The Road to Murder

Why Driving is the Occupation of Choice for Britain's Serial Killers

Lynes, Adam, Wilson, David

• Publisher: Waterside Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781909976375
• eBook ISBN: 9781910979228
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Why do serial killers gravitate towards certain kinds of occupation? Why do they pursue certain types of victim? How do they leave the radar and remain hidden? Through his wide knowledge of the topic honed at one of Britain's leading centres for criminological studies, Adam Lynes demonstrates how theory, practice, profiling and behaviour intertwine to identify the kind of people we should fear (and especially if we are vulnerable to predators). The book also looks at those personality-types most likely to become serial killers whilst hiding in plain sight. From Britain's serial killing studies centre of excellence. Looks in depth at eight of Britain's serial killer drivers, dealing with some of the most notorious crimes of modern times. A fresh and uniquely interesting perspective. Demonstrates the links between mobility, transience, recognisance, predatory behaviour and acting out murderous fantasies.

Prologue

The Lorry Driver Hidden in Plain Sight

Oh, it’s a wonderful invention you can’t deny it … People travel fast and know more … But wild beasts are still wild beasts, and however much they go on inventing still better machines, there will be wild beasts underneath just the same.

Emile Zola, Le Bête Humaine (1890; Penguin Classics Edition, 1977)

On 30 October 1975 a woman from the Chapeltown district of Leeds, Wilma McCann, was found murdered. It was determined by police that McCann, who was known to offer sexual services for money (Newton, 2006), was hit twice with a hammer prior to being stabbed 15 times in the abdomen, chest and neck (Bilton, 2003). Traces of semen were also found on her underwear (Keppel and Birnes, 2003), which suggested a sexual motive. Despite a widespread inquiry, which involved over 150 police officers and consisted of 11,000 interviews, no culprit was identified.

This murder would, unfortunately, not be an isolated incident and the following year 42-year-old Emily Jackson was found murdered in that city. Like Wilma, Emily was exchanging sexual services for money due to financial difficulties (Bilton, 2003), and was found with 51 puncture wounds. Yet again a potential suspect was not identified, with the killer free to strike again the following year.

With the police seemingly unable to identify the individual responsible for these murders, the ever-elusive perpetrator appeared to be gaining more confidence, and in 1977 would go on to murder four women. Twenty-eight-year-old Irene Richardson, 32-year-old Patricia Atkinson, 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald, and 20-year-old Jean Jordan all of whom were murdered within the same year. Each shared similar lacerations and signs of blunt force trauma to the head. Of these victims, three were known sex workers, but with 16-year-old Jayne having just left school and working as a shop assistant. The murder of Jayne lead to heightened public anxiety surrounding the investigation, with the fear that any woman, not just sex workers, were now potential targets for this killer who was no closer to being apprehended.

The following year 21-year-old Yvonne Pearson, a sex worker, was found three months after being murdered due to the killer hiding her body under a discarded sofa (Wier, 2011). Two more women were murdered in 1978, 18-year-old Helen Rytka and 40-year-old Vera Millward. Both were sex workers and both were bludgeoned and stabbed to death (Bilton, 2003). It was almost a year before the killer claimed his next victim, 19-year-old Josephine Whitaker, a bank clerk who was attacked whilst she was on her way home (Wilson, 2007). The perpetrator’s next murder, that of 20-year-old university student Barbara Leach, would mark his third murder of a woman who did not work as a sex worker and, as a consequence, public outcry in relation to the failures of the investigation reached fever pitch. Despite the public uproar, though, it would take the authorities another year before finally apprehending the person responsible, who always appeared to be a step ahead of the authorities.

Nineteen-eighty-one would prove to be the year that the evasive killer was identified but not before he claimed the lives of two more women. 47-year-old Marguerite Walls and 20-year-old Jacqueline Hill, both from respectable backgrounds, with Marguerite working as a civil servant and Jacqueline studying English at university (Bilton, 2003) who were found murdered and yet again displayed similar lacerations, puncture wounds, and blunt force trauma to their heads. The killer may have continued to kill others if it hadn’t had been for one eventful winter’s night.

On 2 January 1981, in Sheffield, the police pulled over 34-year-old Peter Sutcliffe, who happened to have 24-year-old sex worker Olivia Reivers in the passenger seat. The police, upon further inspection, discovered that the car was fitted with false number plates — as a result Sutcliffe was arrested. The next day police returned to the scene of the arrest and discovered a knife, hammer and rope he had discarded when he temporarily left their presence upon telling them he needed the toilet. Sutcliffe was questioned for two days before finally admitting that he was the “Yorkshire Ripper” — a label the press had given to the then unidentified perpetrator. At long last the killer who had evaded the police for five long years had been caught. Following from this, Sutcliffe was convicted of the murder of 13 women, along with attacks on seven others in the years between 1975–1980 (Wilson, 2007, p. 77). During this time it also became apparent that he in fact committed all of his crimes with the aid of transport.

