BOY WHO SAW BROTHER KILLED BY TRAIN GREW UP TO BE ONE OF WALES’ MOST NOTORIOUS KILLERS
H E is one of only four men in Wales to have been told that he is guaranteed to die behind bars after carrying out the brutal and horrific murders of two people, 20 years apart.
Malcolm Green, of Cardiff, was just 24 years old when he committed his first murder, receiving a substantial sentence that wouldn’t see him released until he was aged 44.
But months after his release from prison, he committed another hideous murder in which he echoed his first crime by mutilating his victim’s body beyond recognition.
This is the story of one of Wales’ most notorious killers and of his two victims who were treated as nothing more than objects for his sick fantasies.
Brought up in Ely, Cardiff, Green’s childhood was largely undocumented, but following his infamous murders it emerged that he suffered the trauma of witnessing his younger brother being decapitated by a train, when the killer was just 12 years old.
It is believed that witnessing this event led to Green’s obsession with bloodlust and mutilation that would plague his actions over the course of his adult life.
As a young man, Green lived in Coed-yGores, Llanedeyrn, with his wife Marilyn Stephenson.
Describing her husband in 1991, Ms Stephenson said: “Some of the time he was polite and charming, attractive to women and highly sexed.
“At other times he could be violently possessive, fanatically tidy and subject to fits.
“He got these fits after we married. He went into convulsions and we had to hold him down on the floor, then he’d black out. Most of the furniture was ruined by him. He threw me across the room.
“He’d been in a lot of fights, he knew how to look after himself. A doctor at Cardiff jail said he was so covered in scars that if you pulled one stitch he’d unravel.”
His first victim Glenys Johnson, 40, from Grangetown, was a domestic cleaner and was also believed to have worked as a prostitute.
The trial at Cardiff Assizes in 1971 heard that Ms Johnson was “brutally and viciously murdered” on wasteland in Wharf Street when Green slashed her throat, causing a five-inch wound and proceeded to cut other parts of her body.
After committing the murder, he washed bloodstained clothing at the showers of the British Steel Corporation East Moors works, where he was employed as a crane driver.
He later telephoned the police investigating Ms Johnson’s death on two occasions, telling the operator: “Have you found the body yet? There will be four more.”
Upon his arrest, Green made a clear admission to the murder and gave a statement to police.
He said: “I started walking home by myself. I had had a lot to drink and wanted to sober up. At the bottom of Bute Street I was approached by this woman. She asked me if I was interested in business.
“She started screaming and pulling my clothes. I lost my temper and exploded. The next thing I remember was walking home.”
But Green claimed in his subsequent trial the statement was invented by police, and claimed he had “no idea” how Ms Johnson’s blood had ended up on his shoes or how is blood came to be on her clothing.
When police visited Green’s flat, they found a dummy wrapped up in a roll of carpet with a shirt and coat over it and a knife stuck in its neck.
The jury delivered a guilty verdict on November 5, 1971, but as he was led from the dock Green shouted: “I’ll appeal against this.”
Speaking in 1991, Green’s former wife Ms Stephenson said she was in hospital recovering from losing her baby when Green committed the murder of Ms Johnson.
She said she was not surprised when police told her her husband had done something serious. “I remember him saying ‘I wonder what it’s like to murder.’ It stuck in my mind and I sometimes think I was lucky it wasn’t me.”
After his release on licence from Leyhill Open Prison in 1989, Green, then aged 44, moved to Bristol in a bid to start a new life.
He struck up a friendship with 24-year-old Clive Tully, a New Zealander who had relatives in the Newport area.
Mr Tully was on a world tour and had found a building job with a Bristol firm owned by a family called Higgins and he moved into a house in Luxton Road, Bristol, with Green and his site foreman, Michael Higgins.
Mr Higgins said he and Mr Tully were friends but had fallen out after the New Zealander wasn’t paid a Christmas bonus, and as a result of Mr Tully walking out on a job he was sacked.
He briefly moved to Spain and Portugal before returning to Bristol on March 11 with no money.
One of the last people to see Mr Tully alive was Dennis Coombes, who said he paid him £200 to enable him to get a flight back to the UK.
He said Mr Tully stayed with him for five days in Bristol while looking for a job and later drove him to find a place to stay.
On March 17, Mr Tully visited Green’s girlfriend’s house in Oakdene Avenue and asked if he could stay the night at the Luxton Street flat he had once shared with him. Green agreed, took him round to the house and returned to his girlfriend’s home.
It is believed Mr Tully was murdered in the sitting room of the property by Green on March 19.
Pathologists came to the conclusion that a hammer was used to deliver multiple blows to the head before using a sharp instrument or a saw to “neatly” cut off his head.
The removal of the lower arms, legs, hands and torso was also described as being “neat” having caused little damage to soft tissue.
On March 22, 1990, Linda Vines, a teacher from Cwmfelinfach, Caerphilly, discovered two holdalls in a lay-by as she was driving along the A467 Rogerstone bypass.
The holdalls were taken to Rogerstone police station and examined. They were found to contain “human remains” wrapped in plastic and sealed with sellotape, including a torso, upper arms and legs.
On March 26, 1990, lambing assistant Andrew Newbury was working at Fair Orchard Farm near St Bridges, Wentloog, when he found what he described as a “football-shaped object” wrapped in a red plastic bag but when he put his hand inside it, he felt something that “appeared to be a nose”.
The gruesome finding turned out to be the severed and bludgeoned head of Mr Tully. It had received a dozen blows and had sustained multiple fractures.
Mr Newbury also found a white plastic bag containing two amputated hands, with the third finger on the left hand crushed.
The remains were found to have belonged to Mr Tully after he was identified through a computer-enhanced photograph which had been created by a newspaper graphic artist.
As he was the last person to see Mr Tully alive, Green was arrested on March 30, 1990, on the front door of his girlfriend Helen Barnes’ house in Fishponds at 11.25pm and told police: “Clive Tully dead? He’s my friend. I don’t understand. Clive Tully dead? Me arrested? It’s all a big mistake.”
In his interview, Green told police he knew nothing about the murder and was being “set up” by the real killer.