we had a mass murderer with as many as ten or eleven victims. It looked as if we were going to clear our books of almost every outstanding murder in London”, and with it committed by a ‘maniac’ and MacKay described as a ‘psychopath’, it was a win-win for both. But the evidence against MacKay was slim to non-existent. Nobody saw him in Bethnal Green or the Temple Street Tap which was full of regulars. He denied the killing, he knew nothing about it, and in Psychopath, a book of dubious sources, it states “he established an alibi”, but it can’t be corroborated. Conversely, in the well-researched book ‘Britain’s Forgotten Serial Killer’, John Lucas suggests that as Reverand ‘Ted’ Brack occasionally drank at the now-demolished Lord Hood pub in Bethnal Green, half a mile south of the Temple Street Tap, and MacKay may have joined him, but this can never be proven. It’s a killing as similar as it is different to MacKay’s method, except for a tiny detail. None of MacKay’s robberies or murders had a sexual element, even as old ladies like Adele and Isabella lay there, dead, silent and still, he didn’t undress them, fondle them or kiss them, as he was a sadist, but not a rapist. But with the papers stating “she was sexually assaulted”; if this was true, or he had tried to strangle her with her own stockings, or they had simply fallen down in the struggle, in the same way he didn’t want to be branded a child killer with Christopher, did he not want to be labelled a rapist of old ladies? Part F, the final part of ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’ concludes next week, with Parts 1 of 4 (covering the killings of Father Crean, Isabella Griffith and Adele Price, MacKay’s life, crimes and trial) available now in full as part of this cross-over series with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. And via that feed, Paul & I will also be doing two hour-long chats where together we examine the case. Just search ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’, or click on the link in the show-notes. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.
PART D of Murder Mile covers the murder of Leslie Goodman:
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PART 4 of True Crime Enthusiast covers the trial of Patrick MacKay:
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: “I killed eleven people” Patrick MacKay confessed, with three for certain. But of the eight killings he’d confessed to, was suspected of, and later retracted his confession for; the first, Heidi Mnilk, was well-documented but he got key details wrong and there was no proof he was there; second, Mary Hynds, was typical of his robberies and killing of old lone ladies attacked in their homes, and although charged with her murder, he had to be coerced by detectives to get the basic facts right and it was ‘left on file’. Third and fourth, Stephanie Britton and Christopher Martin, had all the hallmarks of a MacKay robbery gone wrong, but again, there was no evidence he was there, and he flatly denied killing both. Fifth, an unnamed vagrant he supposedly threw off Hungerford Bridge and drowned in the River Thames, but no body was ever found. Whereas sixth, Isabella Griffiths, his first confirmed kill was a crime scene so awash with hard evidence and his testimony so undeniable, that only he could have been her killer. And then there was Leslie Goodman, the seventh killing in his confession of eleven. Like Mary Hynds (as only two of the additional eight confessed or suspected killings strong enough to charge him with) the proof was so strong, the Director of Public Prosecutions brought it to the Old Bailey. But not wanting to sully a faultless prosecution - with evidence so overwhelming that MacKay’s defence didn’t even dispute his killing of Adele Price, Isabella Griffiths and Father Crean - that it was also ‘left on file’. But how strong was the evidence against MacKay in Leslie Goodman’s murder? It was firm. With no coercion, detectives could prove he had committed the robbery, they could link to the murder weapon to his home, and on an unspecified date in May 1975, MacKay willingly took detectives to the former St Marylebone Cemetery in East Finchley, and having hidden it almost one year prior, behind an old and faded headstone, MacKay unearthed a pair of his old worn boots, spattered with human blood. In this case, MacKay was a good as guilty. Yet, as with all of the eleven murders, something odd sits in his confession, as interviewed by DS John