00:00:05
- MALE NARRATOR: Over the
August bank holiday weekend in 1988 the mining village
of Wath upon Dearne
00:00:12
in South Yorkshire, England
was rocked to its core. The body of 25 year old
Marcus Law was discovered
00:00:20
in his home, he'd been
tortured and mutilated. - There were blood all over
the place and then he got
00:00:26
cigarettes stuck in every
orifice in his face, he got 'em in his nostrils,
even in his eyes,
00:00:31
his ears, mouth. And he just looked like
a birthday cake with candles in. - NARRATOR: In a final act
of callousness, the killer
00:00:38
had inserted one of
Marcus' own crutches into his abdomen. - The sheer enormity of
the violence used in this case
00:00:48
is extreme. It is, to use that word,
truly evil. - NARRATOR: The killer
was 21-year-old
00:00:55
Anthony Arkwright. Over the coming days more
bodies would be discovered in similarly horrific
circumstances.
00:01:04
- He didn't just kill
his victims, he completely obliterated them, he humiliated them, and he
didn't feel bad about doing it.
00:01:11
If anything,
he quite enjoyed it. - NARRATOR: Even the police
were wary of what they might
00:01:16
discover next. - I was frightened, no two
words about it, and I said to my colleague, "You know
what we're gonna find."
00:01:25
And he said, "Yes, Sarge." And I said, "You have to
brace yourself for this."
00:01:29
- NARRATOR: In less than
a week, four victims were discovered. Anthony Arkwright had been
revealed as one of the
00:01:36
world's most evil killers. - ♪ - NARRATOR: August, 1988,
Wath upon Dearne, South Yorkshire, England.
00:02:06
Late in the afternoon
on the same day as disabled resident Marcus
Law's badly mutilated body
00:02:13
was discovered, a neighbor,
Anthony Arkwright, was arrested for his killing. Just two days later,
45-year-old retired teacher
00:02:24
Raymond Ford was found
brutally murdered. He'd been stabbed 250 times
before his organs
00:02:32
and intestines were removed
and trailed around his flat. - Marcus is bad enough,
you know with cigarettes
00:02:39
poking out of his
gouged-out eyes and his crutch stuck into his stomach,
but this is worse, if possible.
00:02:47
There's virtually no organ left
inside his body. Raymond's entrails are all
around him,
00:02:53
they're in the bathroom,
they're in the bedroom, and they were in the hallway.
00:02:57
- NARRATOR: As Arkwright's
lawyer proclaimed his client's innocence to the press,
news of a second neighbor
00:03:03
found slaughtered after his
arrest began to spread. A wave of fear descended
on the community.
00:03:10
Retired Detective Constable
David Winter discovered the second victim. - It did spread a lot of unrest
because of the fact that
00:03:18
the second body were found
while he was in custody. That gave credence to,
"We've got a madman
00:03:24
running loose at Wath." So everybody's thinking that
it's not him that, you know,
00:03:29
it's got to be somebody else. - NARRATOR: There was more
to come, within days
00:03:35
two further victims were
discovered, including Arkwright's own grandfather
Stanislav Puidokas.
00:03:42
Former Detective Sergeant
Richard Venables grew up in the village and remembers
how inconceivable it was
00:03:48
that these horrific crimes
had happened there. - RICHARD: Wath on Dearne,
a little sleepy mining village,
00:03:54
which it would be, we were
on the verge of pit closures at that time, it was just,
it's the last place on Earth
00:04:00
you would have thought
that this thing could happen. And I even think about it now
and say that Wath on Dearne
00:04:07
had a serial killer, as long
a shot as a lottery win really. - The impact of crimes like
this on any local community
00:04:17
are going to be devastating
because here's somebody who has been in this area
for a while, people know
00:04:23
who he is, he's a familiar face,
this isn't some monster that's come in from the
outside, it's the evil within.
00:04:30
- NARRATOR: This killer's
story begins on the 24th of March, 1967. Anthony Richard Arkwright
was born in a row house
00:04:39
in Wath upon Dearne
in South Yorkshire. The son a milkman, he was the middle child
of five siblings
00:04:46
and his family life
was dysfunctional from a very early age. - DR. YARDLEY: Arkwright spent
a lot of his early years
00:04:54
in and out of children's homes and this for
me means that he has a very insecure attachment
with his caregivers.
00:05:02
So this is a child who doesn't
feel security, he doesn't feel warmth, and what that
can sometimes translate into
00:05:08
is this kind of defensiveness,
this sense in which, "I can't depend on other
people, it's just me
00:05:13
and I've got to look
after myself." - NARRATOR: Arkwright
struggled in school and was
00:05:18
teased by his peers as people
began to speculate about the true nature of
relationships within his family.
00:05:26
- Arkwright was bullied at
school because there were rumors that were completely
untrue that he was the result
00:05:32
of an incestuous relationship
between his mother and his grandfather. - LOUIS: The reality is not what
counts, it's what he thought
00:05:40
and what he experienced
that was out there, and the kids thought
it was true. And so he was teased a great
deal and when an individual
00:05:49
is teased repetitively
in childhood it affects them emotionally in very,
very significant ways.
