00:00:05
-In February 1988, 29-year-old
carpenter John Duffy was on trial for rape
and the murder of three women.
00:00:13
He was one half
of a terrifying duo who had become infamous
across London. The newspapers had dubbed them
the "Railway Killers."
00:00:22
-As one victim later said, "They were like two bodies
with one brain." They knew exactly what
the other one was going to do.
00:00:28
Their bond was unique
and wicked. -After receiving
six life sentences, Duffy still refused to give up
the name of his accomplice,
00:00:37
a 29-year-old father
of four named David Mulcahy. -I think Mulcahy is somebody
who returns to a normal life
00:00:45
and has absolutely
no problem in doing that. He didn't feel bad
about what he's done,
00:00:51
and it's very much about
self-preservation for him. -But over a decade later, Mulcahy was still free
and Duffy had had enough.
00:01:01
He finally confessed to all his
crimes and told investigators he would testify against
his former friend.
00:01:08
-It was almost
as if he considered this was an act of betrayal
to what was a unique
00:01:12
and wicked bond for decades. These were so poles apart
now across the courtroom.
00:01:19
-John Duffy and David Mulcahy
had made their mark as two of Britain's
most evil killers.
00:01:26
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Two rapists struck fear into the
hearts of women across London. When John Duffy was arrested
in November 1986,
00:01:55
it brought an end to an horrific
4-year crime spree across the British capital. But it would be another 15 years
before Duffy's accomplice,
00:02:05
David Mulcahy, was found guilty for his part
in the heinous crimes. Between them, the deadly duo
were responsible
00:02:13
for over 20 rapes
and three murders. It was Duffy's testimony at
Mulcahy's trial in the year 2000
00:02:22
that helped to incarcerate
his one-time friend. -As the judge delivered
the sentence,
00:02:27
Mulcahy gave no reaction,
staring straight ahead. The judge told him,
"These were sadistic killings,
00:02:33
and of the two of you,
I have no doubt it was you who derived gratification
from the act of killing."
00:02:40
-One of the lead detectives
charged with catching the so-called
Railway Killers was Charlie Farquhar.
00:02:46
His son Simon remembers
the case well. -These women had their lives
disfigured by these two men.
00:02:53
Three women lost their lives
to these two men. Nothing can ever atone for that, and it's a pretty grim thing
to immerse yourself in
00:03:00
for a period of time. -Over 30 years
after the murders, Simon has penned a book about the hunt and capture
of Duffy and Mulcahy.
00:03:11
-Once I started to really delve
into it and really investigate it, I realized I was
completely unprepared
00:03:16
for just how horrific a case
like this actually is. Unlike police officers,
you have all kinds
00:03:22
of defenses built up over years and years to deal
with these sort of things. I did wander into this
as a bit of an innocent,
00:03:27
and it does still
really haunt me. -The story of these two killers
begins half a century ago.
00:03:37
John Duffy was born in 1958
and David Mulcahy in 1959 on separate sides
of the Irish Sea.
00:03:46
-Well, both Duffy and Mulcahy
are from Catholic families, Irish-Catholic families.
00:03:51
Duffy was actually born
in the Republic of Ireland and came over to England
with his family
00:03:56
when his father was
looking for work. Mulcahy was born in England,
and he was the son of a man
00:04:02
who went on to become
a pub landlord. -In 1970, the two 11-year-old
boys struck up a friendship
00:04:10
while attending Haverstock
School in north London. -I think that Duffy and Mulcahy
came together
00:04:16
for a variety
of different reasons. They were both
from Irish families, and the Irish community
were still suffering
00:04:22
quite a lot of discrimination
at this point in time in British society. Also, there was a sense in which
they could be a partnership
00:04:31
because Duffy,
he was quite short. He had red hair.
He was bullied at school. But Mulcahy was bigger.
00:04:38
He was broader, and he could be
his protector, essentially, so it was quite a brotherhood
00:04:43
really rather than any kind
of casual friendship, and it was them against
the rest of the world.
00:04:49
-By the age of 13, both boys were
already displaying signs of disturbing behavior.
00:04:55
-Well, Mulcahy was suspended
from school after he and Duffy
were found essentially
00:05:00
playing a version of cricket
but using a live hedgehog, and they were found after
they had been engaging in this,
00:05:07
and Duffy was covered in blood,
and he was laughing at Mulcahy, who was also covered in blood,
00:05:13
so this really is
quite a warning signal. It's basically a complete
lack of empathy
00:05:19
for the feelings
of this living creature that they were tormenting, and they're starting
to experiment here.
00:05:25
Their behavior
is starting to escalate, and it really is quite
a significant red flag.
00:05:31
-They became fascinated
with each other's company. They would haunt Hampstead Heath
wearing Halloween masks
00:05:39
and jump out
and frighten courting couples who used to meet on
Hampstead Heath, terrify them.
00:05:44
And they took enormous
pleasure from it. -So these two, they're really having the time
of their lives doing this.