Bland at Brixton Prison, MacKay admitted to the robbery of Leslie Goodman’s shop, which puts him there when he was murdered, but again, he denied the killing. But why? Why would a verified serial-killer present evidence of a murder, only to then deny it? Title: Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath – Part D. By January 1974, MacKay had lived in London for just two years, and he’d achieved nothing; he drifted, got drunk, was often sacked, and the crimes he’d committed (by that point) were petty and pointless, as if he was aimlessly wandering through life with no skills, no family, no friends, and no future. After the brutal double murder of Stephanie Britton and Christopher Martin on the 11th of January, from the 14th to the 25th he lasted just 11 days as a groundsman at the Tudor Sports Ground, one mile from ‘The Mercer’s, and on the 25th he began his longest stint of paid work as a patrolling ‘trustee’ at Monken Hadley Common, a 30 second walk from the last murder scene, which could be a coincidence. From February to an unspecified date in May, he spent many hours alone with his thoughts, sweeping up leaves and picking up litter, and having fallen out with Reverend Brack, he moved into a lodging at 29 Cedar Lawn Avenue in Barnet; a pleasant two-storey family home on a residential street owned by Mr & Mrs Whittington, who described him as “quiet and polite, no problem, he paid his rent on time”. From the January to the June, he committed very few offences, he was rarely drunk, and once he tried to kill himself, as a typical depressive reaction to his rage-filled killing of Isabella Griffiths in February. Like his life, his crimes were inconsistent; as he often stole nothing, he attacked without reason, he targeted anyone, he was so unprepared that even his confirmed killings look more like mistakes as none of them had any hint of premeditation beyond robbery, and – as a nobody who achieved nothing - he lacked commitment to any real goal. The way he was going, he would be as forgotten as his father. From the age of eleven, psychiatrists described him as a ‘psychopath’, a ‘maniac’ and a ‘monster’, but how was a boy meant to become anything but that, when that was all society thought he was worth? He was bright but bored, passive and volatile, and unloved by anyone, he was bounced from prisons to mental institutions, and with just bad role models, his only way to get the attention he needed was to lash out, get drunk, be cruel to animals and act as if he was a committed Fascist or Nazi. It all seemed aimless, as if he didn’t know where it was heading, or why. But if that first killing of Isabella Griffiths was really a robbery which went wrong (as many of his attacks on the elderly could have become), did this ‘accidental killing’ in the grip of a rage ignite a potential goal for this hopeless and forgotten boy? Fame is fickle, everyone wants their ‘five minutes’, but not everyone is willing to put in the hours to earn it. It takes years to learn to be a painter, to play the guitar, to write a novel, or to score the winner at Wembley. But anyone can kill, especially if they’re drunk, on drugs, and prone to violent outbursts. Cinema, history and crime books had been a staple of MacKay’s life since his childhood, it gave him an escape from the horrors of his upbringing, and in the same way his drunken father told him war stories of all the soldiers he had killed and the rotting bodies he had seen, MacKay had darker role models.
Sadistic killings were big business at the cinemas in the early 1970s; Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film ‘Frenzy’ was released in May 1972, being loosely based on the ‘Hammersmith nude’ murders; an unnamed killer of at least eight women who infamously stalked West London between 1959 and 1965. And released in January 1972, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was withdrawn from UK cinemas in 1973 due to copy-cat attacks; as a 16-year-old boy beat a homeless man to death, a 14-year old had mimicked it in his classmate’s manslaughter, and a Dutch girl was gangraped as youths sang ‘singing in the rain’. Fiction or fact, sensationalist killings were headline news and turned each perpetrator into household names. They were heralded and hated (like the Moors murderers), feared and studied (like the Zodiac killer), and with the conviction of Edmund Kemper: The ‘Co-ed Killer’ in November 1973, a new era of world-famous serial-killers like Bundy & Dahmer was beginning, being