As it turned out, Sutcliffe not only drove a variety of cars in order to carry out his crimes, but he also appeared to engage in a series of professions that would result in him being surrounded by mechanics and vehicles (Bilton, 2003). Sutcliffe, who worked at a Water Board (Ibid, p. 730), and as a lorry driver (p. 710) not only appeared to consciously chose jobs that required someone who was practical, conforming, and who would be working with objects, but for whom the work would also be a legitimate way of being alone and away from outside interference. When this ability to be alone with his thoughts and fantasies was interrupted, Sutcliffe stated during his police interviews that he was “deeply upset” (p. 730). During one of these interviews, he explained how he couldn’t “concentrate at work” due to working with an assistant who “didn’t fully understand the mechanics of the job”. As a result Sutcliffe was demoted and “got a steady number at the waterworks base at Gilstead”. What is interesting here is that he did not appear to be emotionally upset by the fact that he was demoted and ultimately lost responsibility over other individuals. It could be argued that due to the pressures of working with others, especially those with less experience than him, Sutcliffe was losing the freedom that originally attracted him to the job. Sutcliffe being demoted and his choice of the word “steady” to describe his new position implies a sense of renewed freedom and a job he feels comfortable in doing. As a consequence of these two factors, Sutcliffe was again able to return to his private world and his fantasies. During his time at the Water Board as a mechanic, and later a lorry driver, both of these jobs required Sutcliffe to constantly be around vehicles, with a shift between working on them as a mechanic to being inside them as a driver. This gives a psychological insight into the significance of vehicles for Sutcliffe, further reinforced by his comments in the formal statement about talking to one of his victims prior to killing her: “I asked if she had considered learning to drive I think she said she rode a horse and that it was a satisfactory form of transport” (p. 715). Comments such as these, though seemingly irrelevant, depict just how much driving meant to Sutcliffe and its role in shaping his occupational choice.

While the psychological motivations as to why he chose these types of professions have become clearer, it was not until he began attacking women that he realised the instrumental advantages of having the type of profession that he had. The most prominent advantage for Sutcliffe was that it offered him a legitimate reason for being in the location in which the ripper was picking up his victims (p. 743). Sutcliffe also later became aware of the advantage of using a different vehicle for work and a different vehicle while off-work, stating in his formal statement that:

“One day I had to make a delivery in Huddersfield in the afternoon. I noticed a few girls plying for trade near the market area. Two or three nights later I decided to pay them a visit” (p. 710).

For Sutcliffe, his occupation not only gave him a valid reason to be in the location, but also camouflage while he scouted the area, looking for potential victims. With access to both his work vehicle and own car, he was capable of confusing both witnesses and police with visits to the red light district masked behind different vehicles. The implementation of a work lorry would also devalue his status as a potential suspect due to the supposed nature of his visit into the area.

Through this brief overview of Sutcliffe’s crimes, it is clear that his occupation played a significant role in the commission of his crimes at both an instrumental and psychological level, but what of other British serial murderers? Are there others that held similar forms of occupation? If so, did they use their job as a means to commit their murders in the same vein as Sutcliffe? Are there also other forms of employment that such offenders also held? And did these other occupations hold the same significance to these individuals in relation to their offending as it did for Sutcliffe? These are just some of the questions this book seeks to answer.

Chapter One

Introduction

Serial killers, like society in general, have become geographically more mobile. Unlike their counterparts in earlier years, some serial murderers now travel around the country, leaving a trail of human carnage.

Jack Levin and James Alan Fox, Serial Killers, Like Society in General (1985, Capo Press)

What is the significance of occupational choice or, more specifically, driving as an occupation, for serial murderers? This book is designed to explore, with reference to pre-existing scholarly work on serial murder and relevant criminological theory, this question, and provide some answers. Specifically, it seeks to uncover how these serial murderers use these occupations to assist them in committing their offences. Through a fusion of a criminological and psychological theoretical framework, the book attempts to ascertain if and how these offenders’ thoughts and fantasies of committing murder may have influenced their career choices or, alternatively, if it was the “nature” of their occupations that ignited and then fuelled their need to offend. The answers to these questions will introduce other issues regarding the significance of occupational choice, not only for serial murderers but for other types of offenders. At a more instrumental level, the book seeks to illuminate how the police have attempted to tackle these particular transient offenders with regard to their identification and apprehension.

Both criminologists and psychologists have been noticeably silent about the topic of driving, and more specifically occupational choices which involve driving, with regard to its potential impact on serial murder. Such a lack of scholarly work within this field of study is unusual, as the phenomenon of serial murder has been heavily researched (Gibson, 2006). Serial murder has been a topic of discussion and debate for a variety of academic fields and organizations. At present, the focus appears to be on issues such as the offender’s motivations and, more recently, the possible influence of society with regard to creating the suitable conditions that serial murderers are more likely to operate in (Wilson, 2009). These two opposing theoretical approaches have become known as the “medical-psychological” tradition and the “structural tradition”. Both of these models are discussed in Chapter Two.

Separating Myth from Reality

These diverse and often conflicting approaches to the phenomenon of serial murder have resulted in an interest in the topic that far exceeds its scale and has generated many academic articles, “True Crime” books, and movies (Seltzer, 1998). Through this exposure by both academia and the media, serial murderers have, in many ways, become immortalised and, as a result, dehumanised to the point in which we no longer recognise them. They have become “travellers from another time and space” (Doris, 2010, p. 9). This fascination with and ultimate de...

Table of contents

• Copyright and publication details
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• The Lorry Driver Hidden in Plain Sight
• A Look to the Future: Hunting on the “Technological Highway”
• References
• Index