00:00:04
- MALE NARRATOR: In August 1981,
91-year-old Henry Walsh was held up at knife point
in his small hardware store
00:00:12
at Ormskirk, Lincolnshire,
in England. The elderly shopkeeper
refused to yield to his 18-year-old assailant.
00:00:21
He would pay with is life
in the most horrific way. - Obviously threatened
him with a knife,
00:00:26
two or three times. You could see minor marks
on his clothing, and then he just pushed it
through his chest.
00:00:34
And he's actually hanging
on it on the door. - NARRATOR: The perpetrator
was Andrew Dawson,
00:00:40
a known local thief
who'd suddenly matured into a vicious murderer. He would spend the next 17 years
behind bars,
00:00:50
but that did nothing
to dull his killer instinct. - Almost inevitably
as night follows day,
00:00:59
Dawson was going to kill again,
it was only a question of when. - NARRATOR: Almost 30 years
after his first killing,
00:01:08
Dawson was a free man
with murder on this mind. In 2010,
police in Derby would discover
00:01:16
two of Dawson's neighbors dead,
but the convicted killer was nowhere to be found.
00:01:22
- This guy kept me
awake at night because you just had
this feeling that you had
00:01:25
to get the evidence,
you had to put him away because he was an absolute
danger to anybody in society.
00:01:30
- NARRATOR: Andrew Dawson
had proved himself to be one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:01:36
- ♪ - NARRATOR: In July 2011,
Andrew Dawson pleaded guilty to the double murder
of two of his neighbors
00:02:05
and was sentenced to spend the
rest of his life behind bars. It was the end of the road
for the 48-year-old killer
00:02:14
who chillingly christened
himself the Angel of Mercy. Dawson was no stranger
to prison,
00:02:23
he'd already served time
for murdering a popular shopkeeper in his hometown
of Ormskirk in 1981,
00:02:29
when he was just 18. Local journalist
Clifford Birchall covered the story of the brutal murder
in the unassuming town.
00:02:41
- Ormskirk in the 80s
was just a small country Lincolnshire town. They had a market
that was on the streets
00:02:48
twice a week;
came alive on those days. Just a small friendly place. Everybody seemed to know
everybody and it was just
00:02:56
an ordinary place, nothing
exciting happened very often. - NARRATOR: That was all
to change in August 1981,
00:03:05
when 18-year-old Andrew Dawson
entered a small hardware shop owned by popular pensioner,
Henry Walsh.
00:03:14
- CLIFFORD: From what
we learned from the, uh, evidence, he'd just gone in,
he'd been looking for money
00:03:19
and he thought that Mr. Walsh
would be a soft touch. He was, you know, 91-years-old,
he wouldn't put up
00:03:26
much of a fight, he would,
you know, do as he was told. But, uh, it turned out
however more spirit
00:03:32
than Andrew Dawson
thought he had. He refused to say
where his money was. He refused to help him,
sort of tried to get him out
00:03:38
of the shop and then
he paid for it with his life. - NARRATOR: After serving
seventeen years for the crime,
00:03:46
Dawson was released in 1999
and settled down in Derby with a wife and two children,
but just over a decade later,
00:03:54
the killer found himself
living alone in a flat and his lust
for murder returned.
00:04:00
Former detective,
Paul Callum investigated the killing of two
of Dawson's neighbors in 2010.
00:04:08
- The people who lived in this
block of flats, or his victims, were vulnerable
for some reason,
00:04:12
either sort of, they're
a little bit older and they've got ill health,
uh, or alcohol problems
00:04:17
and this sort of thing,
and I think Dawson knew that and he picked on
vulnerable people
00:04:21
because he knew he could
overpower them, and he knew
he could control them. - NARRATOR: This killer's story
begins in the market town
00:04:31
of Ormskirk in Lincolnshire,
in the north of England. - Dawson was born in 1962 and he was one of six children
and the family
00:04:40
were quite impoverished,
they didn't have alot of money, so I think times
were pretty tough.
00:04:46
He did have a very strict
and domineering father, but that's nothing
out of the ordinary,
00:04:51
and his relationship
with his mother, doesn't seem to
have a flagged up any concerns either,
so his--his family life
00:04:59
wasn't particularly
out of the ordinary. - NARRATOR: But even
from a young age, Dawson displayed signs that
he was in for a life of crime.
00:05:10
- GEOFFREY: He grows up
in straightened circumstances in Ormskirk. A boy who wants
whatever he wants,
00:05:17
whenever he wants to get it. When he's six or seven, he sees
a little girl with money,
00:05:21
pennies literally,
and steals them, because he can, because he feels
he can get away with it,
00:05:26
because it doesn't matter. DR. YARDLEY: He had a very
acute sense of entitlement.
00:05:30
If he wanted something,
he would just literally go and take it,
there were no moral
00:05:35
or ethical boundaries
there whatsoever, and I don't think that behavior
was ever really challenged.
00:05:42
There were never really
any serious consequences for that and if there were,
he didn't care.
00:05:48
So, this was somebody
who was psychologically not quite normal. - In my view,
Dawson was a sociopath
00:05:56
from a very, very early age. He did not know
a responsibility. He did not know moral values,
he did not know conscience,
00:06:02
he did not know forgiveness,
he did not know saying sorry; grab it, "I'm gonna take it,
it's mine, I want it."