achievable in MacKay’s lifetime. Only by then, MacKay was a nothing, a nobody, who gave no reason for his petty and pointless attacks. So how could he create a legacy? Jack the Ripper had his anonymity. The Zodiac had left puzzles. Haigh had his horrific vats of acid. Hindley & Brady’s mugshots became iconic. And Christie had a famous book, film and play written about him. But so far, Patrick MacKay had done nothing of any substance… …yet, all that was about to change. Born on the 15th of September 1911, Leslie Frank Goodman had lived in the borough of Islington, north London as man and boy. Like Stephanie Britton, his whole world was boiled down to just a few houses on neighbouring streets, where every key moment in his life had existed; from his birth, his schooling, his marriage to his wife, the arrival of his son, David, his work, his friends, his happiness, and his death. As an upper working-class neighbourhood, Finsbury Park was a chaotic mix of commercial, residential and industrial; as long lines of crumbling Victorian terraces sat amongst the dense smog of belching chimneys, handwashed laundry is dried beside the sooty cut of train tracks, and the children played in what remained of the burned-out shells and bomb craters which had pockmarked it during the Blitz. To the side of Finsbury Park station, being a main train and tube route into the city, stood Rock Street. Originally called Grange Road, it was built in the 1920s to ease the congestion of buses at the busy bus stop on Station Place, and being little more than a cut-through between Blackstock Road and St Thomas’s Road comprising of a one-way street and two lines of two-storey terraces, it wasn’t pretty, but where there’s buses, there’s people, and seeing an opportunity, several shops were built on the ground floors; including a pub, a café, a tailors and a sweet-shop and tobacconists called ‘L Goodman’. Leslie Goodman, proprietor of ‘L Goodman’ was a gentleman, with old-fashioned manners and morals being the kind of man the locals had no qualms about serving their kids liquorice and dolly mixtures, as he’d happily put aside a newspaper if they asked him to, and as a popular tobacconist, he sold cheap bog-standard cigarettes like Embassy, John Player and B&H, as well as British brands of rolling tobacco like Old Holborn, Drum and Samson, but for the more discerning ‘Avant Garde’ kind of customer or the arty types living in squats, he imported niche French brands like Gauloise, Gitanes and Disque Bleu. Said to be “sweet, well-liked and respected”, Leslie’s warmth greeted every customer; as he had a soft smile, large eyebrows which mirrored the small crown of hair over his ears and arched quizzically all the way up to his bald head, and with neat moustache, he had the demeanour of a kindly grandfather. And even though his shop was hidden away on a back street, it was a popular and known to the locals, being surrounded by houses, shops, the Blackthorn pub, a bus garage, a train and tube station, the local Top Rank bingo hall, and – often mistaken for Jewish, having the surname of Goodman – it was a regular haunt for local Jewish families, as the Finsbury Park Synagogue was just a few streets away. By 1974, aged 64, approaching retirement but not willing to give up his business, Leslie was enjoying a well-earned and more leisurely life. That June, his beloved wife had gone on holiday with her mother, his son David (then 27) had moved out, so with no-one too look after but their cats, that week, Leslie wasn’t planning to work too hard, as his eyes and ears were a little distracted by his real love – football. Thursday 13th of June 1974, six months after Stephanie Britton & Christopher Martin’s double murder, 64-year-old Leslie opened his shop on Rock Street at just shy of 7am. As had been his routine for years, being security conscious, he popped the padlock and rolled up the shutters on the door, he unlocked the deadbolt and the Yale lock, he slid the side curtains up, put the lights on, and turned the sign from ‘closed’ to ‘open’. As a shopkeeper, he’d been robbed before, so caution was always the best option. The day was typical, as being a cool wet summer with a light drizzle and being barely 13 degrees, he wasn’t busy, and even with Shabbat approaching, his Jewish customers had made very few purchases. Normally, he would have shut-up the shop at 8:30pm, but the World Cup was on the telly. Unlike in 1966, eight years before when England romped to victory by beating West Germany 4 