00:05:50
They're really enjoying
having that power over others, but I think to come
across them out there
00:05:55
in the park in the dark
would have been really, really frightening. -As the two teenagers
became young men,
00:06:01
Duffy and Mulcahy's scare
tactics took a criminal turn. -So in their case,
you started with the pranks
00:06:09
and moved on to burglary
and car theft. They stole the cars,
and they didn't steal the car
00:06:14
because they want
to sell the car. It wasn't for profit. They stole the car because
they wanted to drive around,
00:06:19
and they wanted have fun. -But then we see that escalate. We see that their physical
violence angle kind of start
00:06:25
to come out a little bit more, so we hear stories of them
shooting at people in the streets
with an air pistol.
00:06:32
-The pair found work
at Westminster City Council, Duffy as a carpenter
and Mulcahy as a plumber.
00:06:40
On one job, Mulcahy had
spotted a woman who he thought needed
to be taught a lesson.
00:06:46
He and Duffy went to her house
after dark intent on raping the woman. -So Duffy and Mulcahy
break into the house
00:06:57
and lay in wait for the woman whose house Mulcahy
has been decorating, but the woman, thankfully,
doesn't come home that night.
00:07:06
She's gone to a friend's. This infuriates
both Duffy and Mulcahy. -So you've got a plan
developing here.
00:07:14
They're starting to
actually decide, "Well, this is what
we're going to do." This isn't something
that's opportunistic.
00:07:20
This is something
that's very much premeditated. -Duffy and Mulcahy
were undeterred.
00:07:25
They tried the same plan again
with a different woman but escaped from her house when
she returned home with a man.
00:07:32
-And they're probably talking
about, "Say, look, the same old breaking into people's house
and waiting for them is no good
00:07:38
because we don't know
if they're going to come back. We don't know if they're going
to come back with somebody else.
00:07:41
So instead of that, how about
we actually drive around, find someone, see someone
on the street,
00:07:49
and then we pounce on them on a dark alley
or something like that?" So I think the rush that they
got from breaking into the house
00:07:56
just motivated them to go
and do the real thing. -By 1980, both men were in
their early 20s and married,
00:08:06
but their lust
for rape remained. Two years later,
they were ready to strike. -In October 1982, they found
the first one, 21-year-old girl
00:08:18
coming back from a party
carrying a teddy bear. They put a knife to her throat and forced her into a garden
of an empty house.
00:08:28
They said -- I think it was
Duffy who said, "Don't worry.
We only want the teddy bear."
00:08:33
Nothing could have been
further from the truth. They stripped the girl,
gagged her, blindfolded her
00:08:41
and raped her. -From then on, the attacks
became incredibly prolific. At one point, there was
three in one night.
00:08:49
They would generally drive
around together listening to music
to psyche themselves up.
00:08:55
They carried with them
kits of balaclavas, or masks. Mulcahy would put gaffer tape
inside his jacket,
00:09:04
which would then be used
to gag the victims. They'd often
blindfold them, as well.
00:09:09
-Paul Cheston, from
the Evening Standard newspaper, recalls the fear felt
across the capital.
00:09:15
-That added to the sense
of terror felt by Londoners that it was almost
a military-style operation,
00:09:22
and the planning
that was going into it was much more than just spurred
attack, moment attacks.
00:09:27
-Mulcahy would always ask
the victims their names and addresses as well and would often steal items
which had their address
00:09:33
on it, library cards,
that sort of thing. The idea was that if these
victims went to the police,
00:09:38
"We will find you,"
you know, and so on. They always made sure
their victims were reduced
00:09:42
to a state of abject terror. -One such attack occurred
in the summer of 1984. -The attack on the two
Danish au pairs
00:09:51
took place in July 1984. That night, Duffy and Mulcahy
had been driving around for a long time
unable to find a victim,
00:09:57
and finally they saw
these two 18-year-old girls walking along Spaniards Road
on the edge of Hampstead Heath.
00:10:02
They had been out
in the West End and missed the last train home
and were walking back.
00:10:06
They decided
to attack them both. Duffy had a replica gun. Mulcahy had a knife. They were dragged off the road
and onto the Heath and brutally,
00:10:17
brutally assaulted. -For 3 years, Duffy and Mulcahy
continued undetected. -In late 1985,
00:10:27
the police connected 24 attacks
on women in north London, and posters went up
across London
00:10:33
for the north London rapists. They knew they were
looking for two men, a shorter man and a taller one.
00:10:38
They didn't know a great deal
about the taller man, but they knew
that the shorter man was
00:10:42
an A-secretor blood group,
had fair hair. The taller man, they knew
a lot less about.
00:10:46
He had a darker complexion. He had a mole on his chin. He had mousy brown hair,
was about 5-foot-11 tall
00:10:52
and was much more violent
than the shorter man. -The majority of the attacks
had taken place
00:10:57
in the vicinity
of train stations. The press had dubbed them
the "Railway Rapists."
