All language subtitles for WMEK S04E19 - Anthony Arkwright

Over the August bank holiday weekend in
1988, the mining village of Wath-upon-Durn

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 them in his nostrils,
even in his eyes, his ears,

mouth, and he just looked like
a birthday cake with candles in.

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.

The killer was 21-year-old Anthony
Arkwright.

Over the coming days, more
bodies would be discovered in

similarly high-rise buildings
in horrific circumstances.

He didn't just kill his victims.

He completely obliterated
them, humiliated

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

If anything, he quite enjoyed it.

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.

In less than a week, four victims were
discovered.

Anthony Arkwright had been revealed as one
of the world's most evil killers.

MUSIC

MUSIC August 1988, Wath-upon-Durn,
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.

MUSIC 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 it's possible.

There's virtually no organ left in his
body.

Raymond's entrails are all around him.

They're in the bathroom, they're in the
bedroom, and they're in the hallway.

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, you know, the second body

were found while they were in custody.

That gave credence to, we've got a madman
running those at Walth.

So everybody's thinking, you know,
it's not him, then.

You know, it's got to be somebody else.

There was more to come.

Within days, two further
victims were discovered,

including Arkwright's own
grandfather, Stanislava Podorkas.

Former Detective Sergeant Richard Venables
grew up in the village and remembers how

inconceivable it was that these horrific
crimes had happened there.

Walth on Dern, 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
Walth on Dern 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 coming from
the outside.

It's the evil within.

This killer's story begins on the 24th of
March, 1967.

Anthony Richard
Arkwright was born in a row

house in Walth upon
Dern in South Yorkshire.

The son of a milkman,
he was the middle child of

five siblings, and his
family life was dysfunctional.

From a very early age.

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, 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.

Arkwright struggled at school and was
teased.

He 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.

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.

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 undercutting, this

recurrence of rage, I think,
that's developing in him.

The resentment that young Anthony
Arkwright harbored for his family

smoldered 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
-year-old.

He was a petty thief and we were forever
locking him up, when we were a juvenile.

Over the coming years, he
became obsessed with weapons

and had a reputation for
being a habitual troublemaker.

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.

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 him.

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.

By the summer of 1988, the 21-year-old was
working at a scrap metal merchant's in

Mexborough and living in
nearby Wath-upon -Dern

in public housing on
the Denman Road estate.

Neil Hurst was one of his neighbors.

Anthony Arkwright seemed very weird to me.

He looked like a young Clint Eastwood,
and he was very, very frightening.

Kept himself to himself.

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

to have raw look coming
out at the side of his mouth.

He was one of the people that he wanted to
draw attention to himself.

He really loved himself.

Tall, a lot taller than me.

But he'd spiked his hair,
and he bleached the points

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

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
schoolteacher 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 letterbox.

In August 1988, Raymond was burglarized.

Several items had been stolen,
including a microwave oven and a lighter.

And a mental clock.

He reported it to the local police.

One of the second-hand dealers came up to
the police station and mentioned that he'd

bought a microwave oven from Tony Arkwright,
given his name, and he paid 20 pound.

So then it was decided that Arkwright was
going to be arrested.

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 it wasn't, it wasn't right
that it 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.

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 says, oh, he'll be out now, he'll
be on, going round pubs, he's a drunk.

So, you know, I said, well, I'll come
back.

And I left it at that.

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 was coming down the
steps, and Tony approached

me, and he said,
are you in art tonight?

And I just said, yeah.

He said, do you mind if I come with you?

Well, I thought, it's never done out wrong
to me.

You know what I mean?

It might be a chance to get to work.

I wanted to know him a bit better.

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 engine, and then Marcus came in
front of me in his wheelchair,

shouting, where are you going?

And I says, get out of the road,
Marcus.

We're going out.

And then all I heard next from back at car
was, you know what Tony Allwright said?

I'm going to kill that bastard.

And then that's when I thought,
wow.

I said, no.