to 2 in the final – not that we ever mention it – this time, England had failed to qualify. But as a diehard footie fan, Leslie had planned to close-up just before 5pm, and watch it on the box around at a friend’s house. It was only a small 14 inch black and white telly, and the match (the opening game between Brazil and Yugoslavia, neither of whom made it out of Group 2) would end in a thrill-free game of no-goals each, and worse, the winners of the World Cup would be West Germany, only Leslie would never know that. At just ten minutes before 5pm, as Leslie placed his white shopkeeper’s overcoat on the counter, and started his usual routine of locking up, his last customer of the day - and his life - entered the shop… …but was it Patrick MacKay? In a written statement, MacKay admitted to robbing the shop, just as he’d confessed to three provable murders and 23+ robberies, but with several additional killings – one it was unlikely he had committed, one he confessed to under coercion, and two which he flatly refuted - this one, he also denied. Of his three confirmed kills - which by that point he‘d murdered his first, Isabella Griffiths – all victims were elderly and isolated. Two were female, being Adele and Isabella, but Father Crean was male, and he’d targeted women of all ages (such as his mother and sister) as well as young boys. And although this murder didn’t occur within the privacy of a house, he had burgled a grocer’s shop in Dartford for three tins of ham, and early in 1973, he’d broken into a tobacconists in Greenhithe to steal money and cigarettes. Patrick and Leslie were strangers, so if this wasn’t pre-meditated murder, was it a robbery which went wrong, owing to MacKay’s lack of planning, his twisted morals and a short burst of rage? These early attacks were ad-hoc and inconsistent, as he was yet to discover that his perfect victims were old lone ladies in a hunting ground of the wealthy areas of Chelsea and Belgravia, if this killing was by MacKay, was it a mistake, like Heidi’s, like Mary’s, like Stephanie’s and even Christopher’s too? With no transcript of MacKay’s confession, and no quotes by MacKay about his motive, his emotions, or what words (if any) were shared between the two, we can only go by what the evidence can prove. Scuffmarks and scattered sweets show a struggle ensued, as Leslie tried to fend off the robber, and if this was MacKay, Leslie would have been outmatched being three times his age and half a foot shorter. As a proven coward, MacKay always struck fast to disable his victim’s screams and flailing fists, only (if it was him) he didn’t use the knife he said he carried, but bludgeoned Leslie using a foot-long lead pipe ending with a heavy knuckle joint, the kind used by engineers in homes to fix gas or water pipes. Leslie’s beating was frenzied and said to be “the work of a maniac”, as with 14 swift blows, this half kilo pipe caved in his skull, until – as Detective Chief Superintendent Frank McGuinness stated – “his head was practically obliterated by blows”, and looking visibly shocked as he told the press, “this is the most brutal murder I’ve ever seen”, with it continuing long after Leslie was unconscious or dead. The body was dragged from behind the counter to just out of view of the windows, leaving a long trail of blood, but with Leslie’s feet sticking out, his killer had covered them with his shopkeeper’s overcoat. The robbery (if that’s what this is) was perfunctory, as if Leslie’s assailant had killed him in a burst of rage and stole only what came to hand; as he rifled the till, but only took some notes but no coins, and just enough packs of Disque Blue cigarettes to fit into a single man’s pockets, but nothing more. A lot was left behind, so perhaps, in a state of panic, Leslie’s killer had frantically fled? No. As DCS McGuinness clarified, “he spent a lot of time locking up Mr Goodman’s shop”. In fact, his killer calmly put out the lights, slid the side curtains up, turned the sign from ‘open’ to ‘closed’, rolled down the shutters, locked the deadbolt, the Yale and the shutter’s padlock, then calmly walked away with the keys. DCS McGuinness stated “I feel that someone would have seen him”, but nobody did. It was 5pm, on a week day, in a busy city street. The kids were out, rush hour had begun, the shop was near to a train and a tube station, a bus stop, a bingo hall, a few doors down from a pub and a café, as well as two rows of terraced houses where families were sitting down to dinner, or to