Killers: Behind the Myth (2013–2015): Season 2, Episode 5 - The Freeway Killer - full transcript
William Bonin was the first man in California to be executed by lethal injection. His death in 1996 followed a conviction for the murder of 21 boys aged between 12 and 19 in just one frenzied year. He is estimated to have killed as many as double that. A truck driver and son of a bingo-addicted, alcoholic mother and compulsive gambling father, he was incarcerated in juvenile detention at a young age where he suffered his first rape. On his release he began molesting young boys - a crime that would see him imprisoned and consigned to a mental institution. He met a part-time magician, Vernon Butts, and struck up a deadly friendship that would see them recruit a small gang of accomplices and go on to rape and murder lone boys, often hitch-hiking in the southern Californian sunshine. His victims were attacked in the back of his van, named by investigators as "the Death Wagon" and dumped by the side of the freeway, earning him the title; "The Freeway Killer".
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NARRATOR: The most notoriouskillers hide in plain sight.
Free to kill and kill again.
But most are not the criminalmasterminds of fiction.
In their minds, theycommit the perfect murder.
In reality, it is their foolishmistakes that get them caught.
Bradford, England, May, 2010.
A caretaker in a
block of flats sits
down to check the week's CCTV.
Amidst the comings and
goings of the residents
he sees something strange.
The caretaker,
I think, regularly
reviewed silent CCTV
footage on the look
out for petty
crimes in the block,
is anybody vandalizing thefire extinguishers or whatever?
And comes across thishorrendous piece of footage.
NARRATOR: At half past
2:00 in the morning,
a young woman is led into theflat by one of the residents.
Three minutes later, sheemerges running for her life.
CYRIL DIXON: When he playedthat footage back slowly,
he realized that a
young woman was fleeing
the flat of one of his tenants.
NARRATOR: Journalist CyrilDixon is fascinated by the case.
CYRIL DIXON: He knew thattenant by the name of Steve.
He watched as this man,Steve, got hold of this woman,
fought with her,
strike her physically.
NARRATOR: The victim
lies immobilized.
Then the assailant
produces a weapon.
For author Mark
Billingham what comes
next ranks as one of
the strangest moments
in the history of crime.
He, very calmly goes afterher and shoots her twice
in the head with a crossbow.
NARRATOR: He drags her limpbody back towards his tiny flat.
MARK BILLINGHAM: Then he
realizes he's on camera.
There's that moment when hegoes, ah, oh, well, the game's
up, now into performance mode.
When he gives the
finger to the camera,
when he holds up the crossbow,when he basically looks
at that camera and says, hereI am, I'm from your nightmares,
come and get me.
NARRATOR: The caretaker
alerts his manager.
Within hours the police
are on the scene.
CYRIL DIXON: When the policearrived, they come heavily
armed expecting massive
resistance by a virtue
of what's been seen on theCCTV, this man has been
the public enemy number one.
MARK BILLINGHAM:
And when they do
come knocking, rather
violently, on the door,
he apparently says, I'm in here.
He goes, come and get me.
He makes no attempt to run.
No attempt to do anything.
NARRATOR: The
shocking CCTV footage
comes straight out of the blue.
Although there have been
missing person reports,
the police do not
know that there
was a killer on the loose.
They do not even know whetherthe woman in the video
is dead or alive.
The next day, a
member of the public
reports a horrificdiscovery in the river Aire
on the outskirts of Bradford.
CYRIL DIXON: A
member of the public,
who was walking his dog,
saw something floating
in the water.
He wondered what it was.
I think it was in a rucksack.
He opens this rucksack to finda head staring back at him.
And, of course, it didn'trequire much detective work
to work out that the
head in the river
was connected to
the CCTV footage.
NARRATOR: The head
from the river
is swiftly identified
through dental records.
It belongs to a young womannamed Suzanne Blamires.
Blamires had a happy
middle class childhood,
but the death of her fathersaw her descend into alcoholism
and drug addiction.
She ends up prostituting herselfon the streets of Bradford.
She knew the man who appearsto attack her in the video.
Stephen Griffiths has ahigh profile on the street.
Bradford resident, poet JoolzDenby, saw him around the city.
He was a familiar
figure walking around.
Although this is a city,
it's quite a small city.
He was always the guy that waswalking around with a sullen
expression wearing ablack leather trench coat
and his hair slicked back inwhat appeared to be baby oil.
NARRATOR: Although Griffiths
was trying to look cool,
Denby saw a man
who was a misfit.
He looked like an idiot
to be honest with you.
He wasn't the cool goththat you could think, whoa,
he looks interesting.
He was like, oh,
he's a real try hard.
NARRATOR: Griffiths
might have looked
like a mere attention seeker,but it wasn't a game to him.
JOOLZ DENBY: Unfortunately, Ithink that went a lot deeper,
that passionate
desire to be noticed,
than anybody would
have thought possible.
NARRATOR: As the police
begin to delve deeper
into Griffiths private life,they realize the true nature
of his character.
They discover that
Griffiths had been
developing a twisted alter egoon a social networking site.
As well as writing
authoritative accounts
of historic serial
killers, Griffiths
presented a strange newidentity called Ven Pariah.