He's only having a laugh.

He says, I'm going to 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.

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 myself at
that time.

And I'm just lucky that we managed to get
home and he got out of my 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 window.

I'm thinking, what's he going to do?

Is this ticking bomb now going off?

What's he done that for?

All I needed to know was, what's he going
to do?

I didn't need to be there.

And I said to my cousin, let's go.

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 him.

And Arkwright wanted that power back.

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.

Not only did Arkwright kill Raymond 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.

The force that Arkwright
used to stab Raymond was so

great that several of the
knives actually broke into.

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 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.

Shortly afterwards, Neil Hurst was woken
by loud banging.

Arkwright, having washed off Raymond's
blood, was pounding on his door.

I heard some banging at the door.

And when I looked through the people,
they were taunting.

I just didn't answer it.

And I went in to me.

Because the bedroom's open door.

Because he went, it was fucking banging.

I just said, it's Tony from downstairs.

Just leave it.

You can't get in.

That's what last we heard.

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,
thinking, catch him before the pub's open.

And still no reply.

And still, Arkwright comes out.

And he says, well, he'll be out of it now.

He'll have been drinking all day.

And he'll be out of it.

You'll not get him.

And I'll keep coming back.

I did that all evening.

Knowing that the files
got to be in on the Monday

morning, I was desperate
to try to get this statement.

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

It was strange.

It was like he was waiting for me.

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.

And so that was what caused the argument
later on in the night.

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.

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 an utterly depraved manner,

Arkwright attacks Marcus relentlessly.

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.

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 that Arkwright

felt over the years onto other
people, the neighbor being one.

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.

Marcus's distraught mother ran to the
police station.

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

He was laid out on the floor.

All his chest cavity were open.

There was a crutch through his body,
sticking.

It was actually sticking up.

There was blood all over the place.

And then he got cigarettes stuck in every
orifice in his face.

He got them in his nostrils, even in his
eyes, his ears, mouth.

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

The quiet mining village
of Wath-upon-Durn now

had a major murder
investigation on its hands.

Detective Superintendent Michael Burdis
was caught.

He was called in.

It was Bank Holiday Monday,
and I was at home gardening

and got a call to attend the
scene of a murder at Wath.

As Michael made his way to
Wath Police Station, an officer

leaving Marcus's bungalow
saw Arkwright in the street.

And they expected Arkwright to speak to
him because they were on good terms and

they spoke to each other whenever they
met.

Arkwright crossed the road away from him,
and Humphreys was very suspicious of that,

because he was very unusual.

So called him across and
decided that he would invite

him back to the police station
so they could have a chat.

When Michael arrived, Arkwright was
already in the interview room.

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 had no reason to really suspect
Arkwright of any particular crime.

Except that he'd ignored this particular
detective, which was unusual.

Investigations into Marcus's 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.

They sent to her words to the effect,
it's a pity about Marcus.

And they'd 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.

And so it was quite clear that Arkwright
must be a prime suspect for that crime.

Clearly, Arkwright had
inside information, and

he was arrested on
suspicion of Marcus's murder.

Arkwright wasn't admitting that offense.

Arkwright was merely rambling 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, searches of the area, the post

-mortem and the rest of the material that
goes on with the major crime investigation.

On Wednesday, the 31st of August,
as officers continued to speak to

residents, David Winter's thoughts
returned 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 scene and
we could see a bottle that went from the

window right to the back of the room,
like a slope.

And his chair was in front of the TV.

Big piles of newspapers all over the
place.

It wasn't that in his chair, but the
television were on.

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

David made his way in through the broken
window.

It was immediately obvious that something
was amiss.

I could just see blood all over the wall.

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, says, I can't let you
in.

There's no keys.

But I'm talking to him.

He says, well, what's it look like?

I said, well, it's carnage in here.

There's blood everywhere.

Blood, it's dried up floor.

So is he in there?

I'll have another look.

So then I looked through into a bedroom.

And behind the door was, um, his body.