00:05:56
- DR. YARDLEY: Off the back
of the bullying, Arkwright kind of retreats into himself,
he spends a lot of time
00:06:01
on his own, he's a loner. And when people don't have
those social connections
00:06:06
with others, they ruminate,
they spend a lot of time thinking about things,
especially ways in which
00:06:13
they've been wronged
by other people. So, you've got this kind of
undercurrents of rage,
00:06:18
I think,
that's developing in him. - NARRATOR: The resentment
that young Anthony Arkwright
00:06:24
harbored for his family
smouldered inside him and he became a troubled
teenager.
00:06:29
He often found himself
on the wrong side of the law and he was a well-known face
in the local police stations.
00:06:37
David Winter remembers him
as one of their regulars. - I've known Arkwright since
he was about 14 years old.
00:06:44
He were a petty thief and we
were forever locking him up when he were a juvenile.
00:06:50
- NARRATOR: Over the
coming years he became obsessed with weapons
and had a reputation
00:06:55
for being a habitual
troublemaker. - MICHAEL: He got quite a few
convictions for petty crime,
00:07:02
you would call it,
not petty to the victims, but burglaries,
damage, small assaults
00:07:08
and things like that. He was forever getting into
trouble and he'd been sent
00:07:13
to youth custody and various
other penalties that had been imposed on him
over the years.
00:07:19
But he was a troublesome
lad altogether. - GEOFFREY: And while
he was in prison,
00:07:24
perhaps he saw a way of... making himself glamorous. He took a great interest
in Jack The Ripper
00:07:32
and The Yorkshire Ripper,
Peter Sutcliffe, reading books about them. Perhaps for the first time in
his life a subject engaged him.
00:07:42
He developed this fascination
with mass murder and I think perhaps he saw it as a way
of making his mark
00:07:51
in the world. - NARRATOR: By the Summer
of 1988, the 21-year-old was working at a scrap metal
merchants in Mexborough
00:07:59
and living in nearby
Wath upon Dearne in public housing
on the Denman Road estate.
00:08:05
Neil Hurst was one of his
neighbors. - NEIL: Anthony Arkwright seemed
very weird to me.
00:08:11
He looked like a young
Clint Eastwood and he were very, very frightening,
kept his self to his self.
00:08:18
He used to wear long coats
and cowboy hats and he also had rollup coming out of
the side of his mouth.
00:08:26
- DAVID: He were one of them
people that he wanted to draw attention to himself,
he really loved himself.
00:08:31
Tall, a lot taller than me. But he'd spike his hair
and he'd bleached the points
00:08:38
of it and things like that
to get a distinctive look. - NARRATOR: Another of
Arkwright's neighbors
00:08:44
was 45-year-old Raymond Ford. - He was a gentleman who
lived opposite Arkwright in a block of flats.
00:08:52
He was a retired school
teacher suffering from ill health and kept himself
very much to himself.
00:09:00
- Raymond and Arkwright
had history, Arkwright liked to bully him. At one point he shoved excrement
through his letter box.
00:09:08
- NARRATOR: In August 1988,
Raymond was burglarized. Several items had been stolen
including a microwave oven
00:09:16
and a mantle clock. He reported it to the local
police. - DAVID: One of the secondhand
dealers came up
00:09:23
to the police station and
mentioned that he'd bought, um, a microwave oven from
Tony Arkwright,
00:09:29
given his name,
and he paid £20. So then it were decided that
Arkwright were gonna
00:09:34
be arrested. - NARRATOR: On the 26th
of August, the Friday before the bank holiday
weekend, Arkwright was fired
00:09:42
from his job at the scrapyard
for poor attendance. He was extremely aggrieved. To add insult to injury,
early the next morning
00:09:51
the police were knocking on
his door and he was arrested for the burglary of Raymond's
flat.
00:09:57
The officers were surprised
to find a whole arsenal of knives in his home,
but there was something else
00:10:04
that sparked their interest. - They found in his flat
a pocket watch and it was the pocket watch that was
unique, that they'd not seen
00:10:13
before, and decided that
that, it wasn't right that he would have such a pocket
watch, it was an old person's
00:10:20
pocket watch. And so they decided to bail
Arkwright on the Saturday evening in order that they
could make further inquiries.
00:10:28
- NARRATOR: Having just
started his evening shift, Detective Constable David
Winter was tasked with
00:10:34
getting a statement from
Raymond Ford about the burglary. He offered Arkwright a lift.
00:10:40
- I took him back home
and as he's going into his flat, which is on the right hand side,
I went to the left hand side
00:10:47
to Raymond Ford's. Knocking on the door and he
hadn't gone in at that time.
00:10:53
And he said, "Oh, he'll be out
now, he'll be around pubs, he's a drunk."
00:10:57
So, you know, I said,
"Well, I'll come back." And I left it at that.
00:11:04
- NARRATOR: At the time it
seemed like an innocent remark, but Arkwright would
do everything he could
00:11:10
to stop the police from getting
a statement from Raymond. In less than 24 hours,
Arkwright had lost his job
00:11:18
and been arrested. He needed an outlet for
the pent up energy simmering inside him.