Ven, being a shortened versionof his first name Stephen,
and Pariah, one that is
despised or rejected.
Through his dark
online pseudonym
he reveals his inner turmoil.
He goes on to
his networking site
and puts this speech, whichis melodramatic to the nth
degree, it's like somethinghe's read, something he's seen.
He talks about himself
as being hatred
tightly wrapped in flesh.
How poor Stephen
tried to control them,
but couldn't, and now
he is finally emerging.
NARRATOR: But this seeminglyharmless online activity
is just the tip of the iceberg.
Griffiths has a violent
and psychotic past.
This propensity for violenceshowed itself very early on.
NARRATOR: For criminalpsychologist, David Holmes,
Griffiths is a fascinating case.
He was diagnosed as apsychopath, which is really
very dangerous in
terms of threat
to others, and also of
a skitzoid character.
NARRATOR: Griffiths
is an enigma.
He appears to prey
on prostitutes,
a group that are
difficult to track,
and that makes them
easy to pick off.
In the video it looks likehe knows what he's doing.
His actions aren't the
work of a newbie killer.
The police need to know
what else he's hiding
and if he has killed any more.
Having seen Griffiths attackingSuzanne Blamires on CCTV
and discovering her
decapitated head,
the police need to
find out how she died
and whether Griffiths hascommitted other crimes.
CYRIL DIXON: As soon asGriffiths was known about,
he was caught.
The difficulty for
the police, I think,
was trying to
discover exactly what
he had done given that he wasn'texactly straight with them.
So tell me, Mr.Griffiths, there's one thing
we're struggling to work out.
He told them a lot
of what he'd done,
but there was no way
they could trust him.
There was no way
they could believe
his story without checking it.
NARRATOR: The police scourhis flat for evidence.
The police then
come and have a look,
probably thinking they'redealing with some nut
case who's got nothing at all.
And then they see what
they say and all hell
breaks loose, essentially.
CYRIL DIXON: Well, firstof all, they found a number
of crossbows, two or three.
Highly dangerous, highlypowerful, capable of firing
bolts at something
like 200 miles an hour.
They found a number of Japanesemartial arts type swords.
They found knives.
They found knuckledusters.
And they found a whole
library full of books
on every possible murder
that's ever taken place.
NARRATOR: But they find no cluesas to Suzanne Blamires fate.
Stephen Griffiths was very,very clean and house proud.
In the bathroom of his flat,he had obviously mounted
a huge cleanup operation.
NARRATOR: If Griffiths disposedof the body in his flat,
he will find it hard to
disguise the evidence.
Forensics expert,
Ray Palmer, knows
just how hard a job it can be.
It's extremely difficultto completely clean
up from dismembering a body.
Much of the deposition of bloodin these circumstances is tiny
and it's easily overlooked.
And it's easily trapped invarious surfaces in which
the dismemberment took place.
NARRATOR: The forensics
team begin their work
to see if they can find out whathappened to Suzanne Blamires.
Even though Griffiths
is under the spotlight,
in interviews and
in court he spins
a dark tale about
what he has been up to
in his tiny flat in Bradford.
A story of up to five morewomen being lured into his flat
who are kept as sex
slaves, viciously
murdered and cannibalized.
A story so utterly grim
and revolting the police
are under pressure to
discover whether or not
Griffiths is a fantasist
or the most grotesque
serial killer of modern times.
As the detectives
back at base begin
to investigate Griffiths
past, they uncover
a truly disturbing story.
Stephen Griffiths is
born into an upwardly
mobile Bradford family in 1969.
But family life breaksdown, his parents separate,
but they still scrimp and saveto send him to private school.
Despite getting a
good start in life,
he begins to reveal
an unusual side.
DAVID HOLMES: People
with skitzoid tendencies
often do look kind of
like a blank slate.
They just don't seem torelate to others, so they
seem fairly harmless,
and sometimes quite cute
looking as children.
But in the case of Griffiths,he was seen by many people
mutilating animals very cruelly.
JOOLZ DENBY: A lot of the timehe felt quite invisible, as
if he didn't count, as
if the child that he was
was of no consequence,
really, to anybody.
And that however
much he shouted,
it was as if he wasshouting inside a glass jar
and nobody could hear him.
NARRATOR: After a lonelybut uneventful childhood,
Griffiths mental statedeteriorates in his late teens.
He was becoming very
frustrated with the kind
of things he could do inlife and where he would get
satisfaction and his abilityto control the situation,
because he was entering intolife that was becoming more
and more uncontrolled
as an adult.
He couldn't relate
to others very well.
NARRATOR: He leaves
home abruptly
and begins living rough.
Then he reveals his dark side.
The first serious
offense which
can be linked to Griffithstook place in 1987 in Leeds.
He'd gone into a shop witha view to shoplifting.
He was spotted by the shopkeeperwho tried to apprehend him,
and Griffith produced
a knife and slashed
this man across the face.
I think those initial
forays into violence
showed him something, he sawwhat that kind of behavior did.
How it terrified people, howit made him feel powerful.
The sight of blood, thesight of flesh being cut,
whatever that did to
him fired something up.
It lit a fuse.
NARRATOR: He's sent
into youth custody
for one and a half years.
CYRIL DIXON: The
act he had committed
in itself was sufficient
to identify him
as a very dangerous young man.
