Original subtitles

- MALE NARRATOR: Over the August bank holiday weekend

in 1988 the mining village of Wath upon Dearne

in South Yorkshire, England was rocked to its core.

The body of 25 year old Marcus Law was discovered

in his home, he'd been tortured and mutilated.

- There were blood all over the place and then he got

cigarettes stuck in every orifice in his face,

he got 'em in his nostrils, even in his eyes,

his ears, mouth.

And he just looked like a birthday cake with candles in.

- NARRATOR: In a final act of callousness, the killer

had inserted one of Marcus' own crutches

into his abdomen.

- The sheer enormity of the violence used in this case

is extreme.

It is, to use that word, truly evil.

- NARRATOR: The killer was 21-year-old

Anthony Arkwright.

Over the coming days more bodies would be discovered

in similarly horrific circumstances.

- He didn't just kill his victims,

he completely obliterated them,

he humiliated them, and he didn't feel bad about doing it.

If anything, he quite enjoyed it.

- NARRATOR: Even the police were wary of what they might

discover next.

- I was frightened, no two words about it, and I said

to my colleague, "You know what we're gonna find."

And he said, "Yes, Sarge."

And I said, "You have to brace yourself for this."

- NARRATOR: In less than a week, four victims

were discovered.

Anthony Arkwright had been revealed as one of the

world's most evil killers.

- ♪

- NARRATOR: August, 1988, Wath upon Dearne,

South Yorkshire, England.

Late in the afternoon on the same day

as disabled resident Marcus Law's badly mutilated body

was discovered, a neighbor, Anthony Arkwright,

was arrested for his killing.

Just two days later, 45-year-old retired teacher

Raymond Ford was found brutally murdered.

He'd been stabbed 250 times before his organs

and intestines were removed and trailed around his flat.

- Marcus is bad enough, you know with cigarettes

poking out of his gouged-out eyes and his crutch

stuck into his stomach, but this is worse, if possible.

There's virtually no organ left inside his body.

Raymond's entrails are all around him,

they're in the bathroom, they're in the bedroom,

and they were in the hallway.

- NARRATOR: As Arkwright's lawyer proclaimed his client's

innocence to the press, news of a second neighbor

found slaughtered after his arrest began to spread.

A wave of fear descended on the community.

Retired Detective Constable David Winter discovered

the second victim.

- It did spread a lot of unrest because of the fact that

the second body were found while he was in custody.

That gave credence to, "We've got a madman

running loose at Wath."

So everybody's thinking that it's not him that, you know,

it's got to be somebody else.

- NARRATOR: There was more to come, within days

two further victims were discovered, including

Arkwright's own grandfather Stanislav Puidokas.

Former Detective Sergeant Richard Venables grew up

in the village and remembers how inconceivable it was

that these horrific crimes had happened there.

- RICHARD: Wath on Dearne, a little sleepy mining village,

which it would be, we were on the verge of pit closures

at that time, it was just, it's the last place on Earth

you would have thought that this thing could happen.

And I even think about it now and say that Wath on Dearne

had a serial killer, as long a shot as a lottery win really.

- The impact of crimes like this on any local community

are going to be devastating because here's somebody

who has been in this area for a while, people know

who he is, he's a familiar face, this isn't some monster

that's come in from the outside, it's the evil within.

- NARRATOR: This killer's story begins on

the 24th of March, 1967.

Anthony Richard Arkwright was born in a row house

in Wath upon Dearne in South Yorkshire.

The son a milkman,

he was the middle child of five siblings

and his family life was dysfunctional

from a very early age.

- DR. YARDLEY: Arkwright spent a lot of his early years

in and out of children's homes

and this for me means that he has

a very insecure attachment with his caregivers.

So this is a child who doesn't feel security, he doesn't

feel warmth, and what that can sometimes translate into

is this kind of defensiveness, this sense in which,

"I can't depend on other people, it's just me

and I've got to look after myself."

- NARRATOR: Arkwright struggled in school and was

teased by his peers as people began to speculate

about the true nature of relationships within his family.

- Arkwright was bullied at school because there were

rumors that were completely untrue that he was the result

of an incestuous relationship between his mother

and his grandfather.

- LOUIS: The reality is not what counts, it's what he thought

and what he experienced that was out there,

and the kids thought it was true.

