Searching the BBC News website earlier (I can’t remember what I was looking for) I became distracted and found myself at this link British Serial Killer?
It’s a shocking story and like a train-wreck, I couldn’t stop watching – reading…
In the Midlands of England, an old man died in his flat above what used to be a butcher’s shop. He had no friends or family to miss him and as the building (a house converted into a shop and flat above) was a detached property, there were no neighbours to notice the smell at first.
The problem arose when a burst water main was traced to the garden of the property and the plumber knocked on the door of the flat to ask for permission to try to locate a stop-tap.
No answer to the knock, he realised the bad smell wasn’t from the drains, but from the flat. He called the police and they broke in.
The remains of an old man were found and removed. No one claimed the remains and after a long time, he was given a pauper’s burial by the local council.
The building started to get vandalised and was boarded up by the council. The lower floor, what was once the butchers’ shop, already benefitted from sturdy metal shutters and they didn’t need any work… or most of them didn’t. One doorway in the back of the property was found to have been prised open and the council workers, admitting to being nosey, took a peek inside.
They took their time because they weren’t doing anything wrong, and looking around, they found a collection of old tools. Most of them were starting to deteriorate, but a select few were still quite shiny and sharp. The butcher’s block, a thick, slab of hardwood, curved and hollowed out over decades of sharp knives running over it, stood as it would have when the butchers was still open, serving the village.
The counter tops were thick with dust, but the butchers’ block wasn’t. It had a thin layer of dust and the council workers only noticed that fact a little while later.
Pieces of paper with faded writing told them how much braising steak had been back when they were kids and they admit to being delighted at the opportunity to walk down memory lane.
Quote: “Dave shouted from the back of the shop that he’d found the fridges and he tried to open one. It was stuck but not locked. The padlock and chain hung from the handle like they would have when the butcher locked up after the shop was closed and cleaned down, way back when.”
The men studied the handle and realised it was a pull-towards you handle, not a pull-down handle. Dave apparently had another go and it came unstuck and opened a little.
Quote: “We both vomited at the stink that came out of that fridge. It was horrible! The stink wafted out and our instant reaction was to puke our guts up! I’ve only smelled that once before, when we came home from a fortnight’s holiday and the freezer had packed-up and everything rotted, but this was a million times worse! I thought the butcher had forgotten a carcass of meat when he shut-up shop for the last time, but the butcher’s had closed decades ago, it would be mummified by now, surely?”
The men went back out into the fresh air and discussed it further. Now that they knew there was something off in the fridge, they had to follow the job through. They had face masks with filters in the van as luck would have it and they decided they had to go back.
Quote: “I wish we’d just shut the fridge and left it. I’ll never be the same again!”
The men went back and opened the door. They’d taken a portable LED light and set it up so they could see in the fridge.
There wasn’t one carcass in the fridge, there were a total of fifteen. The problem is, they weren’t cow or pig – not even deer – they were human.
The heads were lined up on a rack of shelving and the council workers steeled themselves to count the heads before getting the hell out for the second time that day.
The police went in after the council workers ran out and called them.
At a press conference, a Police Spokesperson gave as much detail as they’d discovered to date.
The bodies ranged in ages, from a thirteen-year-old boy to a fifty-three-year-old man. Some were intact, and two had been flayed. The Police Spokesperson tried to gloss over that, but the reporters clamoured for more information.
The bodies were all male, all naked and most had been ‘jointed’. It was taking a lot of work to piece them all together. The two that were flayed seemed to be the most recently killed and it looks like the murderer was either disturbed in his work, or had stopped for a break, hence the padlock not being locked on the door.
Unfortunately, there were more sets of clothing than the fifteen sets they expected to find. Another store room was found, with neatly folded piles of clothes set out on shelves, in a similar way to how the heads were set out. The fridge the council workers discovered was an industrial freezer and it would appear that the murderer took ill at his work and went up to his flat and died. After a while, the electricity was cut off because of non-payment and the rest is breaking now.
As far as the police can say, speculation and investigation into missing persons in the area leads them to believe the victims were all known to the police for some reason or another and the last two victims were youngsters, known for breaking and entering abandoned buildings to rifle through anything left there. It seems they found the butchers’ tools interesting enough to try to steal and they were discovered by someone far worse.
The mother of the final two victims made a statement.
Quote: “My two boys were good lads! They din’t never steal nuffink. They took care of their old mum, they did! They wuz killt unlawfully and I want compensation!”
Images from Google free to use search