But I think the full dangerspotential of Stephen Griffiths
wasn't realized until
some five years later.
NARRATOR: Griffiths isassessed by psychiatrists.
He is not found to be insane,
but he is a psychopath.
DAVID HOLMES: He was diagnosedas psychopathic, skitzoid,
obsessive, controlling.
He was very aloof and didn'treally emotionally connect.
He was certainly-- had
very little empathy
with normal human beings.
Probably didn't even see
himself as being part
of the human race, which isreally very dangerous in terms
of threat to others.
People start saying,
something very worrying,
very dark about this kid.
CYRIL DIXON: In fact, theysaid he had a personality
disorder, which in itself is nottreatable as a mental illness.
He can't be locked up,
basically, until he's
actually committed a crime.
NARRATOR: And it wouldn't belong before he committed crimes
that would make
slashing a shopkeeper's
face look like child's play.
Griffiths emerges intothe economically depressed
Bradford of the early '90s.
He is unable to get a normaljob due to his criminal record,
but he is bright andfascinated by the human mind.
He enrolls as a student ofpsychology at Bradford College.
Initially, Griffiths isnot an outcast at college.
But he soon earns a
sinister reputation.
In a common room in
the college Griffith
is convinced the fellowfemale student is mocking him.
Instead of arguing withher, he becomes dangerous.
MARK BILLINGHAM: Hethreatens a girl with a knife
because a group of girlshave been laughing at him.
So this poor girl has
a knife to her throat.
NARRATOR: The girl'sfather confronts Griffiths.
MARK BILLINGHAM: Hethreatens him with a knife.
He ends up going down for that.
And that's when thingsreally start to escalate.
NARRATOR: Griffiths isarrested for the second time.
He's turning into a
very dangerous man.
In January, 1992,
Griffiths is convicted
for his aggressivebehavior and the possession
of a dangerous weapon.
He is sentenced to twoyears in Wakefield prison.
Here, his fantasies
become darker.
CYRIL DIXON: He used to makekill lists in which he had
mentioned the names
of staff who he felt
hadn't recognized his trueworth, or who in some sense
had disrespected him.
NARRATOR: Alongside
writing kill lists,
he develops a disturbing newinterest in serial killers.
At the top of the list
of his favorite killers
is Bradford born,
Peter Sutcliffe,
the Yorkshire Ripper.
Griffiths, obviously,
from a very early age
has this interest
in serial killers
that develops right from
when he's at school.
And that sort of blooms
and turns into something
extremely strange.
CYRIL DIXON: It was
at this time that he
used that expression, that hewould outdo Peter Sutcliffe.
He wanted to exceed theachievements in inverted commas
of Peter Sutcliffe.
He regarded Sutcliffe assomebody who hadn't really
done things properly, but,
he, Stephen Griffiths,
was going to do much better.
NARRATOR: The seeds of hisinterest in serial killers
date back to Griffiths
former school.
Among the old boys
was John George
Haigh, the Acid Bath Murderer.
Children that
went to this school
were shown the desk ofthis famous serial killer.
The dark history of theschool was very much something
they were all familiar with.
NARRATOR: For
Holmes, Griffith's is
a killer determined to buildon the horrific achievements
of his idols.
So you can see elementsthat were in former killers.
John Haigh, the
Acid Bath Murderer,
fitted the bill that hesaw as being particularly
a notorious killer
that he could emulate,
or kind of beat in a verykind of upstaging way.
NARRATOR: And it is this
exhibitionist mentality
that would reach horrificextremes later in his life.
Particularly in
his violent attack
on Suzanne Blamires in
2010 that seemed to be
performed for the CCTV cameras.
After being released from jailin 1993 he returns to Bradford.
He moves into a flat in thered light area of the city.
He now has a persona toproject to the outside world.
MARK BILLINGHAM: He's surroundedby DVDs, by books, by knives,
and swords, and cultivates
his image as if he's
some kind of master criminal.
He's wandering around inbizarre long leather coat.
He wants to be recognized.
He's hiding in very plainsight, he's going, look at me.
And, of course, people are
thinking, he's a weirdo.
Without knowing quite
how weird he is.
NARRATOR: Despite his
problems, Griffiths
manages to maintain a numberof romantic relationships.
He would manipulate and
try and charm and pull
people into his control.
But once within his
control, they began
to see a different Griffiths.
Because inside there in thecore was not a human being,
this was some kind of
robot who was acting out
the part of a human being, whoseideas and fantasies and desires
were not human.
NARRATOR: One woman, whoprefers to remain anonymous,
has a two year relationship
with Griffiths.
He did like to watch
slasher horror films.
And he used to
laugh because I used
to sit with cushions over meface, not wanting to watch it.
And he used to pull
the cushion down,
he used to go, oh,
watch it, it's funny.
NARRATOR: Despite
being mildly eccentric,
he is the model boyfriend.
He had his little
quirks like putting
cotton wool in his ears,because he didn't want spiders
getting in there
when he went to bed,
didn't like his hair touching.
I thought Stephen
was attractive,
but I won't say, well, likehot, I didn't go, oh, yeah, drop
dead gorgeous and all this.
But I did bring a
photograph of him.