And so he was teased a great deal and when an individual

is teased repetitively in childhood it affects them

emotionally in very, very significant ways.

- DR. YARDLEY: Off the back of the bullying, Arkwright

kind of retreats into himself, he spends a lot of time

on his own, he's a loner.

And when people don't have those social connections

with others, they ruminate, they spend a lot of time

thinking about things, especially ways in which

they've been wronged by other people.

So, you've got this kind of undercurrents of rage,

I think, that's developing in him.

- NARRATOR: The resentment that young Anthony Arkwright

harbored for his family smouldered inside him

and he became a troubled teenager.

He often found himself on the wrong side of the law

and he was a well-known face in the local police stations.

David Winter remembers him as one of their regulars.

- I've known Arkwright since he was about 14 years old.

He were a petty thief and we were forever locking him up

when he were a juvenile.

- NARRATOR: Over the coming years he became

obsessed with weapons and had a reputation

for being a habitual troublemaker.

- MICHAEL: He got quite a few convictions for petty crime,

you would call it, not petty to the victims,

but burglaries, damage, small assaults

and things like that.

He was forever getting into trouble and he'd been sent

to youth custody and various other penalties that

had been imposed on him over the years.

But he was a troublesome lad altogether.

- GEOFFREY: And while he was in prison,

perhaps he saw a way of...

making himself glamorous.

He took a great interest in Jack The Ripper

and The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe,

reading books about them.

Perhaps for the first time in his life a subject engaged him.

He developed this fascination with mass murder and I think

perhaps he saw it as a way of making his mark

in the world.

- NARRATOR: By the Summer of 1988, the 21-year-old

was working at a scrap metal merchants in Mexborough

and living in nearby Wath upon Dearne

in public housing on the Denman Road estate.

Neil Hurst was one of his neighbors.

- NEIL: Anthony Arkwright seemed very weird to me.

He looked like a young Clint Eastwood and he were very,

very frightening, kept his self to his self.

He used to wear long coats and cowboy hats and he also

had rollup coming out of the side of his mouth.

- DAVID: He were one of them people that he wanted to draw

attention to himself, he really loved himself.

Tall, a lot taller than me.

But he'd spike his hair and he'd bleached the points

of it and things like that to get a distinctive look.

- NARRATOR: Another of Arkwright's neighbors

was 45-year-old Raymond Ford.

- He was a gentleman who lived opposite Arkwright

in a block of flats.

He was a retired school teacher suffering from

ill health and kept himself very much to himself.

- Raymond and Arkwright had history,

Arkwright liked to bully him.

At one point he shoved excrement through his letter box.

- NARRATOR: In August 1988, Raymond was burglarized.

Several items had been stolen including a microwave oven

and a mantle clock.

He reported it to the local police.

- DAVID: One of the secondhand dealers came up

to the police station and mentioned that he'd bought,

um, a microwave oven from Tony Arkwright,

given his name, and he paid £20.

So then it were decided that Arkwright were gonna

be arrested.

- NARRATOR: On the 26th of August, the Friday

before the bank holiday weekend, Arkwright was fired

from his job at the scrapyard for poor attendance.

He was extremely aggrieved.

To add insult to injury, early the next morning

the police were knocking on his door and he was arrested

for the burglary of Raymond's flat.

The officers were surprised to find a whole arsenal

of knives in his home, but there was something else

that sparked their interest.

- They found in his flat a pocket watch and it was

the pocket watch that was unique, that they'd not seen

before, and decided that that, it wasn't right that

he would have such a pocket watch, it was an old person's

pocket watch.

And so they decided to bail Arkwright on the Saturday

evening in order that they could make further inquiries.

- NARRATOR: Having just started his evening shift,

Detective Constable David Winter was tasked with

getting a statement from Raymond Ford

about the burglary.

He offered Arkwright a lift.

- I took him back home and as he's going into his flat,

which is on the right hand side, I went to the left hand side

to Raymond Ford's.

Knocking on the door and he hadn't gone in at that time.

And he said, "Oh, he'll be out now, he'll be around pubs,

he's a drunk."

So, you know, I said, "Well, I'll come back."

And I left it at that.

- NARRATOR: At the time it seemed like an innocent remark,

but Arkwright would do everything he could

to stop the police from getting a statement from Raymond.