00:11:27
- I were coming down the
steps and Tony approached me and he said, "Are you going
out tonight?"
00:11:33
And I just said, "Yeah." He said, "Do you mind if I
come wi' ya?"
00:11:36
Well, I thought, "He's never
done naught wrong to me." You know what I mean?
00:11:43
It might be a chance to get
know him a bit better. - NARRATOR: Later that
evening Arkwright met up
00:11:47
with Neil and his cousin. As the three men got into
the car, a neighbor, 25-year-old Marcus Law,
blocked their way.
00:11:57
- I started the engine and
then Marcus came in front of me in his wheelchair. Shouting, "Where you going?"
00:12:05
And I says, "Get out of the
road, Marcus, we're going out." And then all I heard next
from the back of the car were
00:12:12
Tony Arkwright said,
"I'm gonna kill that bastard." And then that's when
I thought, "Wowee."
00:12:18
I says, "No, he's only
having a laugh." He says, "I'm gonna kill that
bastard."
00:12:22
And I looked at his face
and I could see from his eyes that he meant what he said.
00:12:29
Yeah, and I believed it. - NARRATOR: Once at the
nightclub, Arkwright's behavior
00:12:33
didn't improve. He was so aggressive that
they were eventually thrown out by bouncers.
00:12:39
Arkwright's whole demeanor
that night made Neil incredibly nervous. - To be honest, I didn't feel
safe meself at that time.
00:12:47
And I'm just lucky that we
managed to get home and he got out of me car. Then what happened next
were unbelievable.
00:12:53
In them days you used to have
a bin, like a metal bin, and I saw him, he just picked
it up and threw it
00:12:58
straight through Raymond's
flat's window. I'm thinking,
"What's he gonna do?
00:13:03
"Is this ticking bomb now
going off? Is--what's he doing that for?"
00:13:08
All I needed to know were
I didn't need to be there and I said to me cousin,
"Let's go."
00:13:13
- NARRATOR: Whilst Neil
and his cousin called it a night and made a hasty retreat,
Anthony Arkwright was only
00:13:19
just getting started. He had a score to settle with
his neighbor. The bin was merely the
beginning of what he had
00:13:27
in store for Raymond Ford. - Raymond, according to
Arkwright, had told the police
00:13:33
about the burglary, had
suggested Arkwright was responsible, and in doing so,
he'd taken the power away
00:13:39
from Arkwright, and Arkwright wanted that
power back. - NARRATOR: In the early hours
of Sunday the 28th of August,
00:13:46
Arkwright entered
Raymond's flat using a key that he'd stolen during
the burglary.
00:13:51
Bizarrely, he was dressed
in just a pair of underpants and a devil's mask. - But he didn't want to leave
any forensic traces
00:14:00
on clothing, that was why
he was wearing the devil mask and also a pair of underpants.
00:14:07
- DR. YARDLEY: Not only did
Arkwright kill aymond Ford, he stabbed him 250 times,
that's 250 decisions
00:14:16
to cause harm to this
individual, and then he draped
his entrails around the home.
00:14:23
- NARRATOR: The force that
Arkwright used to stab Raymond was so great that
several of the knives actually
00:14:29
broke in two. - He must have been stabbing
and stabbing for a very long time. There are broken knives,
he would have had to go
00:14:39
and get another knife. You would suspect that he'd
probably have to have a rest
00:14:43
during that because simply
the repetitive action 250 times would be incredibly physically
difficult.
00:14:52
- Worse still,
he takes out just about every single entrail from Raymond's body and
drapes them not only
00:15:02
in the bedroom
but all around the flat. Imagine the scene. - Arkwright is somebody who
has always felt a sense
00:15:11
of humiliation, a sense of shame
and now he's projecting that onto his victim.
00:15:16
He's saying,
"I'm the powerful one now, I can do what I want to you."
00:15:20
- NARRATOR: Shortly
afterwords, Neil Hurst was woken by loud banging. Arkwright, having washed off
Raymond's blood,
00:15:27
was pounding on his door. - NEIL: I heard some banging at
the door and when I looked
00:15:32
through the peephole
there were Tony and I just didn't answer
the door. And I went into me cousin's
bedroom and opened the door.
00:15:38
'Cause he went,
"Who's fucking banging?" I just said, "It's Tony from
downstairs, just leave it,
00:15:44
he can't get in." And that were last we heard. - NARRATOR: Later that day,
David Winter was back on shift,
00:15:52
he was conscious
that he needed to get a statement from Raymond
about the burglary.
00:15:58
- Went straight to Raymond
Ford's see if I could catch him before the pubs were open
and still no reply.
00:16:04
And still Arkwright comes out
and he says, "Well, he'll be "out now, he's been drinking
all day and he'll be out,
00:16:10
you'll not get in." And I'll keep coming back,
I did that all evening.
00:16:17
Knowing that the file's got
to be in the Monday morning I were desperate to try to get
this statement.