00:11:02
-It was a very big story
in London that was a widespread concern not just because
rapists were loose
00:11:11
but because they were
finding victims in and around railway stations,
and London is --
00:11:17
Millions of Londoners
travel on public transport, and it was a serious,
serious concern for Londoners.
00:11:25
-But it was about to get worse. Their next victim
would not just be raped. She would be murdered.
00:11:37
By December 1985,
John Duffy and David Mulcahy had been sexually
assaulting women
00:11:44
in and around railway stations
in London for over 3 years. Still undetected by the police,
their confidence was growing.
00:11:53
-I think it was inevitable that this was only going
to escalate further because we've got two men here
00:11:59
who are really enjoying
the sexual violence that they've been perpetrating, and often when you
look at offenders
00:12:04
who are engaged
in this kind of behavior, they're not going to just stop
at a particular level.
00:12:09
They want to keep
upping the ante, so I think murder was
unfortunately inevitable here.
00:12:14
-On December the 29th, 1985, Alison Day caught a train
to Hackney Wick station to meet her fiancé.
00:12:24
-Alison Day was
a 19-year-old secretary who lived in Upminster
with her parents.
00:12:29
She had been adopted as a baby
and brought into a very, very loving household. She worked as a secretary
in a local solicitor's office.
00:12:36
She was enormously
bubbly and popular, and she had just got engaged. -But Alison never
completed her journey.
00:12:44
-At that time,
obviously it was a torture for her parents not knowing
if she'd just run away,
00:12:49
although it seemed absolutely, you know, implausible
that she had. What had actually happened
was that she'd got the train
00:12:55
to Hackney Wick, and Duffy and Mulcahy were
waiting for her on the platform. They could quite easily have
walked her out of the station,
00:13:03
but instead they decided to walk
her across the live rail tracks down the railway siding and then
under the railway bridge.
00:13:11
There, they both committed
horrific attacks on her. And at this point,
as far as Duffy was aware,
00:13:19
the plan was to leave Alison
on the far side of the bridge and them make their escape,
00:13:23
but Mulcahy wanted to do
something more than that, so he made her walk along
the outside ledge of the bridge.
00:13:28
She couldn't swim. It was also 1 degree
below freezing, and she fell into the River Lea
00:13:34
screaming out
that she couldn't swim. She waded to the edge,
and Duffy helped her out,
00:13:38
and then she managed to run. She ran for her life,
and this enraged Mulcahy. And Mulcahy yelled out,
"Get the bitch, John. Get her."
00:13:48
-Duffy caught up with Alison, but Mulcahy's slip of the tongue
had sealed her fate.
00:13:55
-He said to Duffy, "We have to
do this because she's seen us, and she knows your name now."
00:14:02
-He cuts up the blouse
she's wearing and uses it to strangle her. And he says to Duffy, "You turn
the tourniquet one more time
00:14:13
just so that
we're in it together." -Alison was begging
and pleading for her life,
00:14:17
and her last words were, "Please, it's only
the mustache I've seen. I won't tell anyone.
Do not hurt me."
00:14:23
It's just unbelievable. She was strangled,
rolled into the river, and then they both drove back.
00:14:32
Duffy was panicking. Mulcahy said,
"We would have been done for attempted murder anyway.
It's got to be --
00:14:37
That's just the way it is." He dropped Duffy off. Mulcahy picked his children up,
went back home,
00:14:43
and Alison Day was dead. -The 19-year-old's body
was found 3 weeks later face-down in a canal.
00:14:52
The Railway Rapists had become
the Railway Killers. Duffy and Mulcahy had
strangled Alison to death
00:15:00
using a tourniquet. -I think when we're looking
at the murder of Alison Day, and we hear about them twisting
the tourniquet together,
00:15:09
basically what they're
doing here is saying, "We're in this together.
We've both done this.
00:15:14
You can't blame it on me.
I can't blame it on you." So there is that pact going back
to their school days
00:15:20
when they said they're not
going to grass on each other. That really is the kind
of cementing of that.
00:15:27
-Less than 6 months later,
Duffy and Mulcahy struck again. This time, their victim
was even younger.
00:15:36
-Maartje Tamboezer was
a Dutch schoolgirl. She had just celebrated
her 15th birthday.
00:15:40
On Thursday, the 17th of April,
at 4:00 in the afternoon after coming home from school,
00:15:46
she had something to eat,
had a drink, and then got on a bike
to cycle into the village
00:15:51
to buy some sweets
from the shop. Her mum said to her,
as she always did, "Don't take the railway path
00:15:57
because it's very quiet
along there. Take the long way around." Maartje, being a teenage girl,
thought, "It'll be all right,"
00:16:04
and she took the railway path,
and Duffy and Mulcahy were waiting
at the end of it for her.
00:16:10
-Maartje was raped by both men in the woods
near Horsley station. Mulcahy used a rock to knock
00:16:18
the 15-year-old
schoolgirl unconscious and then made the decision
that she had to die.