In less than 24 hours, Arkwright had lost his job

and been arrested.

He needed an outlet for the pent up energy simmering

inside him.

- I were coming down the steps and Tony approached me

and he said, "Are you going out tonight?"

And I just said, "Yeah."

He said, "Do you mind if I come wi' ya?"

Well, I thought, "He's never done naught wrong to me."

You know what I mean?

It might be a chance to get know him a bit better.

- NARRATOR: Later that evening Arkwright met up

with Neil and his cousin.

As the three men got into the car, a neighbor,

25-year-old Marcus Law, blocked their way.

- I started the engine and then Marcus came in front of me

in his wheelchair.

Shouting, "Where you going?"

And I says, "Get out of the road, Marcus, we're going out."

And then all I heard next from the back of the car were

Tony Arkwright said, "I'm gonna kill that bastard."

And then that's when I thought, "Wowee."

I says, "No, he's only having a laugh."

He says, "I'm gonna kill that bastard."

And I looked at his face and I could see from his eyes

that he meant what he said.

Yeah, and I believed it.

- NARRATOR: Once at the nightclub, Arkwright's behavior

didn't improve.

He was so aggressive that they were eventually

thrown out by bouncers.

Arkwright's whole demeanor that night made Neil

incredibly nervous.

- To be honest, I didn't feel safe meself at that time.

And I'm just lucky that we managed to get home

and he got out of me car.

Then what happened next were unbelievable.

In them days you used to have a bin, like a metal bin,

and I saw him, he just picked it up and threw it

straight through Raymond's flat's window.

I'm thinking, "What's he gonna do?

"Is this ticking bomb now going off?

Is--what's he doing that for?"

All I needed to know were I didn't need to be there

and I said to me cousin, "Let's go."

- NARRATOR: Whilst Neil and his cousin called it a night

and made a hasty retreat, Anthony Arkwright was only

just getting started.

He had a score to settle with his neighbor.

The bin was merely the beginning of what he had

in store for Raymond Ford.

- Raymond, according to Arkwright, had told the police

about the burglary, had suggested Arkwright was

responsible, and in doing so, he'd taken the power away

from Arkwright,

and Arkwright wanted that power back.

- NARRATOR: In the early hours of Sunday the 28th of August,

Arkwright entered Raymond's flat using a key

that he'd stolen during the burglary.

Bizarrely, he was dressed in just a pair of underpants

and a devil's mask.

- But he didn't want to leave any forensic traces

on clothing, that was why he was wearing the devil mask

and also a pair of underpants.

- DR. YARDLEY: Not only did Arkwright kill aymond Ford,

he stabbed him 250 times, that's 250 decisions

to cause harm to this individual,

and then he draped his entrails around the home.

- NARRATOR: The force that Arkwright used to stab Raymond

was so great that several of the knives actually

broke in two.

- He must have been stabbing and stabbing

for a very long time.

There are broken knives, he would have had to go

and get another knife.

You would suspect that he'd probably have to have a rest

during that because simply the repetitive action 250 times

would be incredibly physically difficult.

- Worse still, he takes out

just about every single entrail

from Raymond's body and drapes them not only

in the bedroom but all around the flat.

Imagine the scene.

- Arkwright is somebody who has always felt a sense

of humiliation, a sense of shame and now he's projecting that

onto his victim.

He's saying, "I'm the powerful one now,

I can do what I want to you."

- NARRATOR: Shortly afterwords, Neil Hurst

was woken by loud banging.

Arkwright, having washed off Raymond's blood,

was pounding on his door.

- NEIL: I heard some banging at the door and when I looked

through the peephole there were Tony

and I just didn't answer the door.

And I went into me cousin's bedroom and opened the door.

'Cause he went, "Who's fucking banging?"

I just said, "It's Tony from downstairs, just leave it,

he can't get in."

And that were last we heard.

- NARRATOR: Later that day, David Winter was back on shift,

he was conscious that he needed to get

a statement from Raymond about the burglary.

- Went straight to Raymond Ford's see if I could catch him

before the pubs were open and still no reply.

And still Arkwright comes out and he says, "Well, he'll be

"out now, he's been drinking all day and he'll be out,

you'll not get in."

And I'll keep coming back, I did that all evening.

Knowing that the file's got to be in the Monday morning

I were desperate to try to get this statement.

