AS ‘GAY SLAYER’ COLIN IRELAND IS REVEAL WHAT SICK KILLER THOUGHT I sat with the bodies them go cold. I remember the overwhelming smell

Walker was enjoying a drink in his favourite watering hole, popular gay haunt The Coleherne in Kensington, south west London, when he caught the eye of a burly, bull-necked man with a cropped, militarystyle haircut.

Emboldened by a drink, the theatre director and choreographer soon found himself chatting to the stranger and during the course of their ever more intimate conversation, admitted he liked being beaten up during sex.

The pair finished their drinks and, after his new friend picked up his rucksack, they caught a taxi back to Peter’s flat in Battersea.

Peter, 45, was not to know that inside his friend’s rucksack were some gloves, duct tape, a knife, lengths of sailing cord and a change of clothing – a mobile murder kit.

Once inside the flat, Peter shut his two dogs, a Labrador and German shepherd, into the living room and led his new chum into the bedroom.

With his consent, the man tied Peter naked to the four poster bed. As he then lay there, spread-eagled, the man punched him and whipped him with a dog lead.

He then fetched a plastic bag from the kitchen, placed it over Peter’s head, and began to suffocate him.

He pulled the bag off at the last moment, as Peter thrashed around for air. Peter finally gasped: “I’m going to die.”

The man leaned over and said: “Yes, you are.” And then finished him off with the bag.

Colin Ireland had made his first kill.

Ireland later told police: “I took the bag away and told him how easy it was to end it all. It was a fate thing.”

Once Peter was dead, Ireland burnt his pubic hair to see what it smelled like.

Then – while rifling through his victim’s drawers – he came across a letter informing Peter he was Hiv-positive.

Disgusted, he further defiled the man’s body – stuffing condoms into his mouth and nostrils and arranging two of his teddy bears in the 69 position next to the corpse.

He stayed at the flat all night, watching TV and eating Peter’s food. Then he cleaned up after himself, leaving during morning rush hour so as to be less conspicuous.

He would later tell police: “After killing Walker, I walked down the road and thought that anyone who saw my face would be able to see that I had just killed somebody.

“I remembered losing my virginity and I remembered the feeling – I was buzzing.”

Two days after the murder Ireland phoned The Sun newspaper and told a reporter: “I’ve killed a man.”

After giving Peter’s address, he added: “I am calling you because I am worried about the dogs. I want them let out.”

After a brief pause, he said: “I killed him. It was my New Year’s resolution to kill a human being. He was a homosexual into kinky sex. You like that sort of stuff, don’t you?”

With two marriages behind him and the loss of his job, Ireland, 39 at the time, was bitter about life. He wanted to be “somebody” – so he decided to become aserial killer.

He’d read books about serial killers and learned he had to kill at least five people to be afforded the dubious title. He decided his victims would be gay, sadomasochistic men.

Peter Walker was his first victim. There would be four more.

number two would come three months later on May 30, 1993. Thirty-seven-yearold librarian Christopher Dunn also met Ireland in The Coleherne, and admitted he liked to be dominated.

They were soon back at his flat in Wealdstone, north-west London, drinking wine and watching an S&M video.

A colleague, worried that Christopher had not turned up for work, found his body the next morning. He had been bound and gagged and was found in a leather harness.

Before strangling him with a nylon cord, Ireland had forced his victim to give him his PIN number – burning his genitals with a lighter to make sure it was the right one. Later, he would take £200 from his bank account.

But first, like with his first victim, he would stay the night. He later told police: “It’s strange but now I remember overwhelming things – death and what it smells like. When people have been strangled, they break wind – that’s what it smells like.

“I think if I’d killed these people and just gone, I wouldn’t have been affected mentally so much, but sitting with these bodies like five or six hours, watching them gradually blotch as they go cold… it wasn’t something I think I could cope with, quite honestly.”

But cops at first didn’t think Christopher was murdered – concluding instead that he had died accidentally during a kinky S&M sex game.

Five days later, 35-year-old American sales director Perry Bradley was drinking in The Coleherne. He too left with Ireland, returning to his home nearby in Kensington.

Perry was initially reluctant to be tied up, but Ireland told him he couldn’t get an erection without S&M being involved. He then strangled him to death, took £100 from his wallet and, later – as he’d tortured Perry’s PIN out of him – a further £200 from his bank account.

By now, Ireland was on a rampage. Three days after murdering Perry, he went back to the same pub in search of fresh meat. He found 33-yearold nursing home care worker Andrew Collier.

At Andrew’s flat in Dalston, east London, the younger man readily agreed to be tied up for sex – and was soon dead by strangulation.

But as Ireland then made his customary prowl around his victim’s flat, he found that Christopher – like Peter