But it was 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.

Whilst the police were
making their grisly 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.

Two of the detectives who had
been talking to him were sitting

in a 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 alarm in
those 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.

He didn't want to act
like the ordinary criminal,

the ordinary murderer who
goes there and 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.

The case had just been blown wide open.

The police now believe 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.

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.

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.

Through his inquiries, Richard learned
that Arkwright's grandfather, a 68-year

-old Lithuanian gentleman
named Stanisława Podorkas, lived

with his partner, Elsa
Konraditi, 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 joy.

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.

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.

So that meant that we knew that there'd
been no activity at that house,

and so we feared for the safety of his
grandfather.

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.

The scene was reminiscent of many
burglaries they'd seen before,

and so Richard and his colleague made their
way through the window into the bedroom.

And when I got into that room,
I 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
quiver.

After a search of the upstairs room
revealed nothing but ransacked belongings,

Richard prepared himself to go down the
stairs.

If I just ask 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's sliced his body open.

He's rammed a crutch up the 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 banister 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.

The body was that of 72-year-old Elsa
Conraditi, 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.

My next consideration was, where is
granddad?

And granddad 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
granddad had an allotment.

The allotment was locked.

The allotment shed was locked.

It was quite a substantial area.

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.

Once they'd broken
through the door, Michael and

his team made yet another
gruesome discovery.

Inside the shed itself was a
workshop, really, and Arkwright's

grandfather was jammed
against the legs of this workbench.

And again, he'd been very savagely
attacked.

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.

Later, Arkwright would die.

He 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.

As crime scene investigators meticulously
gathered evidence, 21-year-old Anthony

Arkwright remained in police custody at
Roarmarsh 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 literally legitimately there,

and so it didn't really provide us 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.

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 there,
that we found in his flat, that we

believed originally had come from Raymond
Ford, was actually his grandfather's.

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.

He refused to answer questions.

He did talk, but he wasn't answering
questions that were rational and wasn't

giving him responsible answers to anything
that we were asking him.

When he learned that the bodies of his
grandparents, Dennis Laver 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.

We weren't doing tape-recorded interviews
in those days.

But we were about to start the process,
so we decided to go ahead in the hope that

Arkwright would then
find the facility useful

for him and would
be able to talk to us.

It 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
question, to the questions about the murders.

And so I put a stop to that.

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 I switched 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, I sang

a little song, something
like, da-da-da-da-da.

And I said, Strangers in the Night.

And he said, you've named that tune in
one.

I'll speak to you.

And then, of course, 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.

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.

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.

Well, he didn't tell me anything.

I don't have a problem reacting to the
grandfather's murder.

They'd argued over the
fact that they'd not rebuilt

this motorcycle they were
supposed to be working on.

And he felt justified in committing that
particular crime.

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, um...

it wasn't true.

It certainly wasn't the father of
Arkwright.

But Arkwright did give that information
and imply that that was maybe why he'd

murdered his grandfather.

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 her 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 deserve the kind

of violence that he
enacted on other people.

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

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.

And in the wake of that firing,
he set off on a 56-hour killing spree,

which would leave four people dead.

The victims were found dead 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 had answered that door,
I would have been killed that night

myself, definitely, if I had answered the
door to him.

I think he would have
had to do what he could

do and try being a
bigger hero in one night.

So, yeah, I think it would have took my
life if I had answered that door.

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.

He was most flamboyant.

He appeared wearing a
jacket and a bow tie in court,

and he waved at the
journalists and waved at people.

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 that he

was pleading guilty to all four
murders, it was quite obvious.

It was a 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.

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.

I think that's the reason why he does
this, because 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.

It 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 Khodakas, and not guilty to
the murder of Elsa Conradetti.

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.

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.

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... 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.

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.

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.

Arkwright grew up harbouring a vendetta
against the law.

He didn't care for 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 as infamous.

He slaughtered his grandparents before
torturing and mutilating two vulnerable

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