And each time I knocked on Ford's door Arkwright came out

and it was strange, you know,

it were like he were waiting for me.

- NARRATOR: Arkwright spent much of that

Sunday afternoon with Marcus Law, the same neighbor

that he'd recently threatened to kill.

25-year-old Marcus had been injured in a motorbike accident

as a teenager and lived in a bungalow

on the Denman Road estate.

- Arkwright had shared his cigarettes with Marcus Law

and he didn't have any money with which to buy

any more cigarettes.

And so he was quite sure that Marcus Law would have

cigarettes in his bungalow but he'd not shown him

where the cigarettes were.

So that was what caused the argument later on

in the night.

- NARRATOR: On the Sunday evening Arkwright paid

Marcus another visit to try to persuade him to give up

some cigarettes.

Still, Marcus insisted he had none and so Arkwright

proceeded to search the bungalow.

- And then Arkwright discovers that there are some cigarettes

in a drawer and he feels, you know, that,

"I've been lied to."

So it's this sense of real disproportionate reaction

to a kind of everyday situation.

- GEOFFREY: We're now dealing with someone who's...

disintegrating into a desperate, horrific, sadistic fantasy.

All we know is that, in what can only be described as

utterly-depraved manner, Arkwright attacks Marcus

relentlessly.

- DR. YARDLEY: Marcus is not just killed, he's brutalized.

Arkwright stabs him over 70 times and when he's there

with his body in the flat afterwards he takes cigarettes

and puts them into his ears, his nose, his eyes.

- LOUIS: You look at that and say, "Well, how could he

"possibly be so angry at this neighbor?

What did the neighbor do to deserve that?"

And the answer is nothing.

But it was a displacement from all of the anger

than Arkwright felt over the years onto other people,

the neighbor being one.

- NARRATOR: The following day was the bank holiday Monday.

Marcus's mother was moving away for a new job

and at 11:30 in the morning she called round to say

goodbye to her son.

- And was unable to get in originally, which was unusual,

and she managed to slip the chain on the front door

and get access to the place.

And she found that he'd been very brutally murdered.

- NARRATOR: Marcus's distraught mother ran

to the police station.

David Winter was one of the first officers on the scene.

- DAVID: He were laid out on the floor and all his

chest cavity were open.

There were a crutch through his body, sticking--

it was actually sticking up.

There were blood all over the place and then he got

cigarettes stuck in every orifice in his face, I mean,

his nostrils, even in his eyes, his ears, mouth.

And he just, it just looked like a birthday cake with candles in.

- NARRATOR: The quiet mining village

of Wath upon Dearne now had a major murder investigation

on its hands.

Detective Superintendent Michael Burdis was called in.

- MICHAEL: It was bank holiday Monday and I was at home

gardening and got a call to attend at the scene

of a murder at Wath.

- NARRATOR: As Michael made his way

to Wath Police Station, an officer leaving Marcus' bungalow

saw Arkwright in the street.

- MICHAEL: And they expected Arkwright to speak to him

because they were on good terms and spoke to each other

whenever they met, Arkwright crossed the road

away from him and Humphreys was very suspicious of that

because it was very unusual.

And so called him across and decided that he would

invite him back to the police station

so they could have a chat.

- NARRATOR: When Michael arrived, Arkwright was already

in the interview room.

- MICHAEL: So far as we knew, Arkwright was a friend

of Marcus Law's

and we were following that line of inquiry.

What did he know about the movements of this friend?

So we, we had no reason to really suspect Arkwright

of any particular crime except that he'd ignored

this particular detective, which was unusual.

- NARRATOR: Investigations into Marcus' killing continued

with officers making door-to-door inquiries

in the hope of finding witnesses who may have seen his killer.

On the Monday evening they spoke with a lady

who recounted how Arkwright had visited her that morning

and he'd broken the news that Marcus was dead.

- He said to her, words to the effect,

"It's a pity about Marcus."

And then explained that Marcus had died

and she thought that Marcus Law had probably committed suicide,

but that was an hour before Marcus Law's mother

had found the body.

So it was quite clear that Arkwright must be a prime

suspect for that crime.

- NARRATOR: Clearly, Arkwright had inside information,

and he was arrested on suspicion of Marcus's murder.

- Arkwright wasn't admitting that offense Arkwright was

merely grumbling on all sorts of subjects and talking anything

but the actual response to the questions

about the crime itself.