00:16:23
And each time I knocked on
Ford's door Arkwright came out and it was strange, you know,
00:16:29
it were like
he were waiting for me. - NARRATOR: Arkwright
spent much of that Sunday afternoon with Marcus
Law, the same neighbor
00:16:37
that he'd recently threatened
to kill. 25-year-old Marcus had been
injured in a motorbike accident
00:16:44
as a teenager and lived in
a bungalow on the Denman Road estate. - Arkwright had shared his
cigarettes with Marcus Law
00:16:53
and he didn't have any money
with which to buy any more cigarettes. And so he was quite sure
that Marcus Law would have
00:17:00
cigarettes in his bungalow
but he'd not shown him where the cigarettes were.
00:17:05
So that was what caused
the argument later on in the night. - NARRATOR: On the Sunday
evening Arkwright paid
00:17:12
Marcus another visit to try
to persuade him to give up some cigarettes. Still, Marcus insisted he had
none and so Arkwright
00:17:21
proceeded to search
the bungalow. - And then Arkwright discovers
that there are some cigarettes
00:17:26
in a drawer and he feels,
you know, that, "I've been lied to." So it's this sense of real
disproportionate reaction
00:17:34
to a kind of everyday situation. - GEOFFREY: We're now dealing
with someone who's...
00:17:40
disintegrating into a desperate,
horrific, sadistic fantasy. All we know is that, in what
can only be described as
00:17:49
utterly-depraved manner,
Arkwright attacks Marcus relentlessly. - DR. YARDLEY: Marcus is not
just killed, he's brutalized.
00:17:59
Arkwright stabs him over
70 times and when he's there with his body in the flat
afterwards he takes cigarettes
00:18:07
and puts them into his ears,
his nose, his eyes. - LOUIS: You look at that and
say, "Well, how could he
00:18:13
"possibly be so angry
at this neighbor? What did the neighbor do
to deserve that?"
00:18:18
And the answer is nothing. But it was a displacement
from all of the anger than Arkwright felt over the
years onto other people,
00:18:26
the neighbor being one. - NARRATOR: The following day
was the bank holiday Monday.
00:18:31
Marcus's mother was moving
away for a new job and at 11:30 in the morning
she called round to say
00:18:38
goodbye to her son. - And was unable to get in
originally, which was unusual, and she managed to slip the
chain on the front door
00:18:47
and get access to the place. And she found that he'd been
very brutally murdered.
00:18:52
- NARRATOR: Marcus's
distraught mother ran to the police station. David Winter was one of
the first officers on the scene.
00:19:00
- DAVID: He were laid out
on the floor and all his chest cavity were open. There were a crutch through
his body, sticking--
00:19:06
it was actually sticking up. There were blood all over
the place and then he got
00:19:11
cigarettes stuck in every
orifice in his face, I mean, his nostrils, even in his eyes,
his ears, mouth.
00:19:18
And he just, it just looked like
a birthday cake with candles in. - NARRATOR: The quiet
mining village
00:19:25
of Wath upon Dearne now had
a major murder investigation on its hands. Detective Superintendent
Michael Burdis was called in.
00:19:34
- MICHAEL: It was bank holiday
Monday and I was at home gardening and got a call to
attend at the scene
00:19:40
of a murder at Wath. - NARRATOR: As Michael
made his way to Wath Police Station, an
officer leaving Marcus' bungalow
00:19:49
saw Arkwright in the street. - MICHAEL: And they expected
Arkwright to speak to him
00:19:53
because they were on good terms
and spoke to each other whenever they met,
Arkwright crossed the road
00:19:59
away from him and Humphreys
was very suspicious of that because it was very unusual.
00:20:05
And so called him across
and decided that he would invite him back
to the police station
00:20:09
so they could have a chat. - NARRATOR: When Michael
arrived, Arkwright was already
00:20:14
in the interview room. - MICHAEL: So far as we knew,
Arkwright was a friend of Marcus Law's
00:20:20
and we were following that
line of inquiry. What did he know about the
movements of this friend?
00:20:27
So we, we had no reason
to really suspect Arkwright of any particular crime
except that he'd ignored
00:20:34
this particular detective,
which was unusual. - NARRATOR: Investigations
into Marcus' killing continued
00:20:40
with officers making
door-to-door inquiries in the hope of finding witnesses
who may have seen his killer.
00:20:48
On the Monday evening
they spoke with a lady who recounted how Arkwright
had visited her that morning
00:20:54
and he'd broken the news
that Marcus was dead. - He said to her,
words to the effect,
00:20:59
"It's a pity about Marcus." And then explained that
Marcus had died
00:21:04
and she thought that Marcus Law
had probably committed suicide, but that was an hour
before Marcus Law's mother
00:21:11
had found the body. So it was quite clear that
Arkwright must be a prime suspect for that crime.
00:21:18
- NARRATOR: Clearly, Arkwright
had inside information, and he was arrested on
suspicion of Marcus's murder.