00:06:11
- LOUIS:
The majority of individuals who commit juvenile crime,
petty or otherwise,
00:06:16
usually turn themselves around
as they mature out of it. The younger someone is when they
begin their criminal behavior,
00:06:26
the worse the prognosis is,
the worse the outcome is, and so, when you look at
Dawson's background,
00:06:32
what stands out to me
from a distance is he was involved in crime
right from the beginning,
00:06:37
he was a problem child,
right from the start. - NARRATOR: As Dawson
matured, so did his crimes.
00:06:45
- DR. YARDLEY: As a teenager,
Dawson engaged in property crime. He committed a range
of petty thiefs and the victims
00:06:52
he would target
would be elderly people, and I think he was--
he was quite aware
00:06:57
of the vulnerability
of the elderly, of the fact that they might keep
money in their houses
00:07:02
or their work places. - NARRATOR: The burgeoning
criminal was soon on the radar
of the local authorities.
00:07:10
- Andrew Dawson
had come to the attention of the police in the past, uh,
through just, uh, petty thief.
00:07:15
He wasn't known to them,
I don't think they thought he was one of the great
criminals of the town,
00:07:20
but he was just perhaps more
a nuisance than anything else. - NARRATOR: There appeared
to be nothing obvious
00:07:27
in Dawson's young life
that justified his criminality. - He had five siblings,
they're not all
00:07:34
committing crimes
and killing people, no, it was Dawson,
he's the only one. He grew up in the same
family with them.
00:07:41
The parents treated them,
generally speaking, the same, according to all the other
family members,
00:07:47
no, it was Dawson,
it's within him. It wasn't an event
that happened that created him,
00:07:53
it's who he was. - DR. YARDLEY: I think there
was very much a sense of competition between Dawson
and his siblings.
00:08:01
It's always that vying
for attention and there are six of them,
so I think that they're always
00:08:07
trying to outdo each other,
and that's the case in many large families,
but I think Dawson took it
00:08:14
a little bit further than most. He had a significantly
antagonistic relationship
00:08:19
with his brother, he stole
money from his brother. - NARRATOR:
It was the final straw,
00:08:25
Dawson's brother
reported him to the police and the young criminal
was arrested and charged with theft.
00:08:33
- CLIFFORD: That was enough
to have him sent to boarding school for,
uh, about six months.
00:08:37
And then sort of,
when he was released, he came back Ormskirk,
but obviously, you know,
00:08:43
hadn't really learned
from his ways. He just carried on as he--
as he had before.
00:08:48
- Somebody like Dawson
and other extraordinary offenders who particularly
those who commit
00:08:53
multiple crimes,
they see the world differently then the average person, they function
in a different sphere.
00:09:01
And so where punishment
may help somebody straighten themselves out
and get on the right track,
00:09:07
for somebody like Dawson
it has no affect at all, just serves as an irritant
for him,
00:09:12
just makes him angry
because he wants to do what he wants to do;
that's who he is.
00:09:18
- NARRATOR: By the age of 18,
Andrew Dawson was already a veteran thief and his time
in the youth prison,
00:09:25
nickname Borstal, had not
curbed his criminal ways. But in August 1981,
his life of petty crime
00:09:32
would take an even darker turn. - CLIFFORD: Henry Walsh
had been a shopkeeper in the town for a long time,
[unintelligible].
00:09:40
His shop didn't carry
a lot of stuff, but it was stuff
you couldn't find anywhere else,
00:09:45
it was sort of a--a time warp
in some ways. He was just
a loveable old character.
00:09:52
- NARRATOR: At some point,
late on Thursday, the 13th of August,
Andrew Dawson entered
00:09:58
Henry Walsh's shop,
by the following morning, locals were concerned for the
whereabouts of the 91-year-old.
00:10:06
- CLIFFORD: Mr. Walsh hadn't
been seen on the Friday, which was unusual
and somebody was going past,
00:10:14
noticed that two big, uh, gates
which guarded the alley to the rear of the premises,
they hadn't been closed
00:10:21
all night and his back door
was open, which was unusual. - NARRATOR: The passerby
dialed 999 and in a matter
00:10:28
of moments, Detective Jim Kay
arrived at the scene. - JIM: I was driving
through the town,
00:10:36
and the call came over the radio
that this back door of the shop was open and there
was no sign of the shopkeeper.
00:10:44
So, I just turned around
the corner, it was a matter of 20 yards, and, uh, went into the shop
00:10:52
and another officer arrived. He arrived and I said,
"Just follow me in." You're walking through
expecting to find the old man
00:11:00
somewhere, maybe collapsed, to see this man
hung on the door... It was a little bit
frightening.
00:11:10
- NARRATOR: 91-year-old,
Henry Walsh had been hung from coat hooks on the back
of the door, tortured,
00:11:16
and then brutally stabbed to
death with a carving knife. It wouldn't be long before news
of the beloved elderly man
00:11:23
found viciously murdered
in his own hardware store got out. It would send shockwaves
across the quiet town
00:11:31
of Ormskirk, England. - CLIFFORD: I was
in Moore street, uh, which is one of the main
shopping streets
00:11:39
and about 250 yards away,
at the other end of Moore street,
I could see some unusual police activity.