At the same time, we had a major investigation

to undertake with house-to-house inquiries,

with searches of the scene,

the searches of the area, the postmortem,

and the rest of the material that goes on with a major

crime investigation.

- NARRATOR: On Wednesday the 31st of August, as officers

continued to speak to residents, David Winter's thoughts

return to Raymond Ford.

He'd been so involved with the murder investigation

that he still hadn't managed to get a statement

from Raymond about the burglary.

Coincidentally, he was the only resident that

the house-to-house team hadn't managed to get in contact with.

- So I went down with a uniform lad and at that time

his front window was smashed, so looking in,

we could see this sea of bottles that went

from the window right to the back of the room like a--

like a slope,

and his chair was in front of the TV,

big piles of newspapers all over the place.

He wasn't sat in his chair but the television were on.

So they said, "Well, you better go in and have a look."

- NARRATOR: David made his way in through the broken window,

it was immediately obvious that something was amiss.

- DAVID: I could just see blood all over the wall and all over

the floor, you know, big piles of it so I'm stepping over it.

Detective Inspector came down, he's in the door.

I says, "I can't let you in, there's no keys."

But I'm talking to him.

He said, "Well, what's it look like?"

I said, "Well, it's carnage in here, there's blood everywhere.

Blood's-- it's dried on the floor."

So, "Is he in there?" "I'll have a look."

So then I looked through into the bedroom and behind

the door was his body, but it were all covered up

with cloths and that, but I could see a hand.

So I said, immediately, "Yeah, he's here."

- You couldn't call it anything other than a tip but it was

literally three feet deep in clothing and underneath that

was the body of Raymond Ford,

having suffered grotesque injuries.

- NARRATOR: Whilst the police were making their

grizzly discovery, Arkwright was appearing at

Rotherham Magistrate's Court, charged with the murder

of Marcus Law and the burglary at Raymond Ford's flat.

Detective Superintendent Michael Burdis now had

a second horrific crime to investigate.

But he already had a good idea who was going to be

their prime suspect: Anthony Arkwright.

- MICHAEL: Two of the detectives that had been talking to him

were sitting in the canteen area and waiting for his

solicitor to attend so they were merely sitting waiting.

And during that time on the table was a pack of cards

and Arkwright was flicking through these cards

and eventually he said to the detectives, "I can read

the cards," and he turned over the four of hearts.

And he said, "One you've got, two, three, four to come."

That prompted alarms in the officers because they,

as far as they knew there was just the one body.

And so they rang that information through to me

at the incident room.

But of course by that time, we'd found Raymond Ford's body,

which meant then that there were two more.

- LOUIS: He didn't wanna act like the ordinary criminal,

the ordinary murderer who goes there an confesses

or start crying, "You got me, oh my God."

He didn't want to do that at all, he wanted to do

the opposite of that, he wanted to be newsworthy,

to be notorious, to be infamous in some way.

- NARRATOR: The case had just been blown wide open.

The police now believed there were more victims,

but they had no leads as to who these unfortunate souls

may be.

Both known victims had been from the Denman Road estate

and all available police resources were sent to the area

to knock on doors and make sure that every resident

was safe and well.

- MICHAEL: And we used the local authority who provided us

with a joiner to help us to break into properties

if we couldn't get in,

in the fear that there might be a body there.

But at the same time we had another team of officers

trying to trace his family background

and his family relations

and other people that he may well have been in contact.

- NARRATOR: Detective Sergeant Richard Venables

was part of the team investigating Arkwright's

background.

- So, I was actually tasked, with my local knowledge in mind,

to look at Arkwright's family, to try and build up

a picture of the guy in custody, who had allegedly

committed these horrific murders.

- NARRATOR: Through his inquiries Richard learned

that Arkwright's grandfather, a 68-year-old Lithuanian

gentleman named Stanislav Puidokas, lived with his partner

Elsa Konradaite in nearby Mexborough.

- We made several visits to that house from about

Tuesday the 30th of August, went once, twice a day.

We didn't get any [unintelligible].

- NARRATOR: By Friday, September the 2nd, the police

still hadn't managed to speak to the couple, but neighbors

had noticed normal activity at the house.

The bottles of milk left on the doorstep had been taken in

each day.