It was his first day, whichI thought would have been
weird, actually, looking back.
He was just absolutely
fine with me.
Nothing out of the ordinary,until I saw his flat.
NARRATOR: Later in
their relationship
she finally enters his flat.
EX-GIRLFRIEND: Stephen
said, a girl had
been murdered in the next flat.
And I said to him, oh,God, how can you live here?
And he just shrugged his
shoulders and he went,
it's fine.
And he went, now, sitdown on the [inaudible],,
and I sat down, and it's
just instinct to look
around at what there is.
And he had like this hugebookcase just full of books,
but they weren't all nice book.
They were all just likereally macabre, about horror,
serial killers, and thenthere were samurai swords
in the wall, and crossbow.
And I was just like, what?
And I just got a really
horrible feeling.
And I didn't even have my cupof tea, because I said to him,
I said, oh, I feel
really sick, do you
mind if you just take me home?
NARRATOR: Griffiths'
flat is deeply alarming.
When I came back fromStephen's flat I rang me cousin
and I told her.
And she's like, Oh my God,you need to bring the police.
And I always feel really
guilty about that,
because I think if
I'd rung the police
and they could've like
kept an eye on him.
NARRATOR: When she
ends the relationship,
Griffiths doesn't
react in a normal way.
I rang him the nextmorning and I said, look,
it's not working out.
I don't think we should
be together anymore.
He was just like, yeah, fine,that's all right, OK, bye.
And that was it.
NARRATOR: Cathy Hancock,
a later girlfriend,
sees his darker side.
They will only go
out for a year,
but he will make her life hell.
He becomes increasingly
jealous and violent.
CATHY HANCOCK: Oh,
he broke my nose,
he stabbed me in
numerous occasions,
cut with a piece of glass.
NARRATOR: And after
a miscarriage,
he presents her
with a tiny coffin
in memory of their lost baby.
DAVID HOLMES: These were
really scary things.
And his obsessiveness
that actually
showed that there was somethingvery disturbed in there.
His lack of ability to beflexible with other the human
beings, and only can relateto them by controlling
them, manipulating them.
NARRATOR: Even after
she leaves him in 2001,
Griffiths persistently
stalks her.
An incredible seven
years later, in 2008,
with his goth period
long behind him,
he leaves terrifyingmessages on her mobile phone.
STEPHEN GRIFFITHS:
I'm trying to help ya.
I'm not going to go away,so I guess, you'd better--
[maniacal laughter]
[smack]
NARRATOR: Eventually,Griffiths, struggles to maintain
relationships with women.
A highly intelligent man, hisobsession with serial killers
blossoms into fullyfledged academic research.
He begins a PhD on 19thcentury murder in Bradford.
He lives alone in his
flat in the red light
district and the Thorntonroad area of the city.
He begins paying for sexand befriending prostitutes.
JOOLZ DENBY: A lot of thewomen said he was a nice guy,
they liked him,
they trusted him.
And I think in those
few brief moments
he was almost like he wastrying to be a human being,
because a lot of
the time he was just
pretending to be a human being.
NARRATOR: Griffiths alsobegins indulging in drugs.
Speed, amphetamines is a cheapdrug, it's crude, it's quick,
and it's brutal.
And it allows you to
do things repeatedly.
I once described it asbeing like gold on a rocket.
NARRATOR: As his normalrelationships with women come
to an end, he slides
deeper into an addiction
to online pornography.
JOOLZ DENBY: He
spent a lot of time
in that world where women arethe brutalized sperm receptacle
who was used and discarded.
Who are kind of
meek puppets who are
raped and brutalized on film.
And if you add into thatmix a lot of amphetamines,
then it's a strange, darkworld with colossal velocity
all aimed towards
one thing, extremity.
What is the most extremething that you can then do?
NARRATOR: Griffiths gets toknow many of the Thornton road
prostitutes.
For some of them,
this relationship
will end in a horrific death.
Bradford, a former
industrial powerhouse
of the north, economic declinehas had a devastating effect
on the inner city.
More and more women,
many of them addicts,
are forced to sell their
bodies on the streets.
Late July, 2009, a year beforeGriffiths is caught attacking
Suzanne Blamires
on CCTV, posters
spring up around Bradford city.
They appeal for informationover the whereabouts
of 43-year-old mother of
three, Susan Rushworth.
CYRIL DIXON:
Obviously, her family
were very, very concerned.
They reported herdisappearance to the police.
And the police put out appeals
through the local media.
NARRATOR: She works
the red light district
in the city center.
So Susan Rushworth goes
missing, a drug addicted
prostitute, but the
police don't really
take an awful lot of notice.
JOOLZ DENBY: The women
are treated as pariahs,
they're regarded as scum.
As a society, we
dehumanize these women
who need our protection
more than anyone.
If one of them goes
missing, who cares?
NARRATOR: Rushworth
is never seen again.
With no leads to speak of, thepolice are getting nowhere.
It reveals the attitudeto those in the sex industry
from certain areas
of law enforcement.
They are, in
criminological terms,
classic low hanging fruit.
NARRATOR: Just
under a year later,
another sex worker, ShelleyArmitage, goes missing.