00:11:46
I could see a policeman
standing where a policeman wouldn't normally stand,
and he wasn't moving,
00:11:51
so he was obviously guarding
something, so I just acted on my reporter instinct
that something was wrong,
00:11:58
and so, and so I got there
and sort of based on the crime and ascertained that there
had been a suspicious death,
00:12:06
and it was Mr. Walsh,
so I arranged for a photographer to come out and take a picture
that we used in the paper
00:12:14
of the police on the scene
outside the shop. - Henry Walsh was a nice man. You know, one who spoke to
every time I passed.
00:12:23
He would come to the door
and say, "Good afternoon," and "Good morning,"
and very pleasant old man.
00:12:29
- He was just a really
loveable person, and you just couldn't imagine
anybody who would have it
00:12:36
in them to--to kill him,
to be honest. - NARRATOR: News
of the 91-year-old's horrific death
began reaching the locals.
00:12:44
The nature of the crime
was unthinkable. - CLIFFORD: He'd been stabbed
with a knife,
00:12:50
been stabbed in the chest
several times, but he'd also been hung up at the back of the door
on some coat hooks,
00:12:58
and the last wound, the knife
had gone straight through him and embedded itself
in the back of the door.
00:13:05
He'd also tied a ligature
around his neck presumably as a way to try and
force information out of him.
00:13:12
- NARRATOR: The police
didn't know it yet, but the killer
was an 18-year-old thief
00:13:17
named Andrew Dawson,
who had seemingly reveled in his first murder. - Dawson didn't just simply
kill Henry Walsh,
00:13:26
he made this victim suffer. He stabbed him multiple times,
some of the wounds were quite shallow, which is
indicative of a torture,
00:13:35
of saying actually,
"I have power over you, I am in control,"
and enjoying the reaction
00:13:41
of his victim to that. And he hung Henry up
on the--the back of a door, so he's displaying his victim.
00:13:48
He's saying, "Hey, everybody,
look at what I've done, look at what I can accomplish."
00:13:53
- GEOFFREY: You have
to ask yourself, what is it that provokes
an 18-year-old to kill him,
00:13:59
to repeatedly stab him,
to pose him, and to leave him? There is something
very, very depraved about that,
00:14:07
there is something monstrous. - LOUIS: I don't see him
targeting a truck driver,
00:14:12
a 25-year-old truck driver
out there, well, why isn't he targeting that guy. That guy can have money too,
he just made his deliveries.
00:14:19
No, Dawson's way too smart
for that, he targets somebody old and weak and vulnerable
that he knows
00:14:26
he can get over on;
that's who Dawson is. - NARRATOR: Dawson had killed
a man 73 years his senior
00:14:34
for nothing more
than the day's takings from the till,
and the 91-year-old's pension book.
00:14:42
- When police conducted a search of the house later on,
they found out that Mr. Walsh
00:14:47
did what most old people
in those days did, and he'd hidden money
in and around rooms
00:14:52
in the house, and I think they
collected about £1800, uh, in cash, which is, you know,
quite a lot of money
00:14:59
in those days, but I think
Andrew Dawson had tried to get him to say where it was,
but, uh, he refused,
00:15:07
which, I think perhaps
it counts for the ferocity of his attack in the end. - JIM: He'd been
frightened to death.
00:15:14
He was a very timid old man;
not the type of man who'd look for trouble
or get involved in trouble.
00:15:21
He's only picked on
because he was an old man. He wouldn't fight back,
I wouldn't have thought.
00:15:27
- NARRATOR: After taking
the life of another man for the very first time,
Dawson didn't panic
00:15:33
or attempt to flee Ormskirk,
instead the cocky 18-year-old flaunted his newly
acquired riches.
00:15:42
- Now, everybody
knows he's got no money, you know, he goes to a pub,
local pub where he's seen,
00:15:49
all of a sudden, feeding lots
of coins into the fruit machine. Well, that's--that's rather odd,
rather strange.
00:15:58
You're immediately going to say,
"Where did you get the money from,"
it is unbelievably foolish.
00:16:04
- DR. YARDLEY: He was somebody
who was perpetually broke, so this was something
that was rather unusual
00:16:11
and that the police eventually
catch up with him, and it emerged that Dawson
had actually cashed in
00:16:17
Henry's pension book for £50 in the days
following the murder. - CLIFFORD: Once Andrew Dawson
was arrested, sort of, people,
00:16:26
in some ways they--they
weren't surprised because they knew he did
have a reputation, but who--
00:16:30
it was sort of shocked
that he could have done such a--a savage act. - NARRATOR:
At Preston Crown Court,
00:16:37
on the 10th of March, 1982,
Andrew Dawson pleased guilty to the murder of Henry Walsh.
00:16:45
He had told police
that he panicked after the 91-year-old
had recognized him. In a statement, Dawson said,
"I am sorry
00:16:54
"for what I have done,
I had no intention "to cause anybody any harm. I wish it was me and not him."
00:17:03
- The judge
at the Crown Court gave credence to Andrew Dawson's
guilty plea and also to the fact
00:17:09
that, uh, he seemed
remorseful to some extent. He was said to have told
the police, you know,
00:17:18
"I wish it'd been me, not him,"
so the judge did give credence and mention this when
she was passing sentence.