00:21:26
- Arkwright wasn't admitting
that offense Arkwright was merely grumbling on all sorts
of subjects and talking anything
00:21:34
but the actual response
to the questions about the crime itself. At the same time,
we had a major investigation
00:21:43
to undertake with house-to-house
inquiries, with searches of the scene, the searches of the area,
the postmortem,
00:21:50
and the rest of the material
that goes on with a major crime investigation. - NARRATOR: On Wednesday
the 31st of August, as officers
00:21:58
continued to speak to residents,
David Winter's thoughts return to Raymond Ford.
00:22:04
He'd been so involved with
the murder investigation that he still hadn't managed
to get a statement
00:22:09
from Raymond about the burglary. Coincidentally,
he was the only resident that the house-to-house team hadn't
managed to get in contact with.
00:22:20
- So I went down with a
uniform lad and at that time his front window was
smashed, so looking in,
00:22:27
we could see this sea
of bottles that went from the window right
to the back of the room like a--
00:22:33
like a slope, and his chair was in front
of the TV, big piles of newspapers
all over the place.
00:22:41
He wasn't sat in his chair
but the television were on. So they said, "Well, you better
go in and have a look."
00:22:48
- NARRATOR: David made his way
in through the broken window, it was immediately obvious
that something was amiss.
00:22:55
- DAVID: I could just see blood
all over the wall and all over the floor, you know, big piles
of it so I'm stepping over it.
00:23:03
Detective Inspector came down,
he's in the door. I says, "I can't let you in,
there's no keys."
00:23:08
But I'm talking to him. He said, "Well,
what's it look like?" I said, "Well, it's carnage in
here, there's blood everywhere.
00:23:15
Blood's--
it's dried on the floor." So, "Is he in there?"
"I'll have a look."
00:23:20
So then I looked through
into the bedroom and behind the door was his body,
but it were all covered up
00:23:30
with cloths and that,
but I could see a hand. So I said, immediately,
"Yeah, he's here."
00:23:36
- You couldn't call it anything
other than a tip but it was literally three feet deep in
clothing and underneath that
00:23:44
was the body of Raymond Ford, having suffered
grotesque injuries. - NARRATOR: Whilst the
police were making their
00:23:53
grizzly discovery,
Arkwright was appearing at Rotherham Magistrate's Court,
charged with the murder
00:23:59
of Marcus Law and the burglary
at Raymond Ford's flat. Detective Superintendent
Michael Burdis now had
00:24:06
a second horrific crime
to investigate. But he already had a good
idea who was going to be
00:24:13
their prime suspect:
Anthony Arkwright. - MICHAEL: Two of the detectives
that had been talking to him
00:24:20
were sitting in the canteen
area and waiting for his solicitor to attend so they
were merely sitting waiting.
00:24:31
And during that time on the
table was a pack of cards and Arkwright was flicking
through these cards
00:24:38
and eventually he said to
the detectives, "I can read the cards," and he turned
over the four of hearts.
00:24:46
And he said, "One you've got,
two, three, four to come." That prompted alarms in
the officers because they,
00:24:56
as far as they knew there was
just the one body. And so they rang that
information through to me
00:25:01
at the incident room. But of course by that time,
we'd found Raymond Ford's body,
00:25:07
which meant then that there
were two more. - LOUIS: He didn't wanna act
like the ordinary criminal,
00:25:13
the ordinary murderer who
goes there an confesses or start crying,
"You got me, oh my God."
00:25:19
He didn't want to do that
at all, he wanted to do the opposite of that,
he wanted to be newsworthy,
00:25:23
to be notorious,
to be infamous in some way. - NARRATOR: The case had
just been blown wide open.
00:25:30
The police now believed
there were more victims, but they had no leads as to
who these unfortunate souls
00:25:36
may be. Both known victims had been
from the Denman Road estate and all available police
resources were sent to the area
00:25:45
to knock on doors and make
sure that every resident was safe and well. - MICHAEL: And we used the local
authority who provided us
00:25:54
with a joiner to help us to
break into properties if we couldn't get in, in the fear that
there might be a body there.
00:26:01
But at the same time we had
another team of officers trying to trace his family
background
00:26:06
and his family relations and other people that he may
well have been in contact.
00:26:12
- NARRATOR: Detective
Sergeant Richard Venables was part of the team
investigating Arkwright's
00:26:17
background. - So, I was actually tasked,
with my local knowledge in mind, to look at Arkwright's
family, to try and build up
00:26:25
a picture of the guy in
custody, who had allegedly committed these horrific
murders.
00:26:31
- NARRATOR: Through his
inquiries Richard learned that Arkwright's grandfather,
a 68-year-old Lithuanian
00:26:37
gentleman named Stanislav
Puidokas, lived with his partner Elsa Konradaite
in nearby Mexborough.
00:26:45
- We made several visits
to that house from about Tuesday the 30th of August,
went once, twice a day.
00:26:53
We didn't get any
[unintelligible]. - NARRATOR: By Friday,
September the 2nd, the police
00:26:58
still hadn't managed to speak
to the couple, but neighbors had noticed normal activity
at the house.
