THE ZOMBIE MONSTER OF YORKSHIRE
VIOLENT
alcoholic Mark Hobson warned friends of the ‘evil’ that lurked within him.
And following the killing spree that left four dead – including female twins – the scar-faced psychopath came to embody that four-letter word.
Hobson’s case was a sickening rampage that involved blunt-force trauma, harrowing torture, sexual sadism…and even possible cannibalism.
And after his actions left veteran police officers suffering psychological damage, Hobson was told he will NEVER be freed from the cage he occupies at HMP Wakefield…
THE lush fields and gently rolling hills of North Yorkshire attract countless tourists looking for rural tranquillity.
But, for a terrifying week in July 2004, the pastures around York weren’t teeming with walkers, they were swarming with armed police for one of the biggest manhunts in British history.
And when, six days later, binman Mark Hobson, then 35, was arrested at a petrol station, he had left a gruesome trail of terror in his murderous wake.
The events had begun two weeks earlier, on July 10.
Violent
Hobson rowed with his girlfriend of 18 months, Claire Sanderson, 27, in the flat they shared in the pretty village of Camblesforth.
It was an argument that would not end well.
It was also the tragic end of a relationship that had long been a violent one.
Hobson attacked his lover with a hammer, raining down 17 blows to her skull, before wrapping a plastic bag around her head.
And as the heavy drinker sat on his blood-soaked sofa and watched Claire’s life drain away, he hatched a plan that would shock Satan himself.
Hobson had confided in a co-worker that it wasn’t Claire he lusted after, it was her twin sister Diane.
He felt he’d moved in with the wrong sibling.
He knew Diane that loathed him for the hurt he’d caused Claire, so he connived to lure her to the flat.
He penned a chilling ‘to do’ note, writing, ‘Use Claire’s phone. Tell Di to come down. Use and abuse at will.’
A shopping list hinted at how he planned to dispose of the bodies. It said, ‘Big bin liners, tape. Tie wraps. Fly spray.’
Before he honed in on Diane, the killer – with a distinctive scar above his left eyebrow – spent a week living with Claire’s decomposing body, calling the corpse his “little China doll”.
Deranged Hobson, who often drank 20 pints of beer a day, even put Claire’s body in a sleeping bag to “make her more comfortable”.
It was as if the attack had never happened – he slept on the couch as Claire slumbered eternally in the bedroom.
Plot
On July 17, Hobson set his second, terrible plot in motion.
He called Diane to say Claire had glandular fever and could she come to visit.
Diane set off from her parent’s house in nearby Snaith village, arranging to meet her boyfriend, Ian Harrison, later that night at a pub in Selby.
But Diane never make it.
Within moments of her arrival at the flat, Hobson launched a brutal assault.
While neighbours heard piercing screams, they put it down to another all-too-familiar row between Hobson and Claire.
Instead, it was Diane pleading for her life as Hobson beat her with a hammer, ‘hogtied’ her arms to her legs behind her back, and carried out a vicious sexual assault before ending her ordeal by strangling her.
A court later heard how her left nipple had been bitten off…and presumably eaten by Hobson.
These acts of extreme cruelty mark him out as one of the most twisted would individuals currently being held in a UK jail.
And Hobson wasn’t done yet.
When Diane failed to show up at the pub, boyfriend Ian raised the alarm.
On the morning of July 18 both Ian and the twins’ father George drove to the flat and pushed open the unlocked door.
Both girls were found naked, covered in bin bags, in the bedroom.
Devoted dad George later described the discovery that led him to suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome.
He said: “I found my girls robbed of their life and their dignity.
“They came into this world together and left it so tragically together.”
TERRIFYING: Hobson used such force the knife broke in his victim
Recalling the bags which now housed the two daughters he’d nurtured for 27 years, he added: “I knew Claire was inside. I looked at Diane and wanted to cuddle her.”
As North Yorkshire Police launched a murder investigation, Hobson was making his way to Strensall, near York.
There he walked into the home of frail WWII pilot James Britton, 80, and his wife Joan, 82. Mr Britton was attacked first, beaten around the head several times with his own walking stick before Hobson plunged a 12-inch knife into his chest.
Then, as Mrs Britton hobbled into the room, Hobson buried the knife into her back, piercing her stomach and liver and causing the handle to snap off at the blade.
Grabbing another knife from the kitchen, Hobson went on the run.
It didn’t take long for cops to link the murders – witnesses had seen Hobson lurking around Strensall.
But it took seven days of frantic searching until Hobson was finally apprehended on July 25.
His arrest followed a tip-off by a petrol station owner in Shipton-byBeningbrough, who’d spotted Hobson coming in to buy a packet of cigarettes.
On his arrest, Hobson told police: “I’m a f**king murderer, aren’t I? I’ll take my punishment.”
At Leeds Crown Court on May 27 the following year, Hobson pleaded guilty to four counts of murder.
The judge, Mr Justice Grigson, ordered him to die in prison, saying: “You not only destroyed the lives of your victims, but you devastated the lives of those who loved them…The enormity of what you have done is beyond words.”
While banged up, Hobson wrote to and was visited by former neighbour Donna Kemp.
He confided in her: “There’s something evil inside me that comes out when I drink.
“I enjoyed defying everything. That’s the bad side lurking in me.”