00:17:25
- DR. YARDLEY: I'm not
convinced by this, whatsoever, we got to remember
that this was a young man
00:17:30
who'd done a stint in Borstal,
um, he was quite familiar with the types of things
that he needed to say
00:17:37
to get sympathy,
to get attention and to secure the best
outcome for himself. - NARRATOR: Dawson,
aged just 19-years-old
00:17:44
was jailed for life. He had graduated from Borstal
to prison adding murder to his rap sheet.
00:17:53
- CLIFFORD: The murder--
from a murder trial, it's not exactly,
when we said people
00:17:57
would love that sentence
being carried out, we thought, Well, what I relief that,
you know, some justice
00:18:02
had seem to be done
and sort of the fact that the right thing
had--had happened and people were now happy
and so they were content
00:18:11
that the wrongdoing
had been punished. - NARRATOR: Dawson spent
the next 17 years of his life
00:18:16
behind bars,
but during his time inside, he was no shrinking violet. He reportedly commented
on serial killers
00:18:24
Peter Sutcliffe
and Dennis Nelson, labeling them as wimps
and claiming to be a better man.
00:18:32
- When he was in prison,
he was comparing himself to other notorious offenders;
that's a bad sign.
00:18:40
Anytime an offender
wants to compare himself to other notorious killers,
that's a huge red flag.
00:18:48
A sign of rehabilitation is,
you wanna put that part of your life away,
you wanna show
00:18:53
how you're different
than other people, not how that you're more extraordinary
than some of these
00:18:58
notorious people,
that's a huge red flag. - NARRATOR: In early 1999,
Andrew Dawson was deemed
00:19:05
ready for release from
Sudbury prison in Derbyshire. Still, just 36-years-old,
it was a chance for him
00:19:13
to start a new life. - After his release from prison, Andrew Dawson appeared
to have turned over a new leaf.
00:19:20
He'd moved
to a different area, Derby. He'd met a woman,
he'd settled down with her
00:19:26
and they had
two children together, and from the outside,
he appears to be a regular guy,
00:19:32
but this was not to last
because Andrew Dawson is a person
who is prone to boredom,
00:19:38
he has that need
for stimulation, he has that hedonistic
streak to him, so he starts drinking
and that leads
00:19:44
to the--the breakdown
of his marriage. - LOUIS: He's matured now,
he's older, maybe he's a different person,
but it wasn't long
00:19:55
before Dawson reverted
to who he was. - NARRATOR: Over the next decade
Dawson would continually breach
00:20:02
the conditions of his release. - GEOFFREY: In that period
between his divorce in 2003
00:20:08
and 2010,
Dawson bumps into the law, and is returned to prison
on a regular basis, three times.
00:20:17
He's drunk and disorderly,
he's violent, he isn't in any kind of control
and he's constantly
00:20:22
therefore--because he's out
on license for the original life sentence--
straight back to jail,
00:20:29
almost as inevitably
as night follows day, Dawson was going to kill again. It was only a question
of when.
00:20:41
- NARRATOR: By July 2010,
Andrew Dawson was estranged from his wife with limited
access to his children.
00:20:49
He lived alone
in a one-bedroom flat on Waterford Drive
just outside of Derby. Former detective Paul Callum
worked on the investigation
00:21:00
into the sudden death
of one of Dawson's neighbors, 66-year-old,
John David Matthews.
00:21:07
- The initial police incident
came in at 7:00PM on the Sunday the 25th of July. Mr. Matthews worked
at a local restaurant
00:21:14
and staff at the restaurant
had been worried that he had not turned up for
work in the previous week or so,
00:21:19
and, uh, police officers
were called to the flat and they forced entry
and they found, um,
00:21:24
Mr. Matthews' body
in the bath downstairs. They looked at
Mr. Matthews' body and; unfortunately,
because they think
00:21:30
he'd been there
for a couple weeks, there was quite a lot
of decomposition, and at that time, uh,
the incidence was recorded
00:21:37
as a potential suicide. - NARRATOR: But the postmortem
told a different story. - DET. CALLUM: Late
in the afternoon of Wednesday,
00:21:46
the 28th of July,
I had a phone call from the coroner's office
to say that the local
00:21:51
pathologist had started
the postmortem of Mr. Matthews and that he said that there was,
00:21:56
uh, what he believed were
stab wounds. - NARRATOR: It was clear,
this was not a suicide;
00:22:01
it was, in fact, murder. The killer had done his best
to cover up the murder. - DET. CALLUM: What he'd done
at the crime scene
00:22:09
with Mr. Matthews is that,
uh, after stabbing him, he'd re-dressed him,
so he got rid of the shirt
00:22:16
that had the stab wounds
through it and put a shirt that didn't have
any marks on it.
00:22:20
And completely changed
all his clothing and then put him into the bath. We started doing
some early inquiries
00:22:26
and one of those which,
you know, what--what do we have on the, uh, electro register?
Who lives there?