- DR. YARDLEY: They assumed that either the grandfather or Elsa

were collecting it and taking it into the house, but actually

the milkman was going by later on in the day, noticing

that it hadn't been taken in and he was taking it away.

- MICHAEL: So that meant that we knew there had been no activity

in that house and so we feared for the safety

of his grandfather.

- NARRATOR: On the Friday afternoon Richard paid

a final visit to the house in Mexborough.

When yet again there was no response he had no option

but to break in.

- I noticed that the upstairs window of the front bedroom

was open.

I needed to source something to get up there

so the next-door neighbor, he loaned me his ladder.

When I looked through the window and I saw the untidy

ransacking of the bedroom, I knew there was a problem.

- NARRATOR: The scene was reminiscent of many burglaries

they'd seen before.

And so Richard and his colleague made their way

through the window and into the bedroom.

- And when I got into that room,

I've smelled death before, many times,

and I knew the house had got the smell of death.

What I was gonna be confronted by I didn't know.

And that's when the heart started to quicken.

- NARRATOR: After a search of the upstairs room revealed

nothing but ransacked belongings

Richard prepared himself to go down the stairs.

- RICHARD: If I just asked you to transport yourself into

this position: you're an investigator, you've been

briefed as to what this guy's allegedly done,

he's disemboweled a guy, he's stabbed him 250 times,

he's stabbed another disabled guy 70 times,

he sliced his body open, he rammed a crutch up that body,

and then all of a sudden you know you're gonna discover

this guy's work.

I was frightened, no two words about it.

And I said to my colleague,

"You know what we're gonna find."

And he said, "Yes, Sarge." He says, "I know."

And I said, "Remember the pictures,

you have to brace yourself for this."

We walked down the stairs together and as we got

to the spot where the landing and the bannister

opened up sufficiently, I leaned forward

and I looked back towards the kitchen.

The old lady was laid in the kitchen door and I saw

the axe protruding from her head; clearly she was dead.

- NARRATOR: The body was that of 72-year-old

Elsa Konradaite, Arkwright's step-grandmother.

She'd been ironing on the kitchen table

when she was attacked.

- She's struck in the head with an axe but there's none

of the excess that's shown with the other victims,

it's not the sort of clear message that he's trying

to send with the others, it's simply getting rid

of a problem.

- RICHARD: My next consideration was, "Where is Grandad?"

And Grandad wasn't there but I had an idea where he was,

because as part of our investigation that week,

I'd been told by locals that Grandad had an allotment.

- MICHAEL: The allotment was locked,

the allotment shed was locked,

it was quite a substantial home-build.

His grandfather had been a miner and it was a really

well-made piece of equipment.

And we had to open that first.

- NARRATOR: Once they'd broken through the door,

Michael and his team made yet another gruesome discovery.

- MICHAEL: Inside the she itself was--was a workshop, really.

And Arkwright's grandfather was jammed against

the legs of this workbench and again,

he'd been very savagely attacked.

- DR. HAMILTON: Arkwright stabbed him, first of all,

he stabbed him with such force he severed the spinal cord,

that in itself is an incredible level of violence.

That wasn't enough for him, he then strikes him with an axe,

almost certainly when he's paralyzed and unable

to respond, and with a large heavy hammer.

So this is not just killing,

this is sheer needless brutality.

- NARRATOR: Later Arkwright would tell investigators

that he'd killed his grandfather partly because of the rumors

that he may actually be his father.

Rumors that had tainted his whole life.

And it perhaps gives a clue as to why he would exercise

such extreme brutality on the old man.

- This was much more violence than was needed

to end his grandfather's life, so these are these feelings

of shame, of humiliation, of rage

really coming to the surface.

And I think it's, it's a way of kind of retaliating,

it's a way of taking back power.

- Although Arkwright was obviously the prime suspect,

you take all the right steps to make sure that you

gather all the scientific material that you can gather.

- NARRATOR: As crime scene investigators

meticulously gathered evidence,

21-year-old Anthony Arkwright

remained in police custody

at Rawmarsh Police Station charged with murdering

four people, including his own grandparents.

Although he was confident they had identified

the serial killer, Detective Superintendent Michael Burdis

knew that proving the case might not be that simple.

