Double killer linked to murder of Andrea, 15
COPS DIDN’T QUIZ HIM SAYS REPORT
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EXCLUSIVE
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A DOUBLE murderer confessed to the 1983 killing of a teenage girl but was never quizzed about it, a leaked report says.
Now the brother of Andrea Troupe is urging cops to question evil Michael Smithyman about the frenzied stabbing of his 15-year-old sister, who was six months’ pregnant at the time.
Smithyman, now living as Michelle, was jailed for life in 1993 for killing his pregnant girlfriend and a gangland hit.
That year Met police handed a document to the Home Office detailing his confessions to 13 killings.
The report says he told a fellow lag he raped and murdered Andrea but Smithyman was never quizzed about it.
The monster also claimed a criminal associate started the 1981 New Cross fire in South London, which left 13 young black partygoers dead.
Smithyman, now 56, renounced his confessions when he was up for parole in 2015. But Andrea’s brother Paul Burchell, 61, wants her case reopened.
He said: “It’s heartbreaking. I don’t know how he would have got hold of my sister but I would want Scotland Yard to question him.
“It’s hard for me but it’s worse for my mother. She just looks at pictures of Andrea and will burst into tears.
“We made a fresh appeal last year but nothing happened.”
Andrea was stabbed 12 times in the neck and heart in a park in Peckham, south London, in May 1983.
Grave
In January 1990 Smithyman drove girlfriend April Sheridan, 22, to a field in Meopham, Kent, made her dig a grave and shot her in the back of the head with a sawn-off shotgun. He did it to stop her telling police of his crimes.
Days later he stabbed drug dealer Terence Gayle, 30, for £3,000 in cash and drugs, given after he produced one of his victim’s hands as proof of death.
Smithyman has been denied parole three times. Police said his claims had been investigated but no “further meaningful lines of enquiry” had been found.
The Met added: “Any new information will be thoroughly assessed.”
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