00:22:31
What intelligence do we have
around the block of flats? - NARRATOR: Detectives
immediately singled out
00:22:36
convicted killer, Andrew Dawson
as a potential suspect. - DET. CALLUM: It very quickly
became obvious
00:22:42
that Andrew Dawson
was gonna be our suspect. He had a conviction for murder,
um, and he was on license
00:22:50
and there was some history
of a recent assault with, um, somebody else at a previous flat
that he'd lived at, um,
00:22:55
so, it was reasonably obvious
that he was gonna be our main focus quite early on.
00:23:01
- We wanted to secure the scene at-at Dawson's house and then,
obviously our biggest priority
00:23:06
was finding out
where was Dawson right now. - NARRATOR: Whilst detectives
launched a manhunt,
00:23:12
investigators forced entry
into Dawson's flat. - The flat was completely empty,
um, apart from a few
00:23:19
items of clothing, but what
was particularly interesting about Dawson's flat
was that it smelled of bleach
00:23:23
and it was very, very clean. - NARRATOR: Andrew Dawson
was no where to be found.
00:23:29
He was on the run and presumed
to be very dangerous. - DET. CALLUM:
We were extremely worried,
00:23:36
we obviously knew
that a murder had happened at some point before
the Sunday the 25th,
00:23:40
and--and looking
at the decomposition, we think probably up
to two weeks before that,
00:23:44
so we had nearly
a three week time period where we had no idea
where Dawson had been.
00:23:49
- NARRATOR: John David Matthews,
who was known as Dave, had actually been killed
on the 10th of July,
00:23:56
stabbed 18 times by his
seemingly friendly neighbor, Andrew Dawson, who often popped over
to use the washing machine.
00:24:06
- GEOFFREY: Dawson arrives
at his door with the conventional excuse
that he used many times
00:24:12
in the block,
"Can I use your washing machine? Because mine's broken," Dave lets him in,
not suspecting anything.
00:24:21
- Imagine what must have gone
through Dave Matthews' mind. It would've been indescribable.
00:24:29
Terrifying. Reduced him
to absolute fear in an instant and yet there was nothing
he could do, nothing he could do
00:24:39
to protect himself
against a man who'd come there to kill him, and to kill him
for reason entirely of his own.
00:24:45
This was not a motive of greed, this was a motive
of the desire to kill. - DR. YARDLEY: After Dawson
had killed David
00:24:52
and left his body in the bath,
he actually left the flat, um, because this was the day
when he was looking after
00:24:59
his children
and he took them out for the day as if nothing
had ever happened and he returned the next day
and cleaned up the crime scene
00:25:09
and got rid of the blood. Now for somebody
to be able to do this, to be able to function as normal
after committing a murder,
00:25:16
is something that is
very, very rare. I've met a lot of people
convicted of murder
00:25:21
and their behavior
in the aftermath is very rarely normal
because they're so shocked
00:25:27
at the enormity of what
they've done that they're unable to function with any degree
of normality.
00:25:33
- NARRATOR: The crime had
affected the whole community. As the search for the convicted
killer continued,
00:25:41
detectives question
the other neighbors at Waterford Drive. One neighbor
even told the story to police
00:25:48
of how the killer
had been involved in an altercation in his flat. - A resident started telling
00:25:54
the investigating officer
that had sat down with him to take his statement,
about, uh, the relationship
00:25:58
with Dawson and that they use
to walk into each other's flats and this sort of thing.
00:26:02
- NARRATOR: The neighbor
went on to describe an incident which had occurred
just days before.
00:26:08
After inviting Dawson
in for a drink, he caught him riffling
through his drawers.
00:26:13
The neighbor confronted him
and Dawson turned nasty. - He was grabbed
from behind with an arm
00:26:19
around his neck and he felt
something in his, uh, in his sort of lower abdomen. He'd sort of thrown Dawson off.
00:26:26
Dawson made light of it,
and said he was just mucking around
and this sort of thing,
00:26:29
and--and again at the time,
he didn't particularly think anything of this,
but we now know
00:26:33
when you listen to the account,
uh, and you know what Dawson was capable of,
that it was likely
00:26:39
that he was gonna
be his first victim. - I think that's only
further evidence of the fact
00:26:44
that in this small block
in Chaddesden, not alot of flats, that Dawson,
by now, was out of control,
00:26:52
completely and utterly
out of control. He would attack anyone, driven by his own desire
to kill.
00:27:00
- NARRATOR: On the morning
of the 30th of July, detectives receive news
that Dawson had been spotted
00:27:06
in Whitehaven, Cumbria
over 200 miles away from Derby. While local police
begin to search for the killer,
00:27:16
investigations were continuing
at the flats. Detectives had accounted for all of Dawson's neighbors
apart from one,
00:27:25
58-year-old Paul Hancock. - DET. CALLUM: So about half
past seven or eight o'clock
00:27:30
while I was doing the briefing,
we got to one of the detective sergeants
stood at the back
00:27:34
of the--the room
and was waving at me, and she came across
and whispered to me and said,
00:27:38
"They found another body,"
and that the officers that were doing the house
to house inquiries
00:27:42
had forced entry
into Mr. Hancock's flat and had found him
and he'd also been murdered.
00:27:47
We finished the briefing
and it started again, and this is when you started
to really feel concern that,
00:27:52
what had Dawson been doing
in that three-week period when the--
we couldn't account for him,
00:27:56
and had he killed anybody else? - NARRATOR: How many
more bodies might turn up at Waterford Drive?