- One of the problems that we had was that Arkwright

had a right to be in some of the premises,

the grandfather's house, the grandfather's allotment shed,

so any traces of fingerprints or DNA

could have been legitimately there and so it didn't really

provide us with, with tangible evidence.

So it was a matter of proving that Arkwright had actually

committed the murder rather than merely being

present at the scene.

What did give us evidence was the fact that there were

items that were stolen from those premises.

- NARRATOR: In particular, one item seized when

Arkwright was first arrested for the burglary

at Raymond Ford's flat now became very significant.

- The pocket watch that was found in his flat,

that we believed originally had come from Raymond Ford,

was actually his grandfather's.

- NARRATOR: With difficulties gathering evidence

conclusively linking Arkwright to some of the murders,

Michael knew that what they really needed

was a confession.

However, despite already having spent several days

in the interview room being questioned about

Marcus and Raymond, Arkwright had refused

to give up any information.

- MICHAEL: He refused to answer questions; he did talk,

but he wasn't answering questions that were rational

and wasn't giving responsible answers to anything

that we were asking him.

- NARRATOR: When he learned that the bodies

of his grandparents, Stanislav and Elsa,

had been found, and another two murder charges

were to be brought against him, Arkwright made

an unusual request.

- He asked if he could be interviewed on tape.

Now, we weren't using tape recordered interviews

in those days but we were about to start the process,

so we decided to go ahead and hope that Arkwright

would then find the facility useful for him

and would be able to talk to us.

Didn't work quite like that, because he merely enjoyed

the experience and rambling on tape about horror films

that he'd watched and experiences that he'd tried

to relive himself but none of it was a response

to the questions about the murders.

So I put a stop to that.

- NARRATOR: Michael Burdis was getting tired of Arkwright

stringing his officers along.

Later that evening, Arkwright was fetched from the cells

and the Detective Superintendent himself

started the tape in the interview room.

- I asked him questions, he didn't respond at all,

I continually asked him if he would identify his name

for the purposes of the tape

and he didn't respond to that.

I asked him questions about his family,

he didn't respond, he never spoke at all.

So then I sweeped the tape off and I came out

of the interview room quite frustrated, and about

five minutes later the solicitor came down the corridor

and said that, "He wants to speak to you."

So I refused to go through the scenario again.

But the solicitor really was very persuasive

and said, "I think he does want to talk to you."

So I went back into the interview room.

As I was setting the machine up again he sang a little song,

something like, "Da-dee-da dee-da."

And I said, "Strangers in the night."

And he said, "You've named that tune, you won,

I'll speak to you."

- GEOFFREY: And then of cours,e the reality begins to pour out

of Arkwright.

Because in a period of just 56 hours he's brutally killed,

and you cannot say more strongly, brutally,

savagely dispatched four people.

- MICHAEL: And he then went on to make a full confession

of the murder of Raymond Ford and Marcus Law.

And then started to speak about his grandfather

and the tape ran out.

- NARRATOR: He'd had to endure more of Arkwright's games,

but Michael had managed to get confessions

for two of the murders.

The following morning the interview resumed,

and Michael hoped Arkwright would also confess to killing

his grandfather and Elsa.

- MICHAEL: He didn't have a problem reacting

to the grandfather's murder,

they'd argued over the fact that they did not rebuild

this motorcycle he was supposed to be working on.

And he felt justified in committing

that particular crime.

- NARRATOR: He also began to speak about something

that had haunted him since he was a child.

The local folklore that his grandfather

was in fact his father.

- Whether Arkwright ever believed that to be the case,

it wasn't true, it's certain that he wasn't the father

of Arkwright.

But Arkwright did, did give that information and imply

that that was maybe why he murdered his grandfather.

- NARRATOR: When it came to talking about Elsa's murder,

however, Arkwright's whole demeanor changed.

- His voice went particularly quiet, he was talking about

darkness and light, black and white,

he was black and Elsa was white.

And the fact that Elsa was Lithuanian like his grandfather

and didn't speak any English, he was concerned that

she didn't understand the language and he felt

that he was doing the right thing by taking her life.

- Her killing, it wasn't as violent as the other murders

in this killing spree, which suggests to me that

she wasn't part of this kind of project of vengeance,

she hadn't done anything to, in his mind,

justify or deserved the kind of violence that he enacted

on other people.

So she was literally a barrier that had to be removed.