00:16:24
-He then instructs Duffy
that he has to kill her. "After all,
I killed the first one.
00:16:30
You've got to kill
the second one." They take her belt,
put it around her neck, and they stick a stick
through the belt
00:16:38
to tighten the pressure
on her neck. And they do indeed kill
the poor 15-year-old, innocent,
00:16:44
had done nothing more
than ride her bicycle, and she had done nothing
to these two men.
00:16:47
It was an absolutely abhorrent,
depraved, disgraceful crime. -Once Duffy had killed
Maartje Tamboezer,
00:16:55
Mulcahy ran up to him and says, "Well-done. You've done good," almost like he was the captain
of a football team
00:17:02
congratulating a new player. He then told Duffy to go back
to the station and said he would see him there.
00:17:09
He said he wanted to go
back to the body to make sure there were no
fingerprints left on the rock.
00:17:14
He actually went back
to make sure that she was dead and to make
a pretty vile attempt
00:17:20
to destroy any forensic evidence there was by setting
fire to her. -Maartje's body was found
in the woods the following day.
00:17:29
-The sight that greeted
those police officers was absolutely horrific. She had been savagely raped,
00:17:33
submitted to brutal
head injuries, strangled, and the body
had been set on fire in a clear attempt
to destroy forensic evidence.
00:17:41
She was lying beside
some bluebells, and the police
christened the inquiry Operation Bluebell
in tribute to her.
00:17:50
-Metropolitan Police
Detective Charlie Farquhar, who was investigating
the murder of Alison Day,
00:17:57
contacted his colleagues
in Surrey Police. He believed the two
murders were connected.
00:18:04
-And when he told Surrey
on the phone, Surrey realized
that the piece of wood that was lying next
to Maartje's body
00:18:12
wasn't in fact just a piece
of wood on the ground. It had actually fallen out
of the knots in the rope,
00:18:15
and obviously it was
the same murder method. And at that point, this became
a joint-murder inquiry.
00:18:21
Shortly afterwards,
the connection was made with the London rapes, and this went from
being a small inquiry
00:18:27
being run from a portacabin
to the biggest criminal manhunt since the search
of the Yorkshire River.
00:18:33
-Duffy and Mulcahy
didn't wait long to claim their third victim. On May the 18th, 1986,
recently married Anne Locke
00:18:42
boarded a train from Brookmans
Park station in Hertfordshire, but she never made it home.
00:18:48
-Anne Locke was 29 years old. She was a bright,
attractive girl with a huge amount of talent
and future in broadcasting.
00:18:59
She was a secretary at
London Weekend Television, and she was in love. She had been married
just 4 weeks earlier
00:19:06
and returned from a dream
honeymoon in the Seychelles, had gone scuba diving. She still had a suntan
from that lovely holiday,
00:19:13
and she disappeared. -Paul Dockley
from the Hertfordshire Police led the inquiry
into Anne's disappearance.
00:19:22
-The weirdest thing was
that the initial officers attending this
missing-person inquiry
00:19:28
discovered that her bike
was missing, and in fact we found it
behind the shed leaned up against a tree,
00:19:36
which was unusual
to say the least. And so we started searching. We started searching around
the railway station.
00:19:44
We also did a trawl of people
that may have been on the train coming out of London
on that particular night.
00:19:51
-It was the latest twist
in a story that had captivated
the British public. -The disappearance
of Anne Locke
00:19:58
was a media sensation
that summer. The "Missing Bride Story,"
as it was called. -And the headlines about
Missing Bride escalated.
00:20:06
The speculation
became more forensic about what could have
happened to her. They were already piecing
her disappearance
00:20:14
to the two previous murders, and there was a tangible air
of, you know, "What are the police doing?
They cannot even find a body
00:20:21
let alone
find the people responsible." -But the police
had little to go on. They could not even be sure
00:20:29
that Anne had reached
Brookmans Park station. -The first time that the
police genuinely realized
00:20:34
that Anne was probably dead was when Inspector Paul Dockley
was searching the area,
00:20:41
and even though
the search was massive, the search was generally
at ground level,
00:20:45
and being a good detective,
he looked up, and up in the trees, cradled in
the branches, was Anne's diary.
00:20:52
-I didn't know it was Anne's
diary immediately, but I saw it in the tree,
so we recovered that.
00:20:57
And within the next day, we reasserted our search
in the area and recovered her purse,
00:21:02
her LWT pass
and her address book. So at that point, which was probably
4 weeks into the inquiry,
00:21:13
we knew at that point that Anne
had returned to Brookmans Park. -And just a week later,
00:21:20
the police found out
the devastating truth of what had happened
to 29-year-old Anne.
