Man admits to murdering his former partner
SERIAL KILLER ALREADY HAD CONVICTIONS FOR MANSLAUGHTER OF WIFE AND EX-GIRLFRIEND
A SERIAL killer is facing life in prison for murdering his ex-partner after she got together with someone else.
Theodore Johnson, 64, already had two manslaughter convictions – for killing his wife and a former girlfriend – when he got together with Angela Best, who was from Manchester.
Ms Best was with Johnson for more than 20 years, but when they broke up and she started a new relationship he subjected her to an appalling, fatal revenge attack.
Ms Best’s body was found by police at Johnson’s north London home after he threw himself in front of a train.
The 51-year-old grandmother had been hit over the head with a claw hammer and then throttled with a dressing gown cord. Johnson suffered horrific injuries after attempting to kill himself at Cheshunt railway station, but survived.
Now confined to a wheelchair, Johnson has been sentenced to life in prison after admitting Ms Best’s murder on the first day his Old Bailey trial was to begin.
Angela Best was the third of Johnson’s partners to die at his hands. She met him in 1995 after he came out of a psychiatric unit following the second killing. Back in November 1981 the garage worker was convicted by a jury at Stafford Crown Court of killing his wife, Yvonne Johnson.
Following an argument, he hit the mother-of-two with a vase before pushing her over the balcony of their ninth-floor flat in Wolverhampton.
Then in March 1993, he was convicted at the Old Bailey for the manslaughter of his partner, Yvonne Bennett, by diminished responsibility.
The couple, who had a daughter together, had moved from Wolverhampton to Finsbury Park in north London, where Johnson strangled Ms Bennett with a belt after she had an affair with another man.
Johnson now faces life in prison after admitting murdering Angela Best – a charge he had previously denied. The victim’s two sisters sat in court as Johnson entered his guilty plea.
Judge Richard Marks QC remanded Johnson into custody to be sentenced tomorrow.