00:27:04
The bottles of milk left on
the doorstep had been taken in each day. - DR. YARDLEY: They assumed that
either the grandfather or Elsa
00:27:11
were collecting it and taking
it into the house, but actually the milkman was going by
later on in the day, noticing
00:27:17
that it hadn't been taken in
and he was taking it away. - MICHAEL: So that meant that we
knew there had been no activity
00:27:24
in that house and so we
feared for the safety of his grandfather. - NARRATOR: On the Friday
afternoon Richard paid
00:27:32
a final visit to the house
in Mexborough. When yet again there was no
response he had no option
00:27:38
but to break in. - I noticed that the upstairs
window of the front bedroom was open.
00:27:44
I needed to source
something to get up there so the next-door neighbor,
he loaned me his ladder.
00:27:50
When I looked through the
window and I saw the untidy ransacking of the bedroom,
I knew there was a problem.
00:27:56
- NARRATOR: The scene was
reminiscent of many burglaries they'd seen before.
00:28:00
And so Richard and his
colleague made their way through the window
and into the bedroom.
00:28:05
- And when I got into that room, I've smelled death before,
many times, and I knew the house had got
the smell of death.
00:28:13
What I was gonna be
confronted by I didn't know. And that's when the heart
started to quicken.
00:28:21
- NARRATOR: After a search
of the upstairs room revealed nothing but ransacked
belongings
00:28:26
Richard prepared himself
to go down the stairs. - RICHARD: If I just asked you
to transport yourself into
00:28:33
this position: you're an
investigator, you've been briefed as to what this guy's
allegedly done,
00:28:40
he's disemboweled a guy,
he's stabbed him 250 times, he's stabbed another disabled
guy 70 times,
00:28:48
he sliced his body open,
he rammed a crutch up that body, and then all of a sudden you
know you're gonna discover
00:28:55
this guy's work. I was frightened,
no two words about it. And I said to my colleague,
00:29:02
"You know
what we're gonna find." And he said, "Yes, Sarge."
He says, "I know."
00:29:06
And I said,
"Remember the pictures, you have to brace
yourself for this."
00:29:12
We walked down the stairs
together and as we got to the spot where the
landing and the bannister
00:29:17
opened up sufficiently,
I leaned forward and I looked back
towards the kitchen. The old lady was laid in the
kitchen door and I saw
00:29:26
the axe protruding from her
head; clearly she was dead. - NARRATOR: The body was
that of 72-year-old
00:29:34
Elsa Konradaite,
Arkwright's step-grandmother. She'd been ironing
on the kitchen table
00:29:40
when she was attacked. - She's struck in the head
with an axe but there's none
00:29:45
of the excess that's shown
with the other victims, it's not the sort of clear
message that he's trying
00:29:55
to send with the others,
it's simply getting rid of a problem. - RICHARD: My next consideration
was, "Where is Grandad?"
00:30:03
And Grandad wasn't there
but I had an idea where he was, because as part of
our investigation that week,
00:30:11
I'd been told by locals that
Grandad had an allotment. - MICHAEL: The allotment
was locked,
00:30:16
the allotment shed was locked, it was quite
a substantial home-build. His grandfather had been
a miner and it was a really
00:30:24
well-made piece
of equipment. And we had to open that
first. - NARRATOR: Once they'd
broken through the door,
00:30:30
Michael and his team made
yet another gruesome discovery. - MICHAEL: Inside the she itself
was--was a workshop, really.
00:30:37
And Arkwright's grandfather
was jammed against the legs of this workbench
and again,
00:30:44
he'd been
very savagely attacked. - DR. HAMILTON: Arkwright
stabbed him, first of all,
00:30:50
he stabbed him with such force
he severed the spinal cord, that in itself is an incredible
level of violence.
00:30:57
That wasn't enough for him,
he then strikes him with an axe, almost certainly when
he's paralyzed and unable
00:31:04
to respond, and with
a large heavy hammer. So this is not just killing, this is sheer
needless brutality.
00:31:14
- NARRATOR: Later Arkwright
would tell investigators that he'd killed his grandfather
partly because of the rumors
00:31:21
that he may actually be
his father. Rumors that had tainted
his whole life. And it perhaps gives a clue
as to why he would exercise
00:31:30
such extreme brutality
on the old man. - This was much more
violence than was needed
00:31:36
to end his grandfather's life,
so these are these feelings of shame, of humiliation,
of rage
00:31:43
really coming to the surface. And I think it's, it's a way
of kind of retaliating,
00:31:48
it's a way of taking back
power. - Although Arkwright was
obviously the prime suspect,
00:31:54
you take all the right steps
to make sure that you gather all the scientific
material that you can gather.
00:32:02
- NARRATOR: As crime
scene investigators meticulously gathered
evidence, 21-year-old Anthony Arkwright
00:32:09
remained
in police custody at Rawmarsh Police Station
charged with murdering four people, including
his own grandparents.