00:28:03
It was a frightening thought
for the investigators, and they soon had information
that revealed the killer
00:28:09
had been in the building
on the very same day the body of Dave Matthews
was discovered.
00:28:15
- DET. CALLUM: It turns out
on the Sunday afternoon, the call came in
about Mr. Matthews,
00:28:20
the police had arrived
at the flat and, uh, this came out
with subsequent inquiries,
00:28:25
but it turned out that Dawson
was actually upstairs in Hancock's flat
when the police arrived.
00:28:31
Now, it's possible that he'd just committed the murder,
at that point, or he may have
committed the murder
00:28:36
over the previous few days
and he was there cleaning, starting to clean up,
we--we will never really know,
00:28:41
but what we do know
is that Dawson was in Mr. Hancock's flat
when the police arrived.
00:28:46
He came downstairs, he spoke
to one of the special constables that was there and he was asked
had he seen Mr. Matthews,
00:28:52
and he spoke to the police
and said that, oh, no, he doesn't know him very well,
he hasn't seem very much of him,
00:28:56
and we then know
that within about 10 minutes he'd packed his bag,
he'd ordered a taxi
00:29:00
and he'd left the house and
had gone to the train station. - NARRATOR:
Unbeknownst to the police,
00:29:06
they had stood face to face
with the killer. Since that moment, Andrew Dawson
had been on the run
00:29:13
for five days, but now,
local police in Whitehaven had located him and were ready to make an
arrest.
00:29:23
- The uniformed
constable comes across Andrew Dawson sleeping
on a bench on the sea front
00:29:31
in Whitehaven. He might almost have had
a sign on chest saying, "I am Andrew Dawson
and you really want to
00:29:37
look at me because
I killed two people in Derby." - NARRATOR: But the police
had to proceed with care.
00:29:44
They were dealing
with a serial killer. Armed with seven knives
in his backpack,
00:29:49
Dawson had no intention
of giving himself up. - Dawson appeared
to want the police to shoot him.
00:29:57
He wanted to go down
in a blaze of glory and basically occupy
alot of headlines.
00:30:02
There's a real kind
of dramatic element to this perpetrator, and shortly
after he was arrested,
00:30:09
he jumped into the sea
and he started to swim away and it really is
quite incredible,
00:30:16
the behavior of this man. He soon realized, "Actually,
this probably isn't a good idea,
00:30:21
I'm not getting anywhere,"
and then swam back to shore where the police
caught up with him again.
00:30:27
It's an attempt
at being dramatic, it's an attempt at--at trying
to create this kind of
00:30:33
feared persona,
but it's one that always falls flat on it's face
for Dawson. - Dawson is tazored
rather than shot.
00:30:41
I'm sure he was very upset
by that. I'm sure he'd much rather
that armed response unit
00:30:46
had turned up and, uh,
given him the glory that he'd wanted. - NARRATOR: With Dawson
safely in custody,
00:30:53
investigators could begin
to delve deeper into the 47-year-old killer. After his dramatic arrest
00:31:00
in Whitehaven, Cumbria,
he'd been brought back down to Derbyshire to be questioned
on suspicion of the murders
00:31:06
of his neighbors, Dave Matthews
and Paul Hancock. The bodies of both victims
had been bathed in bleach
00:31:13
to hide any forensic evidence. Detectives would have to use
all their skills to prove that Andrew Dawson
had killed again.
00:31:23
- DET. CALLUM: In terms
of an investigation, normally you have some 36 hours
of real, uh, urgent work to do
00:31:30
because you have to either
have to get enough evidence to charge somebody
or you have to release them,
00:31:34
uh, because he was on parole
and because of the nature of this, uh, actually from
an investigators point of view,
00:31:39
it made the job
a little bit easier because we could recourt him
to prison and actually we had
a lot of time
00:31:45
to make sure that we could,
uh, get the evidence together and get the case together,
which was just as well
00:31:50
because despite it feeling
like it was obviously him, you've got to get the evidence
to prove that
00:31:55
and forensically,
it was very, very challenging. - NARRATOR: On the same day
of Dawson's arrest,
00:32:01
police had discovered the body
of 58-year-old Paul Hancock. Just like his neighbor,
Dave Matthews,
00:32:07
Paul had been found stabbed
to death in his own bathtub. - With Mr. Matthews
the flat had been cleaned,
00:32:14
there was alot of bleach
poured into the bath, it clearly been tidied up
and with Mr. Hancock's,
00:32:21
it was very disheveled,
it had been very rushed. There was clothing in the bath,
there was weapons in the bath,
00:32:27
there were all sorts-
bits of gloves, marigold gloves and this sort of thing. All the drawers
had been through the house
00:32:32
and we know that money
was stolen and--and various other items,
and apart from the fact
00:32:37
that there was bodies
in the bath and they'd been stabbed,
the two scenes were totally different.