00:21:27
-Eventually, after 9 weeks,
the search was called off. The police had gone to the edge
of the Hertfordshire boundary
00:21:33
and still couldn't
find anything. And then a few days later, some
railway workers found her body
00:21:39
just into
the Metropolitan Police District dreadfully decomposed. -Following the discovery
of Anne Locke's body,
00:21:46
we actually developed
a joint investigation with Hertfordshire,
The Met, Surrey,
00:21:54
and British Transport Police. Investigating a murder is almost
like starting a jigsaw puzzle
00:22:02
with a piece of blue sky
because you do not know the pattern
of how things have occurred.
00:22:10
You're faced with a scene,
but it doesn't actually tell you necessarily who the offender is,
00:22:17
so you're working through that
jigsaw of trying to put together all the elements
in order to prove a case.
00:22:23
And it's hard as a detective
to detach yourself from what you actually see. You're dealing with this
on a regular basis, and, well,
00:22:33
I don't think I've ever
come across a case like this. -As one victim later said,
00:22:38
"They were like two bodies
with one brain." They knew exactly what
the other one was going to do.
00:22:42
They split up and ran
in different directions. They knew where they were
going to meet up and so on.
00:22:46
Their bond was unique
and wicked. -While police from
three regions searched for them,
00:22:52
Duffy and Mulcahy remained
hidden in plain sight, married men with regular jobs,
00:22:59
but the net was
closing in on the pair. In the summer of 1986,
Hertfordshire, Surrey, and London's
Metropolitan Police forces
00:23:09
were working together
to try and capture the two men the papers were
calling the Railway Killers,
00:23:15
but the evidence
they had was minimal. -So this was the 1980s. Forensic science
was still in its infancy
00:23:22
compared to the advances
that have been made since. Also, it wasn't just
forensic science
00:23:27
which was in quite
a primitive state at the time. Also, police treatment
of sexual crimes
00:23:33
wasn't as sophisticated or
as understanding as it is now. -The surviving victims
had provided
00:23:39
investigators with descriptions
of their attackers. They knew that one of the
rapists was tall and violent,
00:23:47
the other short
with piercing blue eyes. Forensic evidence suggested
that the shorter man
00:23:53
had the blood group A. -We were literally going
through a list of people that could be possible
offenders called the Zed Men.
00:24:06
And the Zed Men
had been previously arrested. And you got to remember
this is pre-DNA,
00:24:12
so we're the precursor to DNA, and we were looking
at A-secretors, so people who secreted
in their blood
00:24:20
or their saliva or semen
an A-secretor factor. -The Zed Men had over
2,000 people in it.
00:24:28
John Duffy was on it
because of a serious assault on his wife the previous year.
00:24:33
He was number 1,595
on that list, and it was just a case
of working through the list
00:24:38
and interviewing
every single one of those men. Eventually,
number 1,595 came up,
00:24:43
and it was time for him
to be questioned. He sat down. He was quite polite
and cooperative
00:24:47
but was behaving
rather strangely. He was trying
to be much too helpful, and his answers
were rather glib.
00:24:53
The two police officers
interviewing him had an uneasy feeling. They left the room
and said to each other,
00:24:59
"This could be him," not least because of these
piercing blue eyes he had, which many of the rape victims
had commented on the shorter man
00:25:05
having great,
piercing blue eyes. -Despite their suspicions,
Duffy was released,
00:25:11
but before long, he was back. -The two investigators
rang me and said, "Governor,
you won't believe this."
00:25:19
He said, "Last night,
John Duffy presented himself at West Hampstead
Police Station.
00:25:26
He'd been slashed across
the chest with a blade, and he was saying
that he had amnesia.
00:25:33
I took him to his home address. He didn't recognize his mom,
his dad, his dog, nothing."
00:25:39
And he was taken
to Friern Barnet Hospital, where he was sectioned. -The investigation had
taken a bizarre twist.
00:25:46
Duffy was still a suspect, but the police were not
permitted to talk to him while he was sectioned.
00:25:53
-So Duffy was at
Friern Barnet Hospital, and we weren't allowed
to interview him
00:25:59
for at least 8 weeks,
and unbeknown to us, we thought he was in a secure
unit at Friern Barnet Hospital.
00:26:08
In actual fact, he was allowed
to come and go. -Duffy had been attacking
on his own since mid-1984,
00:26:14
and unlike Mulcahy, didn't possess the same
level of self-control. He was becoming wildly unstable,
00:26:21
and he also took
a lot more risks when he was carrying
out these attacks and was much more careless.
00:26:28
-And, unfortunately, he went
out to a railway line and raped a young girl whilst he was in the care
of Friern Barnet Hospital.
00:26:37
-The last attack
he committed when he knew the police
were closing in on him was on a 14-year-old
schoolgirl in Watford,
00:26:43
and during that attack,
her blindfold slipped, and she saw him very clearly. When Duffy was arrested, that
girl walked into the I.D. parade
00:26:52
and walked straight up
and pointed him out, and at that point, that was
the end for John Duffy.
00:27:00
-He said nothing. He said "No comment"
to everything. He didn't deny anything. He just said, "No comment."