The police are aware thatGriffiths is violent,
particularly towards women,but he is not brought in
for questioning about
the disappearance
of Rushworth and Armitage.
In a could of, should
of, would of world,
maybe they should have
gone and looked at him.
But there wasn't any
real reason for them
to do that, because nobodypointed the finger at him
and said, that guy, he
hung around with her.
That guy is really weird.
I have been in his flat.
He does nothing but sit therechewing his own lips off and
watching hardcore pornography.
Maybe they should have
done, but they didn't.
MARK BILLINGHAM:
I think the police
could certainly have done more.
The fact that he
knew all the victims.
The fact that he had
a record of violence.
The fact that he had alreadybeen assessed by a psychiatrist
as being a very
dangerous individual.
That's an oversight
that the police
are going to have to live with.
NARRATOR: Griffiths is
hiding in plain sight.
After a year of the policenot noticing that Griffiths
is a serial killer
in the making,
he is suddenly noticed
in the most extreme
manner possible in May, 2010.
On his social
networking site, he
announces the arrival of hissadistic alter ego, Ven Pariah.
CYRIL DIXON: This alter egoappeared to be what Griffiths
wanted to be in real life.
He was powerful, he wassuccessful, he was admired.
But also, Ven Pariah exhibited
the violent, sadistic,
psychotic side of Griffiths.
He was all about
creating the narrative
of his own killing spree,of being in charge of that.
He goes on to his
networking site
and puts this speech, which ismelodramatic to the nth degree.
He talks about himself
as being hatred
tightly wrapped in flesh.
How poor Stephen
tried to control him,
but couldn't, and now
he is finally emerging.
NARRATOR: For criminalpsychologist, David Holmes,
Griffiths has created
the dark shadow
of the [inaudible] superhero.
DAVID HOLMES: If
you could imagine
the kind of kick-ass filmsituation where somebody
kind of starts to kind of halfemulate a superhero and ends up
actually being one.
In this case, we've got akind of dark side of it.
NARRATOR: His attack onSuzanne Blamires in front
of the CCTV camera
announces his arrival
as Bradford's latest killer.
Once he did get caughtand he knew the game was up,
then he was just preparingfor his moments of glory.
He was preparing
for the moment of,
here I am, and this is, theworld will know who I am.
NARRATOR: Perhaps
being caught on CCTV
was always part of
Griffiths' plan.
CYRIL DIXON: My personal beliefis that he was happy for it
to be caught on camera,
because in his mind,
he wanted to be a serial killer.
And what he sought at theend of the day was fame,
and what better way
to achieve that fame
than have a cold blooded
murder caught on camera?
NARRATOR: Within
hours, armed officers
call at Griffiths' flat.
CYRIL DIXON: They steam upthe stairs along the corridor
to flat 33, knock on
the door, from inside
they hear this plaintiff voicesaying, I'm Osama bin Laden.
There's no resistance to such.
He goes with them withoutso much as a crossed word.
NARRATOR: The forensic analysisof his flat reveals blood
spatters that he had
attempted to clean up.
There is enough material
to provide a DNA match.
Despite his situation,Griffiths is relaxed and chatty.
Any chance of
a drink of water?
MARK BILLINGHAM: With
somebody like Griffiths,
once they're caught andthey have the power of life
and death taken away from
them, the power of being
able to rob somebody
of life, he has to find
another way to exert power.
And for him that becomes aboutadmitting to a whole bunch
of killings that he
then clams up about,
and the police go, what
do you mean six bodies?
And he's kind of like,
oh, did I say six?
Blah blah blah blah blah.
NARRATOR: Despite
teasing the police,
he admits to the
murders of Blamires,
Armitage, and Rushworth.
DETECTIVE: Are you saying thatyou killed Susan Rushworth?
Yes.
DETECTIVE: And what
was the other name?
Shelley Armitage.
DETECTIVE: Are you
saying that you've
murdered Shelley Armitage?
Yes.
DETECTIVE: And then last one.
Suzanne Blamire.
DETECTIVE: Are you sayingyou've murdered her?
Yes.
NARRATOR: The families ofthe three missing women
are in shock.
Rushworth's daughter canbarely cope with the news.
[inaudible] I've been 10years old is always saying,
why my mom?
There's millions ofpeople, why is it my mom?
I'm just tired of
seeing the world.
NARRATOR: After finding 81separate pieces of Suzanne
Blamires body in the riverAire, only one fragment,
a vertebrae is found
of Shelley Armitage
in the same body of water.
Despite an intense search,nothing of Susan Rushworth
can be found.
After the discovery of thebody parts of Suzanne Blamires,
Griffiths is interviewed
by the police.
DETECTIVE: So why
did you feel the need
to kill any of the girls?
I don't know.
NARRATOR: Finally,
he can play the part
of a famous serial
killer for real.
MARK BILLINGHAM: When yousee the footage of him,
he's going through the
lines he's rehearsed.
Well, I'm misanthropic.
I don't have much
time for human race.
MARK BILLINGHAM: You can seehim giving that performance
that he's dreamed about,that he's fantasized about.
This is what he's beenworking towards for years.
DETECTIVE: In what sort oflocation did you pull them?
And a weather robot a computerwill put them in a irrational,
emotionless operation
[inaudible]..