- NARRATOR: Arkwright revealed that his killing spree

had started on Friday the 26th of August,

the day he was fired from his job at the scrapyard.

- GEOFFREY: And in the wake of that firing, he set off

on a 56-hour killing spree which would leave

four people dead.

- NARRATOR: The victims were found in the opposite

order to that in which they'd been killed.

His grandfather might have been the last to be discovered

but he was Arkwright's first murder.

For his neighbor Neil Hurst, this was a shocking revelation.

It meant that Arkwright had already killed at least

two people by the time he was trying to get into

Neil's flat in the early hours of Sunday, the 28th of August.

It put a different perspective on Arkwright's motive

for the visit.

- I reckon if I'd have answered that door,

I would have been killed that night me self.

Definitely, if I'd have answered the door to him.

I think he would have to do what he could and

[unintelligible] all in one night, so yeah, I think

he'd have took my life if I'd have answered that door.

- NARRATOR: In July 1989, Anthony Arkwright appeared

at Sheffield Crown Court, he was charged with

four counts of murder.

- At the trial, Arkwright really is the director and star

of his own movie.

- MICHAEL: He was most flamboyant, he appeared wearing

a jacket and a bowtie in court and he waved

at the journalists and waved at people.

- GEOFFREY: If you look at pictures of him at the time,

you see the face of a man who's almost sneering at the camera.

As if, "Look what I've done, look at me, I'm so clever."

He wasn't at all clever.

- Our understanding, and the understanding of the judge,

was he was pleading guilty to all four murders.

It was quite the bizarre event because

when he was arraigned before the judge and the clerk

of the court put the charges to him he pleaded not guilty

to everything.

Which took everybody by surprise,

including his own barristers.

- NARRATOR: The hearing was adjourned whilst

his defense team attempted to find out the reasoning

behind the last-minute change in plea.

Eventually, Arkwright returned to the court

on the understanding that he was permitted to read a poem

that he'd written.

- DR. YARDLEY: There's a very clear reason why he does this,

'cause he's enjoying the attention, he's enjoying

the notoriety, and a poem is something that's

quite unique, it's something that is quite unusual.

He knows that this is something that the media

will pick up on, something that he will be remembered by.

- MICHAEL: Wasn't really a poem, it was just a rambling

of words and after a few minutes the judge said,

"No, I think we've had enough, and we'll stop the trial there.

How do you plead to these charges?"

And he pleaded to the three charges murder against

Raymond Ford, Marcus Law, and Stanislav Puidokis,

and not guilty to the murder of Elsa Konradaite.

- NARRATOR: The judge ordered Elsa's killing

to remain on file and on the 12th of July, 1989,

Arkwright was sentenced for the other three murders.

- GEOFFREY: The judge describes him as an evil fantasist

and calls the crimes grotesque sadism.

It's impossible not to agree with him.

He sentences Arkwright to life with a minimum term

of 25 years.

- NARRATOR: In 1990, his case was reviewed

by the Home Secretary, who imposed a whole life tariff.

Arkwright is the youngest person ever to have received

this term in the UK and has been condemned to die

in prison.

- Life would mean life as far as he was concerned,

and I think that that's a proper sentence.

I don't think this is a safe man to ever allow

out on the street again.

- His goal was not just to kill and to destroy

and to release all of the anger and rage he carried

with him his whole life, but he wanted to be infamous.

- RICHARD: I have to say that the discovery of both bodies,

really, was probably the most horrific sight

I've ever seen.

And remains the worst injuries I've ever seen that

a human can deliberately inflict upon another human.

- GEOFFREY: Arkwright took exceptional pride in killing

in the most grotesque way.

To take someone's life is bad enough but to then

to destroy what remains of their body either by...

eviscerating it or by gouging the eyes out

or by stabbing it several hundred times,

these are the acts of a man who clearly deserves

to be called evil.

- NARRATOR: Arkwright grew up harboring

a vendetta against his own family, he cared only

for himself and would do whatever he wanted

to those he deemed less worthy.

He was a habitual criminal who craved recognition.

And by engaging in a killing spree fueled by rage

and revenge, was determined to emerge infamous.

He slaughtered his grandparents before torturing

and mutilating two vulnerable neighbors,

making Anthony Arkwright one of the world's most evil killers.

- ♪

♪♪

- [swishing sound]