00:32:42
- NARRATOR: It's believed
that Dawson was still cleaning up the crime scene
when the police had discovered
00:32:47
the body of Dave Matthews
across the hall. Dawson likely panicked
and threw his clothes
00:32:54
in the bath of bleach
to kill any forensic evidence. - DET. CALLUM: On the yellow
trousers he was wearing,
00:32:59
there was a slash mark
on the right hand side, on the right leg. Dawson also had, uh, an injury
to his right leg
00:33:06
and it's impossible to actually
match that to the injury but again it's very likely
that he was wearing
00:33:10
those trousers when he committed
the murder, so he was very
forensically aware, so I think he had a system.
00:33:16
He had a type of clothing
that he wore to make sure that he doesn't
get contaminated with blood,
00:33:21
and then he went
and--and commits the murders and then he--he bleaches them
and gets rid of any evidence.
00:33:28
- LOUIS: Bleach indicates
forensic awareness. Bleach is one of those things
that wipes up a great deal
00:33:34
of forensic evidence. Dawson's been a career criminal. He's been in prison
his entire life.
00:33:41
He knows what bleach does. He was in the juvenile center,
but he also went to state prison, that's like
graduate school for crime.
00:33:48
All the criminals do all day
is talk about their crimes and how they got caught
and this and that,
00:33:53
and how to avoid
law enforcement, so the fact that he used bleach
doesn't surprise me at all,
00:33:59
it just reflects
what he learned in prison and how to try
to avoid detection. - NARRATOR: With Dawson being
held in custody indefinitely,
00:34:08
it gave detectives more time
to study the crime scene at Dave Matthews' flat. - When we first searched
Mr. Matthews' house,
00:34:18
there was few, uh, items that
we didn't really understand. One of them was a rose
that was on, uh, pillow
00:34:24
in Mr. Matthews' bedroom,
and it was just an old red rose. The other thing was,
when we searched Dawson's flat,
00:34:31
there was a blank notepad,
um, but you could see indentations on it. - NARRATOR: This suggested
that a note had been written
00:34:39
on the sheet of paper above. If experts could decipher
the faint indentations it could be a huge clue.
00:34:47
- DET. CALLUM: About
three weeks after that inquiry had--had been sent off,
I got a phone call from,
00:34:52
uh, our forensic team,
really excited and they said, you know, they were saying,
"Boss, this is amazing,
00:34:57
this is fantastic,
we've got a confession," and I said,
"What are you talking about?"
00:35:02
And it turned out
that he'd written a letter to the police and it was to
the--to the head of homicide,
00:35:08
it said, and he wrote this poem,
a very badly spelled, but the poem talked about,
in a bath,
00:35:14
uh, in--in Waterford Drive
there lies a man, and he talked about
if in two weeks time
00:35:21
you don't know about it,
I will come and report it to the police,
and he talked about the rose
00:35:26
being the, a nice touch and he
signed it "The Angel of Mercy." - DET. CALLUM: Really,
really chilling,
00:35:33
but very, very important key
bit of evidence. - NARRATOR:
Dawson had signed the note
00:35:39
with a chilling moniker. - DR. YARDLEY:
The confession letter that police had come across
00:35:45
had been signed
"The Angel of Mercy," and I think this is really
testament to Andrew Dawson's narcissism.
00:35:52
He wanted a brand,
he wanted an identity, he wanted infamy, and I think
this was very much part of that.
00:35:59
He wants that recognition
for the things that he's done. - He's pretended
to be significant, he's not,
00:36:06
he's an insignificant, horrid,
horrible, depraved, monstrous killer,
but not in his mind.
00:36:14
- NARRATOR: As investigations
continued, more evidence was uncovered
at Dave Matthews' flat.
00:36:20
- DET. CALLUM:
In Mr. Matthews' house, there was very, very little
forensic evidence in there,
00:36:25
in terms of fingerprints,
DNA and this sort of thing. He had destroyed
most of the evidence,
00:36:30
uh, but we found
marigold glove in the bath that had the thumb
missing on it, and part of the forensic
strategy was to find
00:36:38
this piece of rubber
from the thumb. - NARRATOR: Paul knew
that finding the tip of the glove may finally yield
some forensic evidence.
00:36:46
- So, the whole house was completely emptied,
uh, we spent weeks there meticulously going through
everything in the lounge
00:36:52
and--and the scene's crime team
found the tip of the marigold glove
and we think that it probably
00:36:59
got caught in a drawer
while he was stealing property from the flat,
and it snapped off,
00:37:03
and in this small piece
of the thumb--and it was, it was the tiny piece
of the thumb there--
00:37:09
um, they managed to recover
some DNA which, uh, proved that it was Andrew Dawson,
which was a very, very
00:37:15
significant piece of evidence
because forensically we had very, very little. There was alot
of circumstantial evidence
00:37:20
but little forensic evidence. - NARRATOR: In total,
5,000 items were seized from the flats
at Waterford Drive;
00:37:27
however, only one of these
provided the conclusive forensic evidence
investigators needed.
00:37:34
This new discovery
undoubtedly connected Dawson with the murder of Paul Hancock.
00:37:40
In interviews
with investigators, Andrew Dawson initially
confessed to both murders.