NARRATOR: Griffiths, anexpert on serial killing,
knows that he
needs three murders
to be classified
as a serial killer
and he reveals an
ambition to shock.
He wants to shadow [inaudible]that was too extreme
for his hero, Peter Sutcliffe.
MARK BILLINGHAM: There is noperversion that he's not going
to claim responsibility for.
NARRATOR: Stephen
Griffiths gives
little away to the police.
But the true horror ofwhat they are dealing with
is about to be revealed
in the courtroom.
Griffiths appears
to be in control,
but when questioned
about his motives,
he is more revealing
about his mental state
than he intends to be.
Well, I'm misanthropic.
I don't have much time
for the human race.
A robot, emotionless operation.
NARRATOR: For Holmes,
these few words reveal
Griffiths' psychopathic nature.
He actually did,
honestly, reveal
part of his real character.
When he dismissively
said, oh, I'm a robot,
or why did you do this?
Well, I'm misanthropic.
I don't have much
time for humanity.
He basically didn't
relate to humanity.
It didn't affect him ifpeople suffered, because there
was no humanity in his life.
NARRATOR: Griffiths
arrives at the trial.
First, he has asked
to give his name.
The hush court isrevolted by his response.
MARK BILLINGHAM: For me, oneof the most chilling moments
is that first
moment in court when
he is asked to identify
himself and he says,
I am the Crossbow Cannibal.
NARRATOR: Word has
gone out that Griffiths
claims to have eaten
the flesh of his victims
in police interviews.
The tabloid papers questionedhim the Crossbow Cannibal.
Griffiths is canny, he
knows a serial killer
needs a memorable name.
MARK BILLINGHAM: For him,that's the big moment.
That's the moment
he has dreamed of.
He's being able to stand
up in public and say,
this is who I am.
That's what I want to be.
Nobody else can be
the Crossbow Cannibal.
That's me.
It's like opening his shirt andrevealing the S of Superman.
This is who I am.
NARRATOR: As the CCTV ofthe attack hits the news,
one of his former girlfriendsrealizes how lucky she was.
As I was watching it,
I was physically sick.
I went into shock for days.
I was like, oh God, whathe did to them poor girls,
nobody deserves that.
Nobody.
JOOLZ DENBY: I was horrified.
How awful it must have
been for that girl.
I just wanted to cry.
I hated him.
I hated him.
He's a loathsome
reptile of a man.
NARRATOR: Griffiths goes onto reveal in sordid detail
the prolonged agony
that the women suffered.
[grunting]
[punching]
Mobile phone footage
taken by Griffiths
reveals the ordeal experiencedby his second victim,
Shelley Armitage.
MARK BILLINGHAM:
The second victim
he had already filmed
on a mobile phone which
shows poor Shelley Armitagekind of hog tied in the bath
and stripped and spraypainted with my sex slave.
I mean, you know,
he was on a roll.
And it kind of makes
your blood run cold.
NARRATOR: Forensic analysisof the flat corroborates
Griffiths confession.
Blood from all three womenis found in the bathroom.
His claims to cannibalizesound sensational,
but experts on the case
believe that he did
go to such gruesome extremes.
CYRIL DIXON: Knowing what wedo about Stephen Griffiths,
this is a man who setout to be a serial killer
of the most grotesque kind.
He used all those books abouthomicide and dismemberment
to make himself into
the worst serial killers
that his warped imaginationcould come up with.
So I do find it crediblethat he'd eaten his victims.
MARK BILLINGHAM:
Griffiths killed
in a very unpleasant way.
And again, it was as if
he was trying to tick
as many boxes as possible.
I'm not just going to stabthem, I'm going to tie them
up and torture them
before I stab them,
and I might throw a
bit of [inaudible] in
and, oh, I'll tell
you what, then
I'm going to tell thepolice that I've eaten them.
Some of them I've cooked.
Some of them I've eaten raw.
You know, there is no, noperversion that he's not going
to claim responsibility for.
NARRATOR: CCTV at the flat andat the local railway station
also revealed how Griffithsdisposed of the body parts.
For Samantha Lundrigan,
geographical profiler,
his approach is, both,
cool and calculating,
while at the same time
chaotic and confused.
So on the one hand,
we've got an offender
who will go to
great lengths to try
and conceal forensic
evidence of his victims.
One of the victims
has never been found,
so he was clearly verysuccessful at doing that.
On the other hand,
we have this offender
who's completely chaotic.
Who is fully aware that theCCTV imagery of him and he's
carrying out crime
in front of that.
And also, someone who decidesto get on public transport
with a black bin liner
full of body parts,
and take the trip to actuallydispose of the bodies.
NARRATOR: Despite his expertisein the field of murder,
Lundrigan thinks
Griffiths was simply
too unstable to be successfulin his chosen path to infamy.
So he was called a bit ofa Jekyll and Hyde character,
and he had a diagnosed
mental disorder.
So he did veer from
these two extremes.
NARRATOR: For Holmes,Griffiths' slapdash approach is
rooted in his mental illness.
It seems odd that in
certain circumstances
he appears to be blatantlystupid in forensic terms.
So he makes gross errors becausehe doesn't really understand
humanity and how we relate andhow we see flaws in others,
he just mechanically does it.