watch the footie. With nobody home but his cats, Leslie’s body lay there from the Thursday night until Monday morning, when his wife returned from her holiday to find milk bottles piled up, and the cats meowing to be fed. Police were called, and in the darkness, threw the windows, they saw blood. Detectives made public appeals to locals and passing commuters, and one possible sighting by an eye-witness was reported days later. The Islington Gazette stated an elderly widow had gone to buy toffees and saw ‘a tall, black man’ in the shop. “He was acting suspiciously and Leslie was ‘quiet and behaving nervously’. I thought to myself at the time ‘doesn’t he seem frightened’? When he spoke to me, he had to kind-of lean forward towards me”. MacKay was tall, not black, but he was part Guyanese, and although Police investigated it further, it proved to be a dead end. But then all witnesses have motives. As a high traffic area, no fingerprints were found, but three clues gave DCS McGuinness a hint at who this killer might be; as cash and cigarettes were stolen but nothing else, the lead pipe used to bludgeon Leslie to death had been casually tossed just feet from the body, and said to have been “covered in blood” in this frenzied attack, the killer had stood in a pool of Leslie’s blood, but hadn’t cleaned it up. If MacKay - as was suspected with the murder of Heidi Mnilk that he had recalled some but not all of the details as her killing was heavily reported in the newspapers - similar to Mary Hynd’s murder, this attack was barely reported, and several vital details were incorrect or omitted; as some stated he was killed by a “killer” or “killers”, many said the murder weapon was “an iron bar”, almost no-one of them mentioned the theft of cigarettes, and Police deliberately kept from the press, the bloody footprint. So, was this MacKay? As with Mary Hynds and Stephanie Britton, it had many of the hallmarks of a MacKay killing, but it was the similarities with Father Crean’s murder, just nine months later, which drew the detective’s eye. Both were men in their early sixties and grey-haired. Both lived in places MacKay didn’t belong. And although he knew Father Crean but not Leslie Goodman, he wasn’t averse to commuting for crime. Both were grabbed, had struggled, were repeatedly punched, and attacked frenziedly – with the priest brutalised with an axe found by MacKay in the vicarage, whereas Leslie’s killer carried a lead pipe. Both sustained horrific wounds, in an attack detectives stated was “violent and sadistic”, beyond the realms of self-defence or a personal grudge, as both killers were pure evil with hatred in their hearts. In both cases, the bodies was repositioned away from the sight of the attack, their faces or feet were covered over, the curtains were closed, the lights were switched off, the doors were locked, the keys were taken, the murder weapon was left behind but hadn’t been wiped clean, and little if nothing of any value was stolen, with the ransacking described as “superficial” as if to obfuscate the true motive. In the priest’s killing, MacKay recalled each bloodcurdling aspect of it vividly, yet with the court records locked away for another 40 years, we have no idea how much of the tobacconist’s murder he recalled, or – when he was questioned about this robbery he confessed to – whether he was led or coerced. Neither do we know what he said when they drove him in the police van to Rock Street to identify the shop, as - being a drunk, drug-abuser whose recall was clouded by an alleged ‘white mist’, as Justice Milmo stated, was subject to “eruptions of violence followed by deep depressions which wiped from his mind any memories of what had happened” – it was his calm callousness which was most chilling. We don’t know what he did after Leslie’s killing, if indeed it was him, but having slain Father Crean, he then collected a roast chicken from his mother, watched The Man with the Golden Gun at the cinema, at Hungerford Bridge he threw one of his bloody knives into the River Thames, and in a coin-operated booth at a train station, he posed for four infamous photos; one shows him feverishly ripping apart a cooked chicken leg with his teeth like a rabid cannibal, another as he swallows the delicious flesh, one shows him pained as if he was possessed by a demon, and the last shows him gripped with pure rage. Even when he was arrested at the Cowdrey’s home on 23rd of March 1975 for Father Crean’s killing, with three confirmed kills under