00:27:06
And he would talk to me about
martial arts as long as the day. You know, he was quite happy
to talk about that,
00:27:13
but anything to do with rape, missing girls, murders,
not interested. And, of course, his answer was,
00:27:21
"I've been in hospital.
I've had amnesia. I don't remember anything. I don't remember anything
before going into hospital."
00:27:29
-Detectives knew they needed
some solid evidence if they were going to
charge Duffy with murder,
00:27:35
and the string that he
and Mulcahy had used to tie up Maartje Tamboezer
7 months earlier
00:27:40
was about to give
them just that. -They used a particular
piece of string that was called somyarn,
00:27:48
and a lot of us will think
string is string is string, but when you get down
to the forensic detail,
00:27:54
how it's made,
what it's made of, all of these things
can be very different, and if you happen to use
a very unusual piece of string,
00:28:03
it's going to help identify
where that's come from. -And the company said, "This is
a very unusual piece of string
00:28:11
because it's been taken
from the end of the yarn, so basically it's on a loom,
and it's cut,
00:28:17
and this is an end piece." And they said to us, "If you
can find the ball of string,
00:28:22
we could do a match." So the search team who went
to Duffy's parents' address searched the outside toilet,
00:28:32
and in a bucket in there
was a ball of somyarn. -It was enough to finally put
an end to the murderous career
00:28:40
of one of the Railway Killers. -Gradually, the evidence is
building up against Duffy,
00:28:46
and he was charged with
the murder of Anne Locke in addition to the murder
of Alison Day
00:28:51
and Maartje Tamboezer
and a number of rapes. -Investigators were certain
that Duffy's accomplice
00:28:59
was his oldest friend,
David Mulcahy. -He was actually arrested four
times over the next few months.
00:29:06
Every time that police
got another break, they brought him in again but eventually realized there
just wasn't enough evidence.
00:29:11
There was no forensic
evidence to connect him with the crimes at all. When they searched
these vehicles,
00:29:15
they found in the cab
of his van masking tape, balaclavas, all sorts of things
that incriminated him,
00:29:20
but none of it was enough. -But his name was known
to the press, and a lot of people,
a lot of pressmen,
00:29:28
went to see him to see just to gauge what
sort of reaction he would give. Of course,
there was no reaction.
00:29:33
He would say, "No comment," and he got increasingly angry
about what he called harassment,
00:29:38
but the press knew that
there were two people involved in the Railway Rapist cases,
00:29:43
and Duffy's friend
was the prime suspect. -John Duffy would go
to trial alone, and there was more bad news
for investigators.
00:29:52
The judge instructed the jury to dismiss the murder charge
of Anne Locke due to a lack of evidence.
00:30:00
-This caused a lot of anguish
with Anne Locke's family and was a surprise
amongst the press,
00:30:07
but the problem was that
in the Locke case there was no surviving victim
to give any evidence.
00:30:14
There were no witnesses
to the attack, the fact that the body had laid
unfound for 2 months,
00:30:20
that there was no DNA evidence. -In February 1988,
John Duffy's trial began
at the Old Bailey in London.
00:30:29
-John Duffy walked into
the witness box at the Old Bailey and put up one of the worst
defenses ever heard
00:30:37
by an Old Bailey jury. To suggest that he was
suffering from amnesia and could remember nothing about
what happened during the period
00:30:47
in which he was accused
of the murders and rapes was frankly an insult to the
intelligence of anyone in court,
00:30:55
let alone the jury. His whole body language
was of defiance. "I am going to give you nothing.
00:31:01
I am standing here sticking
to my story, and I don't care." And the piercing eyes that
his victims spoke of, the wild,
00:31:08
staring blue eyes, absolutely radiated out from the
witness box across the court.
00:31:15
-Duffy was found guilty of
two murders and five rapes. He was given six life sentences,
but despite everything,
00:31:23
he refused to give up the name of his accomplice
and best friend. -Well, maybe the reason
00:31:29
why Duffy kept quiet
right at the beginning, they had their agreement that
they had from a very young age,
00:31:35
and they never broke
that agreement, "We're never going to rat
on each other." So when he went to prison,
he probably decided,
00:31:41
"I'm going to stay true because
I am, you know, a good friend, or I am the man I am, whatever,
I was true to my word."
00:31:47
-As Duffy's sentence began, David Mulcahy
remained a free man. The man and father of four set
up his own decorating business,
00:31:56
and life went on as normal. -I think Mulcahy is somebody
who returns to a normal life
00:32:03
and has absolutely
no problem in doing that, and that's because
he can switch. He can flip very easily
00:32:11
because he doesn't feel
empathy for his victims. He doesn't feel bad
about what he's done,
00:32:16
and it's very much about
self-preservation for him. -Everybody knew
that David Mulcahy
00:32:21
was the second man, but he honestly thought
that he got away with that, and for the next 10 years
he pretty much had.