And there's no room
in his mechanizations
for any humanity.
NARRATOR: In his
own twisted way,
Griffiths, the psychopath,desperately wanted fame.
But instead of achieving
it by appearing
on Pop Idol or X-Factor, hewould kill to gain infamy.
Bradford local, Joolz
Denby, sees Griffiths
as the ultimate want-to-be.
JOOLZ DENBY: I think Griffithswants to be a superstar.
Fame seems to be, to peoplewho have not been famous,
that it will make everythingthat you feel is wrong with you
all right.
But it's not quite
as easy as that.
CYRIL DIXON: I think
Griffiths is obviously
a serial killer
produced by a world
which is obsessed with fame.
People want fame now.
MARK BILLINGHAM: He's almost thefirst reality TV serial killer.
If he could have killed peoplein the Big Brother house,
he'd had done that, thatwould have been his dream.
That would have been
the ultimate for him.
NARRATOR: Billingham believesa documentary like this
would be part of the plan.
MARK BILLINGHAM: One wonderswhether in the very filming
of a program like
this we are kind of--
you know, when this
goes out, Griffiths
is going to be sitting watchingthis in the room of some prison
quietly ticking that boxgoing, I got my documentary.
That would have been
something that he'd
have wanted way back then whenhe was wandering around town.
NARRATOR: Griffiths
pleads guilty.
Despite an attempt to
convince the authorities
of his insanity, so thathe is transferred to a more
comfortable mentalinstitution, he is incarcerated
in a high security prison.
Within five days of the
trial, another atrocity
hits the headlines inCumbria, Northern England,
a man kills 12 people
on a shooting spree.
MARK BILLINGHAM: Griffithsis massive headline
news all over the world untilthe next killer comes along.
And suddenly he gets knockeddown that Google search list,
and he's knocked
off that front page.
JOOLZ DENBY: And I do actuallyremember saying to my friend,
I would be really annoyed.
NARRATOR: Griffiths flicks thefirst of many suicide attempts.
MARK BILLINGHAM: He has
to find some other way
to get attention, whichbecomes suicide attempts, which
become self-harm.
Vaguely pathetic, trying tohang himself with a sock.
JOOLZ DENBY: I think he
will feel very unhappy
that he isn't, now,
the great celebrity
that he thought he would be.
NARRATOR: He can't
handle the fact that he
is already being forgotten.
---
NARRATOR: The most notoriouskillers hide in plain sight.
Free to kill and kill again.
But most are not the criminalmasterminds of fiction.
In their minds, theycommit the perfect murder.
In reality, it is their foolishmistakes that get them caught.
Bradford, England, May, 2010.
A caretaker in a
block of flats sits
down to check the week's CCTV.
Amidst the comings and
goings of the residents
he sees something strange.
The caretaker,
I think, regularly
reviewed silent CCTV
footage on the look
out for petty
crimes in the block,
is anybody vandalizing thefire extinguishers or whatever?
And comes across thishorrendous piece of footage.
NARRATOR: At half past
2:00 in the morning,
a young woman is led into theflat by one of the residents.
Three minutes later, sheemerges running for her life.
CYRIL DIXON: When he playedthat footage back slowly,
he realized that a
young woman was fleeing
the flat of one of his tenants.
NARRATOR: Journalist CyrilDixon is fascinated by the case.
CYRIL DIXON: He knew thattenant by the name of Steve.
He watched as this man,Steve, got hold of this woman,
fought with her,
strike her physically.
NARRATOR: The victim
lies immobilized.
Then the assailant
produces a weapon.
For author Mark
Billingham what comes
next ranks as one of
the strangest moments
in the history of crime.
He, very calmly goes afterher and shoots her twice
in the head with a crossbow.
NARRATOR: He drags her limpbody back towards his tiny flat.
MARK BILLINGHAM: Then he
realizes he's on camera.
There's that moment when hegoes, ah, oh, well, the game's
up, now into performance mode.
When he gives the
finger to the camera,
when he holds up the crossbow,when he basically looks
at that camera and says, hereI am, I'm from your nightmares,
come and get me.
NARRATOR: The caretaker
alerts his manager.
Within hours the police
are on the scene.
CYRIL DIXON: When the policearrived, they come heavily
armed expecting massive
resistance by a virtue
of what's been seen on theCCTV, this man has been
the public enemy number one.
MARK BILLINGHAM:
And when they do
come knocking, rather
violently, on the door,
he apparently says, I'm in here.
He goes, come and get me.
He makes no attempt to run.
No attempt to do anything.
NARRATOR: The
shocking CCTV footage
comes straight out of the blue.
Although there have been
missing person reports,
the police do not
know that there
was a killer on the loose.
They do not even know whetherthe woman in the video
is dead or alive.
The next day, a
member of the public
reports a horrificdiscovery in the river Aire
on the outskirts of Bradford.
CYRIL DIXON: A
member of the public,
who was walking his dog,
saw something floating
in the water.
He wondered what it was.
I think it was in a rucksack.
He opens this rucksack to finda head staring back at him.
And, of course, it didn'trequire much detective work
to work out that the
head in the river
was connected to
the CCTV footage.
NARRATOR: The head
from the river
is swiftly identified
through dental records.