his belt, he wasn’t flustered or panicked, as seconds before the cops came knocking, he was sat on the sofa, hungover, wearing a fur collar coat and a trilby hat, and when the Cowdrey’s asked “what you up to today?”, MacKay replied “dunno, probably get pissed again”. But was he calm because he was arrogant, cruel and lacked empathy… …or as a nobody who “would amount to nothing”, he was now officially a serial killer? Leslie’s murder was thoroughly investigated, but with no witnesses, no fingerprints, and no suspect to match the bloody footprint to, two months later with no-one arrested or suspected the case stalled. David’s son, who was 27 at the time, believed that anti-Semitism could have been a factor; “as police told me they found a huge swastika in his home”, and even though they weren’t Jewish “the shop was in a Jewish area and Goodman is a Jewish name”. As a supposed Fascist, MacKay hero-worshipped the Nazis, he wore a homemade SS uniform, he falsely claimed he was ‘pure Aryan’, and it is said he goose-stepped down Dartford High Street giving a ‘Sieg Heil’ salute – all of which could have been for show? But while admittedly so drunk he was found unconscious, MacKay was arrested 11 months before for attacking a vagrant with a four-foot long metal pole, hurling bricks into a pedestrian subway, and was said to have been heard shouting that he wanted to ‘kill all Jewish bastards’, which he later denied. On 25th of June 1975, MacKay was charged with Leslie’s murder, having confessed “I killed eleven people”, and with this killing similar to his confirmed kills, the evidence against him was firm. (Out) On the night of Leslie Goodman’s murder, the Cowdrey’s (his surrogate parents) recalled him coming back to their home late, and although he’d been unemployed for a month, “his pockets were bulging with money… and packets of Disque Blue cigarettes”, the same niche French brand which was stolen. At Mr & Mrs Whittington’s house at 29 Cedar Lawn Avenue in Barnet where MacKay was lodging, they stated that their pipework was being repaired at the time, and – although not unique – lead pipes with a heavy knuckle joint had been used, but after a year, they couldn’t recall if any had gone missing. And when questioned, during his week-long confession to DS Bland, MacKay stated “something was praying on my mind, a bloody footprint I had left behind” – a detail which (again) detectives said they hadn’t leaked to the press, spoken about with MacKay, or shown him any crime scene photos of (like Mary Hynd’s back door or the stocking in her mouth) – but he recalled he’d discarded his bloodied boots behind a gravestone, one year before, at the former St Marylebone Cemetery in East Finchley, On an unspecified date in mid-May, MacKay led police to the cemetery and his bloodied boots. Tests confirmed two types of blood; one unidentifiable as weather and time had decayed the sample, and a speck of ‘human blood’. But with it too old to group, its providence and source remains uncertain. Tried at the Old Bailey, as with Mary Hynds’ murder, the killing of Leslie Goodman was ‘left on file’. But why did MacKay lead detectives to the boots, yet he denied killing the man he had robbed? In his memoir, MacKay wrote cryptically, “the truth about this strange case may, in thirty years or so, unfold. Only then will you have your man. This, by the way, will not be me. I am not responsible. But you will be surprised (very much so) when you find out, as they say in detective stories, who done it”. It was an odd denouement to his so-called confession, but with lines like those later quoted, verbatim and unchecked, by the Sunday People, and those four infamous (yet clearly staged) photos of MacKay looking like a maniac to such an extent that Michael, Mary’s nephew, said “I think Mackay was mad. Look at the photos of him, you can almost see it in him”, was this all part of his desire to leave a legacy? Part E, the penultimate part of ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’ continues next week, with Part 1 of 4 now available in full (covering the killings of Father Crean, Isabella Griffith and Adele Price, as well as MacKay’s life, crimes and trial) available now via as part of this cross-over series with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. Just search ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’, or click on the link in the show-notes. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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