00:32:32
-But as Duffy's time
in prison passed by, something inside of him clicked. After claiming to be
suffering from amnesia,
00:32:40
he suddenly got his memory back. By 1999, he was ready to talk
and tell the police
00:32:47
all about his accomplice,
David Mulcahy. 11 years after his conviction,
John Duffy was in prison
00:32:56
serving six life
sentences for his part in a series of rapes
and murders in and around London
00:33:03
between 1982 and 1986, but Duffy's partner in crime,
David Mulcahy, remained free.
00:33:16
-Mulcahy was one
who first suggested, "Let's break
into the girl's house." He was the one
who first suggested,
00:33:21
"Let's go and find victims
on the street," and he was the one
who first suggested,
00:33:24
"Let's commit murder," but the one who was paying
all the price was Duffy, so it's very, very easy for you
to see that after 10 years,
00:33:32
you know, the little fuse
from Duffy got to an end, and he was like, "Forget it.
I'm going to come clean."
00:33:39
-In 1997, Duffy, who had
originally claimed to be suffering from amnesia
about the crimes,
00:33:46
had begun visiting
a prison psychologist. -So basically Duffy had been in
prison for 10 years and thought,
00:33:54
"This is an opportunity
to talk and talk and talk," and basically he told
the psychologist
00:34:01
about the offenses
he had committed and the fact that he hadn't
committed them alone.
00:34:06
-During their conversations,
Duffy reveals that he committed these crimes
with another person,
00:34:11
and she casually asked which
prison his codefendant is in. And Duffy drops the bombshell.
00:34:17
"He's not in prison.
He was never caught." She says, "I have to tell
the police about this,"
00:34:22
which Duffy agrees to. And so she tells the police,
"John Duffy has just named his accomplice.
00:34:27
It's someone
called David Mulcahy." -It was a big breakthrough for
detectives who had been trying
00:34:33
to bring Mulcahy to justice
for over a decade, and a huge slice of fortune was
about to initiate his downfall.
00:34:41
-There's an extraordinary
coincidence here. At the same time
that this was going on,
00:34:45
a similar series of attacks was
taking place on Hampstead Heath, and police began to suspect
00:34:50
that David Mulcahy may
have become active again. They had a DNA profile
for the attacker.
00:34:55
Mulcahy was brought in,
questioned. They took his DNA,
and it didn't match. And once again, he left
the police station very cocky,
00:35:04
very arrogant. -But the police now had
Mulcahy's DNA on file. They had to go back 15 years
to find a match.
00:35:14
-Amazingly, in deep storage, was the clothing
of the Danish au pairs' rapes on Hampstead Heath in 1984,
00:35:21
and when the clothing
was run through forensics, one sample of clothing
had Duffy's DNA on it,
00:35:26
and the other had
David Mulcahy's DNA. And suddenly, after all
those years of thinking
00:35:30
he got away with it, suddenly that case had
come back to haunt him. -On February the 6th, 1999,
00:35:37
David Mulcahy
was taken into custody. He would never be free again. -As soon as I found out
that the police had arrested
00:35:46
and charged a new suspect
in the Railway Rapist cases, I, like every other pressman
00:35:54
who had been in any sort
of involvement in the case, immediately knew
that it had to be David Mulcahy.
00:35:59
-He thought that they were
just clutching at straws. He thought that this was just
another attempt to arrest him
00:36:04
which was going to fall through. When they sat down
to question him, the first thing they asked him
was about the night
00:36:10
of the 15th of July 1984
in the company of John Duffy, and he wasn't expecting
that at all.
00:36:18
And then the police revealed
that they'd found his DNA on an exhibit from that crime,
00:36:24
and the odds of it being
another person other than him were one in one billion, at which point a police officer
held up the wastepaper basket
00:36:33
because he was violently sick, and he realized
that the game was up. -Mulcahy's trial was set
for October 2000,
00:36:41
and the prosecution had
a surprise witness lined up. John Duffy was ready to testify
against his former friend.
00:36:50
He had admitted to detectives
that the pair had killed all three women,
including Anne Locke.
00:36:56
-Duffy couldn't be retried
for the murder of Anne Locke because at that time
they were still enforcing
00:37:00
something called
the double-jeopardy rule, which means you can't be tried
for the same crime twice.
00:37:03
It's a silly law,
which is now gone, but Duffy said himself
at the time, "If I could be tried again
for this one, I would be."
00:37:10
So there was never any point
where he was trying to minimize his involvement. -After it seemed like he was
going to get away with murder,
00:37:17
the gathered press were excited
to finally see Mulcahy on trial. Paul Cheston was in
the courtroom throughout.