00:32:18
Although he was confident
they had identified the serial killer, Detective
Superintendent Michael Burdis
00:32:24
knew that proving the case
might not be that simple. - One of the problems that
we had was that Arkwright
00:32:33
had a right to be in some
of the premises, the grandfather's house, the
grandfather's allotment shed,
00:32:40
so any traces of
fingerprints or DNA could have been legitimately
there and so it didn't really
00:32:47
provide us with,
with tangible evidence. So it was a matter of proving
that Arkwright had actually
00:32:53
committed the murder
rather than merely being present at the scene. What did give us evidence
was the fact that there were
00:33:01
items that were stolen
from those premises. - NARRATOR: In particular,
one item seized when
00:33:07
Arkwright was first arrested
for the burglary at Raymond Ford's flat
now became very significant.
00:33:13
- The pocket watch that
was found in his flat, that we believed originally
had come from Raymond Ford,
00:33:20
was actually his grandfather's. - NARRATOR: With
difficulties gathering evidence
00:33:25
conclusively linking Arkwright
to some of the murders, Michael knew that
what they really needed
00:33:31
was a confession. However, despite already
having spent several days in the interview room
being questioned about
00:33:39
Marcus and Raymond,
Arkwright had refused to give up any information. - MICHAEL: He refused to answer
questions; he did talk,
00:33:48
but he wasn't answering
questions that were rational and wasn't giving responsible
answers to anything
00:33:54
that we were asking him. - NARRATOR: When he
learned that the bodies of his grandparents,
Stanislav and Elsa,
00:34:01
had been found, and another
two murder charges were to be brought against
him, Arkwright made
00:34:06
an unusual request. - He asked if he could be
interviewed on tape. Now, we weren't using
tape recordered interviews
00:34:14
in those days but we were
about to start the process, so we decided to go ahead
and hope that Arkwright
00:34:22
would then find the facility
useful for him and would be able to talk to us. Didn't work quite like that,
because he merely enjoyed
00:34:31
the experience and rambling
on tape about horror films that he'd watched and
experiences that he'd tried
00:34:38
to relive himself but none
of it was a response to the questions
about the murders.
00:34:45
So I put a stop to that. - NARRATOR: Michael Burdis
was getting tired of Arkwright
00:34:50
stringing his officers along. Later that evening, Arkwright
was fetched from the cells
00:34:56
and the Detective
Superintendent himself started the tape
in the interview room.
00:35:01
- I asked him questions,
he didn't respond at all, I continually asked him
if he would identify his name
00:35:08
for the purposes of the tape and he didn't respond to that. I asked him questions
about his family,
00:35:14
he didn't respond,
he never spoke at all. So then I sweeped the tape
off and I came out
00:35:20
of the interview room
quite frustrated, and about five minutes later the solicitor
came down the corridor
00:35:26
and said that,
"He wants to speak to you." So I refused to go through
the scenario again.
00:35:32
But the solicitor really
was very persuasive and said, "I think he does
want to talk to you."
00:35:38
So I went back into
the interview room. As I was setting the machine
up again he sang a little song,
00:35:44
something like,
"Da-dee-da dee-da." And I said,
"Strangers in the night."
00:35:51
And he said, "You've named
that tune, you won, I'll speak to you."
00:35:56
- GEOFFREY: And then of cours,e
the reality begins to pour out of Arkwright. Because in a period of just
56 hours he's brutally killed,
00:36:06
and you cannot say more
strongly, brutally, savagely dispatched four people. - MICHAEL: And he then went on
to make a full confession
00:36:16
of the murder of Raymond Ford
and Marcus Law. And then started to speak
about his grandfather
00:36:23
and the tape ran out. - NARRATOR: He'd had to endure
more of Arkwright's games,
00:36:29
but Michael had
managed to get confessions for two of the murders. The following morning the
interview resumed,
00:36:36
and Michael hoped Arkwright
would also confess to killing his grandfather and Elsa.
00:36:42
- MICHAEL: He didn't have
a problem reacting to the grandfather's murder,
00:36:46
they'd argued over the fact
that they did not rebuild this motorcycle he was supposed
to be working on.
00:36:52
And he felt justified
in committing that particular crime. - NARRATOR: He also began
to speak about something
00:37:01
that had haunted him since
he was a child. The local folklore
that his grandfather
00:37:06
was in fact his father. - Whether Arkwright ever
believed that to be the case, it wasn't true, it's certain
that he wasn't the father
00:37:14
of Arkwright. But Arkwright did, did give
that information and imply that that was maybe why
he murdered his grandfather.
00:37:25
- NARRATOR: When it came
to talking about Elsa's murder, however, Arkwright's whole
demeanor changed.
00:37:32
- His voice went particularly
quiet, he was talking about darkness and light,
black and white,
00:37:39
he was black and Elsa was white. And the fact that Elsa was
Lithuanian like his grandfather
00:37:48
and didn't speak any English,
he was concerned that she didn't understand
the language and he felt
00:37:54
that he was doing the right
thing by taking her life. - Her killing, it wasn't as
violent as the other murders
00:38:02
in this killing spree,
which suggests to me that she wasn't part of this kind
of project of vengeance,
00:38:10
she hadn't done anything
to, in his mind, justify or deserved the kind of
violence that he enacted
00:38:17
on other people. So she was literally a barrier
that had to be removed. - NARRATOR: Arkwright
revealed that his killing spree
00:38:25
had started on Friday
the 26th of August, the day he was fired from
his job at the scrapyard.
