He was jailed for the callous slaughter of three, but... DID THE BEAST OF Belgravia actually butcher ELEVEN people?
He described watching the priest’s body floating in the bath for an hour
OUR gripping series began in Saturday’s Weekend magazine with a countdown of the 80 best True Crime TV shows and podcasts, and continues all this week with fascinating four-page specials. We’ve already looked at Britain’s Super Sleuths and Crimes of Passion, and in the coming days HARRY WALLOP and CHRISTOPHER STEVENS will tackle Rough Justice and Unsolved Crimes. Today we have three serial killers whose sprees shocked the nation...
On July 22, 1964, 11- year Patrick Mackay appeared before Dartford Juvenile Court. He was convicted of stealing garden gnomes as well as setting fire to curtains in a Catholic church.
Two petty acts by a delinquent. But this court appearance would become the first of many for Mackay. Over the following 11 years he was either convicted, detained or sectioned under the Mental Health Act 19 times before he was brought to justice for a killing spree in which at least three people died, but the tally could have been as high as 11.
The fact he was free to roam the streets of london and Kent, where he committed his crimes — when he should have been locked up — is a stain on 1970s Britain. But this was a dark decade in which Peter Sutcliffe and Dennis nilsen murdered with impunity, with police and courts relying on manila files and card indexing to monitor criminals.
The case shocked the nation. He should have been stopped.
The day he was sentenced, the Mail’s front page saw Mackay’s sunken-cheeked, wispy bearded mugshot staring into the camera. The headline: ‘life For The Mad Killer law let Go’ followed by, ‘Angry MPs demand change in system that let psychopath go on rampage of death’.
If Mackay, dubbed ‘ The Beast Of Belgravia’, really did kill 11 people, as he claimed, he would be Britain’s fifth most prolific serial killer of modern times behind Dr Harold Shipman, nilsen, Sutcliffe and Fred and Rose West.
Mackay, 67, Britain’s longestserving prisoner, was jailed in 1975. The reason he’s not well remembered is because he was only convicted on three charges of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
These three cases, however, were shocking enough.
On February 26, 1974, police found 87-year-old widow, Isabella Griffiths, killed in her flat in Cheyne Walk, one of the smartest streets in Chelsea, West london.
She had been strangled, struck with a heavy instrument and lain dead for 12 days. The killer had put her body in the kitchen, covered it up, closed her eyes then stabbed her, pinning her to the floor. Police found evidence that Mackay had stayed around for a long time listening to the radio.
Although they were searching for a mugger targeting wealthy old ladies in West london police did not link the two.
On March 10, 1975, the body of 89-year-old Adele Price, the widow of a big game hunter, was discovered in a flat on lowndes Square in Knightsbridge.
Again, there were disturbing details. The killer had forced his way in and strangled Mrs Price. As with Mrs Griffiths, he stayed in the flat for several hours, falling asleep in an armchair as the body lay in the kitchen. Mackay only fled when Mrs Price’s granddaughter called the intercom prior to letting herself in.
The police realised the women’s deaths were linked but had no suspect. Eleven days later, 22-year-old Mackay struck again.
Father Anthony Crean, 63, a
Catholic priest, was days away f from celebrating Easter in the v village of Shorne, Kent.
He returned to his cottage after a walk to find Mackay there. The k killer immediately attacked but Father Crean broke free and locked himself in the bathroom.
Mackay found an axe and broke t through the door. He stabbed his v victim frenziedly, before bludgeoning him with the axe and throwing him in the bath. A nun found the bloodied body.
Police realised Mackay could h have been responsible, as 18 months earlier the kindly priest had befriended Mackay, whose m mother lived near Shorne.
Father Crean often tried to help t the homeless and those with a drink problem. Mackay had repaid his kindness by stealing a c cheque from the priest’s home, and forging his signature to get £80 cash at a local bank.
Mackay was caught and prosecuted. local police remembered this and immediately made him a suspect. The evidence soon mounted: eyewitnesses had seen Mackay in Shorne shortly after the murder, including the station master who said he had headed back to london.
THEy tracked him down to his lodgings in South london, where he rented rooms from a Herbert and Violet Cowdrey. Mackay had decorated his bedsit with nazi insignia and photographs of Hitler and Mussolini.
‘He loved war films and would go to them all the time,’ me,’ Mr Cowdrey told the Mail after fter Mackay was convicted.
Beneath cushions in his room, the police found jewellery, which officers suspected came from burglaries in West london. After his arrest, Mackay asked detectives: ‘Do you believe each person
has an individual destiny?’ Without waiting for an answer, he said: ‘This is certainly mine. I knew it would happen. I am not surprised. I have done it. It might even have been me I done it to.’
He immediately admitted to killing Father Crean, and even volunteered to show police where he’d dumped the knife used to stab the priest.
During police interviews,
Mackay described the murder vividly, explaining how he had watched the body floating in the bath water for an hour.
How had Mackay been free to commit such vile crimes?
He’d had a troubled childhood. His father Harold, an accountant, was an alcoholic and often beat up his wife Marion. Harold died when Patrick was ten, and he never really accepted his father had gone gone— — claiming at school that he was still alive.
After his first court appearance, Mackay’s brutality grew.
The Mail reported that at his junior school in Dartford, Kent, his headmaster’s report described him as a ‘bully and gang leader’. Neighbours remember his cruelty to birds.
on May 22, 1968 he appeared at Wandsworth Juvenile Court accused of actual bodily harm after forcing two younger boys to knock their heads on the ground.
Shortly afterwards, he was diagnosed as a psychopath by Dr Leonard Carr, who predicted Mackay would grow up to be a ‘ cold, psychopathic killer’.
In october, 1968, he was committed to Moss Side Hospital in Liverpool. He was released after a year, then readmitted in August 1970.
Despite his fascination with Nazis and the atrocities they committed, as well as boasts about his desire for violence, he was released again in 1972.
LATER, he spent time in a psychiatric hospital in Tooting, South London, after a suicide attempt, only to abscond from the garden.
The doctors made no attempt to track him down or report his disappearance, believing that he was only a risk to himself.
After his arrest, Mackay told police he had killed 11, including a tramp that he said he had pushed from Hungerford bridge, Central London, into the Thames.
He also claimed to have battered to death cafe owner Ivy Davies, at her home at Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex.
He was later to withdraw his confessions.
At his trial at the old bailey, he was charged with five murders. Two of the charges, however, were dropped due to lack of evidence. He was eventually found guilty on three charges of manslaughter.
Mackay has come up for parole at various times, most recently last summer.
Each time relatives of his alleged victims — notably the son of Ivy Davies — have voiced concern about freeing him.
The Ministry of Justice maintains that the Parole board can only take into account the crimes of which he was convicted, not those to which he withdrew confessions.
For now, he remains safely behind bars.