00:37:25
-The Mulcahy trial was
unquestionably the trial of the year at the Old Bailey. There was huge anticipation
at reopening
00:37:32
this historic case
dating back almost 15 years, and, as always, when the case opens
and the defendant is brought in,
00:37:42
everyone's eyes just immediately
shift straight to the dock. He looked more like a bank
manager than a serial killer,
00:37:48
and he immediately set about
getting an air of relaxed as if this was just
maybe a formality
00:37:55
that would be thrown out
of court straight away. -On November the 6th, 2000, John Duffy entered the courtroom
to give evidence
00:38:03
against his former friend
and accomplice. -There was huge anticipation,
a real frisson in court
00:38:11
when John Duffy shuffled in
through the judge's entrance, not through the main entrance
00:38:16
because he was
a category A prisoner, the first category A prisoner,
serving life, murderer,
00:38:20
to give evidence for the crown
at the Old Bailey. And when he entered court,
he shuffled.
00:38:28
He had his head down.
He would mumble. The piercing eyes were hooded. He didn't want to look up.
00:38:34
-The tension in the courtroom between the two killers
was palpable. Duffy avoided eye
contact with Mulcahy.
00:38:43
-It was almost
as if he considered this was an act of betrayal, and he couldn't look
in that direction.
00:38:47
He didn't want to
catch Mulcahy's eye. Meanwhile, Mulcahy in the dock was acting as if
he'd never met him,
00:38:52
and this was some
complete stranger. And he was scribbling notes
on this and that,
00:38:58
and this seemed bizarre
for what was a unique and wicked bond for decades. These were so poles apart
now across the courtroom.
00:39:10
-True to his word,
Duffy gave a detailed account of the duo's career
of rape and murder.
00:39:17
-His accounts,
particularly of Alison Day pleading for mercy
with Mulcahy claiming,
00:39:23
"We're going to have to kill her
because she's seen us," and Alison Day saying, "I've only seen a mustache,
and don't do this to me.
00:39:32
Don't hurt me.
I won't tell anybody," and Mulcahy,action
in Duffy's words, twisting the tourniquet
and throttling her to death,
00:39:41
that for the first
and only time, John Duffy showed
a glimmer of remorse. His eyes welled up,
and his voice faltered.
00:39:48
The judge called a halt. He was led away,
and the case was adjourned for 10 to 15 minutes.
00:39:56
-Duffy gave testimony
across 2 weeks of the 5-month murder trial. On February the 2nd, 2001,
the jury had made a decision
00:40:07
on the fate of David Mulcahy. -And when the jury forum
was asked to go through on each count
on this long indictment
00:40:16
and answered the first, "So did you find Mulcahy guilty
or not guilty?", answered, "Guilty," there was
such an escape of emotion
00:40:25
and, like, steam
from a kettle of relief, and then it went through
the indictment,
00:40:30
"Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Guilty. Guilty." -And when it came to
the verdict on Anne Locke,
00:40:35
because this had been
a case of Duffy had been found not guilty of
because of the lack of evidence,
00:40:40
this was finally the chance
to really lay this to rest. And when a "Guilty"
came in on that as well,
00:40:44
the atmosphere was extraordinary
in that court. -And there was a lot of victims,
a lot of victims' families,
00:40:50
in court, an inevitable outbreak
of relief, of tears. Mulcahy himself seemed
entirely unmoved.
00:40:58
It's almost as
if he expected it, and it was an extraordinary
scene at the Old Bailey,
00:41:03
even by the Old Bailey
standards. -And David Mulcahy had
nothing else, no other way of hurting
those victims anymore,
00:41:10
so as he walked out of the dock,
he looked over at two of the victims
sitting in the public gallery
00:41:14
and smirked at them. It was his last desperate act of
revenge, and then that was it.
00:41:22
And then he was promptly
sentenced to a total of 258 years in prison, so I think we can safely say
he's never going to get out.
00:41:31
-Sentencing Judge Michael Hyam
told Mulcahy, "There were acts
of desolating wickedness.
00:41:37
You descended to
the depths of depravity." -Finally, 15 years after
the murder of Anne Locke,
00:41:43
John Duffy and David Mulcahy
were both behind bars. 12 years were added
to Duffy's sentence
00:41:50
while Mulcahy has still never
confessed to any of the crimes. -I think the fact that Mulcahy
has always maintained
00:41:55
his innocence really is a testament
to his narcissism. He is protecting
the image of himself
00:42:01
that he's putting out
there to other people. He doesn't want others
to believe that he is
00:42:06
this individual who has carried
out these heinous crimes. -There's always been
speculation that Duffy
00:42:11
and Mulcahy
were guilty of other rapes, several of which will not
even have been reported,
00:42:16
but thank goodness at least,
finally, they were brought to justice. -These were perhaps crimes
that they may not have committed
00:42:23
had they never met,
but they come together, and you create
the perfect storm. -For 4 years,
John Duffy and David Mulcahy
00:42:31
targeted vulnerable women
in and around London. They callously raped
over 20 and murdered three,
00:42:39
one of them
a 15-year-old schoolgirl. Although
initially detained in 1986, it wasn't until Duffy
broke the bond
00:42:48
that he and Mulcahy have shared
since their childhood that their world of lies
fell apart and justice
00:42:54
was finally served
upon the twisted pair known as the Railway Killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