00:38:32
- GEOFFREY: And in the wake
of that firing, he set off on a 56-hour killing spree
which would leave
00:38:39
four people dead. - NARRATOR: The victims
were found in the opposite order to that in which
they'd been killed.
00:38:45
His grandfather might have
been the last to be discovered but he was Arkwright's first
murder.
00:38:51
For his neighbor Neil Hurst,
this was a shocking revelation. It meant that Arkwright had
already killed at least
00:38:58
two people by the time he
was trying to get into Neil's flat in the early hours
of Sunday, the 28th of August.
00:39:05
It put a different perspective
on Arkwright's motive for the visit. - I reckon if I'd have
answered that door,
00:39:12
I would have been killed
that night me self. Definitely, if I'd have
answered the door to him.
00:39:16
I think he would have to do
what he could and [unintelligible] all in one
night, so yeah, I think
00:39:23
he'd have took my life if
I'd have answered that door. - NARRATOR: In July 1989,
Anthony Arkwright appeared
00:39:30
at Sheffield Crown Court,
he was charged with four counts of murder. - At the trial, Arkwright
really is the director and star
00:39:38
of his own movie. - MICHAEL: He was most
flamboyant, he appeared wearing a jacket and a bowtie
in court and he waved
00:39:48
at the journalists
and waved at people. - GEOFFREY: If you look at
pictures of him at the time,
00:39:54
you see the face of a man who's
almost sneering at the camera. As if, "Look what I've done,
look at me, I'm so clever."
00:40:03
He wasn't at all clever. - Our understanding, and the
understanding of the judge,
00:40:07
was he was pleading guilty
to all four murders. It was quite the bizarre
event because
00:40:13
when he was arraigned before
the judge and the clerk of the court put the charges
to him he pleaded not guilty
00:40:19
to everything. Which took everybody
by surprise, including his own barristers. - NARRATOR: The hearing
was adjourned whilst
00:40:26
his defense team attempted
to find out the reasoning behind the last-minute change
in plea.
00:40:33
Eventually, Arkwright
returned to the court on the understanding that he was
permitted to read a poem
00:40:39
that he'd written. - DR. YARDLEY: There's a very
clear reason why he does this,
00:40:42
'cause he's enjoying the
attention, he's enjoying the notoriety, and a poem
is something that's
00:40:47
quite unique, it's something
that is quite unusual. He knows that this is
something that the media
00:40:52
will pick up on, something
that he will be remembered by. - MICHAEL: Wasn't really a poem,
it was just a rambling
00:40:58
of words and after a few
minutes the judge said, "No, I think we've had enough,
and we'll stop the trial there.
00:41:06
How do you plead to
these charges?" And he pleaded to the three
charges murder against
00:41:12
Raymond Ford, Marcus Law,
and Stanislav Puidokis, and not guilty to the murder
of Elsa Konradaite.
00:41:22
- NARRATOR: The judge
ordered Elsa's killing to remain on file and on
the 12th of July, 1989,
00:41:29
Arkwright was sentenced
for the other three murders. - GEOFFREY: The judge describes
him as an evil fantasist
00:41:37
and calls the crimes
grotesque sadism. It's impossible not to agree
with him.
00:41:45
He sentences Arkwright to
life with a minimum term of 25 years. - NARRATOR: In 1990,
his case was reviewed
00:41:54
by the Home Secretary, who
imposed a whole life tariff. Arkwright is the youngest
person ever to have received
00:42:02
this term in the UK and has
been condemned to die in prison. - Life would mean life
as far as he was concerned,
00:42:10
and I think that that's
a proper sentence. I don't think this is
a safe man to ever allow
00:42:14
out on the street again. - His goal was not just
to kill and to destroy and to release all of the
anger and rage he carried
00:42:23
with him his whole life,
but he wanted to be infamous. - RICHARD: I have to say that
the discovery of both bodies,
00:42:30
really, was probably
the most horrific sight I've ever seen. And remains the worst
injuries I've ever seen that
00:42:37
a human can deliberately
inflict upon another human. - GEOFFREY: Arkwright took
exceptional pride in killing
00:42:46
in the most grotesque way. To take someone's life
is bad enough but to then to destroy what remains
of their body either by...
00:42:56
eviscerating it or by
gouging the eyes out or by stabbing it several
hundred times,
00:43:02
these are the acts of a man
who clearly deserves to be called evil. - NARRATOR: Arkwright
grew up harboring
00:43:10
a vendetta against his own
family, he cared only for himself and would do
whatever he wanted
00:43:16
to those he deemed less
worthy. He was a habitual criminal
who craved recognition.
00:43:21
And by engaging in a
killing spree fueled by rage and revenge, was determined
to emerge infamous.
00:43:28
He slaughtered his
grandparents before torturing and mutilating
two vulnerable neighbors,
00:43:34
making Anthony Arkwright one of
the world's most evil killers. - ♪ ♪♪ - [swishing sound]