Who is the December Twelfth killer?
COULD AN UNSOLVED MISSING PERSON’S CASE MEAN A LONGER SENTENCE FOR A SUSPECTED SERIAL KILLER?
In December 1999, Hampshire Police asked Royal Navy
Petty Officer Allan Grimson to come into the station and give a witness statement. They were following up leads in a missing person’s probe, after 18-year-old Nicholas Wright, who was also in the Navy, disappeared on 12 December 1997. They had just discovered that Grimson had been spotted chatting with Nicholas at Joanna’s nightclub in Southsea, and police were keen to discount him from enquiries. But when the detective became suspicious of his story and questioned him further, Grimson shocked them by suddenly confessing.
Grimson said Nicholas had gone back to his Portsmouth flat that night, and he had beaten him to death with a baseball bat after he spurned his sexual advances. Grimson also confessed to hacking off part of Nicholas’ ear with a diving knife, cutting his throat and performing a sex act, before wrapping him up in bin liners and burying him in a shallow grave just off the A272 near Cheriton, Hants. When asked if he had anything else to say, Grimson answered that there was “one more body”, later revealed to be Sion Jenkins. He then led now-retired detective Neil Cunningham and his team to their roadside graves.
Grimson killed Sion, 20 – who had also been in the Navy for a short while – on 12 December 1998, after meeting him at The Hog’s Head in Southsea, where Sion worked. After sexually assaulting him, Grimson killed him and buried him by the A32 in West Tisted, Hants. After pleading guilty to both murders at Winchester Crown Court in March 2001, Grimson was sentenced to 22 years minimum in jail. During his trial, the man dubbed the “Royal Navy’s Dennis Nilsen” was referred to by Judge Cresswell as “a serial killer in nature, if not in number”, adding that Grimson was a “highly dangerous killer who killed two young men in horrifying circumstances”. It is
thought he could be responsible for as many as 20 more murders. And now police have found fresh leads in one case they have been investigating for over 30 years.
FRESH APPEAL
After noting the significance of the date 12 December, Operation Thornhill was launched by Hampshire Police. The investigation looked into the disappearances of young men at ports where Grimson docked while serving on HMS Illustrious and HMS Edinburgh, as well as cold cases of individuals going missing on that date. Now, a year before he becomes eligible for parole, Grimson has been linked to the disappearance of Royal Navy
Seaman Simon Parkes, who went missing on 12 December 1986, aged 18.
Simon vanished while HMS Illustrious, on which he was serving as a radio operator, was docked in Gibraltar on its way home to Britain from the Far East. His last confirmed sighting had been at The Horseshoe bar at 10.30pm, but two days later, the aircraft carrier sailed without Simon, despite the fact his passport, clothes and Christmas presents for his family were still on board. It had always been assumed Simon had run away after meeting a girl, but in 2002, while in prison, Grimson hinted that he had murdered Simon and buried him in Gibraltar. A fellow crew member also suggested Grimson was involved, saying they had seen him walking with a young sailor, who could have been Simon, late that evening.
Despite Grimson denying the claims, Hampshire Police started working with Royal Gibraltar Police. And, in 2019, a new witness came forward, 33 years into the investigation. After giving evidence the police will only describe as “credible”, they began digging in Gibraltar’s Trafalgar Cemetery in December 2019, where they found fragments of unidentified bone. However, in October 2020, they were confirmed as not being human. Now, with Grimson, 61, eligible for parole in December 2021, it’s a race against time to stop a potential serial killer from being freed from prison – and the police are not giving up. DI Adam Edwards said, “These searches are a continuation of our investigation into the disappearance of Simon Parkes. We owe it to him and his family to ensure we have followed every legitimate line of enquiry in a bid to give them the answers that they have been waiting 30 years for.”
They are now appealing for more of Simon’s former crewmates to get in touch with any information.
‘WE WANT TO GIVE HIS FAMILY THE ANSWERS THEY HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR’