Murderer was on leave from secure hospital

A SERIAL killer met his third victim while on unescorted leave from a secure mental hospital where he had been locked up for strangling his last girlfriend, a court heard.

Violent and “controlling” Theodore Johnson, 64, attacked Angela Best, 51, a mother of four and grandmother, beating her over the head with a hammer and throttling her with a dressing gown belt after she left him for another man.

He then jumped in front of an express train at Cheshunt railway station in Hertfordshire. As he was being treated for severe injuries, police found Ms Best dead in his living room. Johnson pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to murdering Ms Best and yesterday was jailed for life with a minimum of 26 years.

In 1981, he was convicted of killing his wife by pushing her off a balcony and then, in 1993, he was convicted of strangling another girlfriend in London.

The court heard that Ms Best, of Tottenham, north London, had been in a relationship with Johnson since around 1996, after moving to the capital from Manchester. At the time Johnson was still the subject of a hospital order. The Jamaican suffered from a personality disorder and depression, and was on unescorted leave when he met Ms Best.

In October 1997, he successfully applied for a conditional discharge. One condition was that he alerted authorities to any relationship with a woman.

He kept his relationship a secret and was last seen by a social worker and psychiatrist on Dec 8 2016, days before the murder. He was not found to be depressed and continued to deny being in a relationship.