00:37:47
- He talked about
Mr. Matthews being a nice man. He talked about how he didn't
really want to kill him,
00:37:52
but he just felt that he had to
and he had an urge to do it, and this was what's particularly
chilling and very frightening
00:37:57
about Mr. Dawson. There didn't seem to be
any particular motive other than I desire
to kill somebody,
00:38:03
so in that respect, you know,
you--you tell me someone's mental state, I mean that's, uh,
that's quite worrying
00:38:10
and certainly, I mean,
I've dealt with a lot murder inquiries, um,
for all sorts
00:38:15
of different reasons
but to have somebody that said they just had
an urge to do it,
00:38:18
is very, very frightening. - NARRATOR: By the time of his
court hearing in July 2011,
00:38:25
Dawson had changed his story,
denying the murders and pleading not guilty,
but he didn't hide behind
00:38:32
his lies for long. - DET. CALLUM:
You saw it in court, he was very, very inpatient.
00:38:37
He--he didn't like
to wait around, He's like a very impetuous
sort of character.
00:38:40
For example, at court
he pleaded not guilty and after a couple of hours,
he--he looked like he got bored
00:38:45
and he had a word with his
solicitor and just said, "Oh, I can't be bothered,
I plead guilty,"
00:38:49
you know, and that was,
that was the court case, and that was kind of
the way I think he was.
00:38:54
- DR. YARDLEY: This is a tactic
we see with alot of offenders like Dawson. They enjoy playing with people,
they enjoy manipulating people.
00:39:00
They enjoy having everybody
running around sorting things out
and then they chuck a grenade in
00:39:05
and cause chaos
and I think that's exactly what he was doing here. - NARRATOR: In total,
Andrew Dawson stabbed
00:39:12
Dave Matthews 18 times
and Paul Hancock 22 times. He had received a fairly lenient
sentence after his first murder
00:39:21
in Ormskirk in 1981, but there would be no similar
result for him this time. - The judge,
Mrs. Justice Dobbs, gave Dawson
00:39:32
a whole life tariff, "Life
will mean life in your case." She told Dawson,
in sentencing,
00:39:40
"These were premeditated
and planned, brutal killings. "Each had the misfortune
of being your neighbor
00:39:50
who had no chance." - DET. CALLUM: Relief, I think
more than anything. There--there wasn't, you know,
there's no particular reason
00:39:59
to sort of celebrate or anything
like that, it's just, you know, really sad for the victims
and the family.
00:40:04
These are both--both victims,
uh, were just, you know, regular people that, uh,
were tryn to live their life
00:40:12
and hadn't particularly
upset anybody, for both had been described
as very pleasant people
00:40:16
who had just sort of
kept themselves to themselves, so very, very sad. - NARRATOR: Andrew Dawson
remains in prison
00:40:23
and will never be released. Some experts believe
that he was never rehabilitated
00:40:29
after his first murder
conviction and should have never been in a position to be able to
kill two more innocent victims.
00:40:38
- For me, what makes
this case exceptional is the failure to realize how
serious the first murder was.
00:40:44
It was interpreted as a homicide
during the course of a robbery, but actually it was much,
much worse than that.
00:40:51
This individual
had been tortured, essentially, that the time that
the perpetrator had spent
00:40:56
with the victim
was quite significant, and the perpetrator
was only 18 years old,
00:41:01
so I think this was, uh,
a massive red flag for--for further potential
violence and even though
00:41:07
he was convicted of murder,
there was not enough work done to address what led to that.
00:41:13
- CLIFFORD: I think
there--there is a case that sorta some people
are so dangerous that they
00:41:17
can't be let out again,
out of prison. It seems a harsh thing
to condemn somebody
00:41:21
to die in prison, but sort of--
I think some people, you know, never learn and never alter.
00:41:26
I think it's one of those things
that sort of sometimes you--you have to do it,
and, uh, this is, you know,
00:41:32
probably one of those cases. - NARRATOR: Dawson
was a selfish killer who had no regard
for his victims.
00:41:39
The only reason he's ever given
for his horrific crimes is that he had an urge to kill.
00:41:45
- When we look
at the crimes of Andrew Dawson, they are so horrendous
that many people say
00:41:49
this could only be the workings
of a madman, but unfortunately, they're not,
this is an individual who knew
00:41:57
exactly what they were doing. They knew that what
they were doing was wrong and they carried on
doing it anyway.
00:42:03
- GEOFFREY: It's conventional
to talk about serial killers as having a trigger, sometimes
it's in their childhood,
00:42:10
sometimes it's a moment
in their adolescence. I don't believe there was such
a trigger to Andrew Dawson,
00:42:16
I think there was something
in him from the very beginning that led him to commit
these heinous crimes.
00:42:24
- DET. CALLUM: I've dealt
with alot of suspicious deaths and a lot of murder inquiries,
and there weren't many
00:42:28
that's kept me awake at night,
this guy kept me awake at night because you just had
this feeling that you had
00:42:33
to get the evidence,
you had to put him away because he was an absolute
danger to anybody in society.
00:42:38
I think this idea
that you can suddenly, um, get an urge to kill someone
clearly makes you
00:42:43
extremely dangerous, doesn't it? - NARRATOR: Dawson is a killer
who murdered innocent people
00:42:48
for his own depraved enjoyment. He may have started out
as a petty thief, but that was an unlawful
livelihood that didn't satiate
00:42:57
his urges,
he needed something more to satisfy his twisted mind. His lust for murder
and the pleasure
00:43:04
he gets from it,
are what makes Andrew Dawson one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:43:10
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