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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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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