It belongs to a young womannamed Suzanne Blamires.
Blamires had a happy
middle class childhood,
but the death of her fathersaw her descend into alcoholism
and drug addiction.
She ends up prostituting herselfon the streets of Bradford.
She knew the man who appearsto attack her in the video.
Stephen Griffiths has ahigh profile on the street.
Bradford resident, poet JoolzDenby, saw him around the city.
He was a familiar
figure walking around.
Although this is a city,
it's quite a small city.
He was always the guy that waswalking around with a sullen
expression wearing ablack leather trench coat
and his hair slicked back inwhat appeared to be baby oil.
NARRATOR: Although Griffiths
was trying to look cool,
Denby saw a man
who was a misfit.
He looked like an idiot
to be honest with you.
He wasn't the cool goththat you could think, whoa,
he looks interesting.
He was like, oh,
he's a real try hard.
NARRATOR: Griffiths
might have looked
like a mere attention seeker,but it wasn't a game to him.
JOOLZ DENBY: Unfortunately, Ithink that went a lot deeper,
that passionate
desire to be noticed,
than anybody would
have thought possible.
NARRATOR: As the police
begin to delve deeper
into Griffiths private life,they realize the true nature
of his character.
They discover that
Griffiths had been
developing a twisted alter egoon a social networking site.
As well as writing
authoritative accounts
of historic serial
killers, Griffiths
presented a strange newidentity called Ven Pariah.
Ven, being a shortened versionof his first name Stephen,
and Pariah, one that is
despised or rejected.
Through his dark
online pseudonym
he reveals his inner turmoil.
He goes on to
his networking site
and puts this speech, whichis melodramatic to the nth
degree, it's like somethinghe's read, something he's seen.
He talks about himself
as being hatred
tightly wrapped in flesh.
How poor Stephen
tried to control them,
but couldn't, and now
he is finally emerging.
NARRATOR: But this seeminglyharmless online activity
is just the tip of the iceberg.
Griffiths has a violent
and psychotic past.
This propensity for violenceshowed itself very early on.
NARRATOR: For criminalpsychologist, David Holmes,
Griffiths is a fascinating case.
He was diagnosed as apsychopath, which is really
very dangerous in
terms of threat
to others, and also of
a skitzoid character.
NARRATOR: Griffiths
is an enigma.
He appears to prey
on prostitutes,
a group that are
difficult to track,
and that makes them
easy to pick off.
In the video it looks likehe knows what he's doing.
His actions aren't the
work of a newbie killer.
The police need to know
what else he's hiding
and if he has killed any more.
Having seen Griffiths attackingSuzanne Blamires on CCTV
and discovering her
decapitated head,
the police need to
find out how she died
and whether Griffiths hascommitted other crimes.
CYRIL DIXON: As soon asGriffiths was known about,
he was caught.
The difficulty for
the police, I think,
was trying to
discover exactly what
he had done given that he wasn'texactly straight with them.
So tell me, Mr.Griffiths, there's one thing
we're struggling to work out.
He told them a lot
of what he'd done,
but there was no way
they could trust him.
There was no way
they could believe
his story without checking it.
NARRATOR: The police scourhis flat for evidence.
The police then
come and have a look,
probably thinking they'redealing with some nut
case who's got nothing at all.
And then they see what
they say and all hell
breaks loose, essentially.
CYRIL DIXON: Well, firstof all, they found a number
of crossbows, two or three.
Highly dangerous, highlypowerful, capable of firing
bolts at something
like 200 miles an hour.
They found a number of Japanesemartial arts type swords.
They found knives.
They found knuckledusters.
And they found a whole
library full of books
on every possible murder
that's ever taken place.
NARRATOR: But they find no cluesas to Suzanne Blamires fate.
Stephen Griffiths was very,very clean and house proud.
In the bathroom of his flat,he had obviously mounted
a huge cleanup operation.
NARRATOR: If Griffiths disposedof the body in his flat,
he will find it hard to
disguise the evidence.
Forensics expert,
Ray Palmer, knows
just how hard a job it can be.
It's extremely difficultto completely clean
up from dismembering a body.
Much of the deposition of bloodin these circumstances is tiny
and it's easily overlooked.
And it's easily trapped invarious surfaces in which
the dismemberment took place.
NARRATOR: The forensics
team begin their work
to see if they can find out whathappened to Suzanne Blamires.
Even though Griffiths
is under the spotlight,
in interviews and
in court he spins
a dark tale about
what he has been up to
in his tiny flat in Bradford.
A story of up to five morewomen being lured into his flat
who are kept as sex
slaves, viciously
murdered and cannibalized.
A story so utterly grim
and revolting the police
are under pressure to
discover whether or not
Griffiths is a fantasist
or the most grotesque
serial killer of modern times.
As the detectives
back at base begin
to investigate Griffiths
past, they uncover
a truly disturbing story.
Stephen Griffiths is
born into an upwardly
mobile Bradford family in 1969.
But family life breaksdown, his parents separate,
but they still scrimp and saveto send him to private school.
Despite getting a
good start in life,
he begins to reveal
an unusual side.
DAVID HOLMES: People
with skitzoid tendencies
often do look kind of
like a blank slate.
They just don't seem torelate to others, so they
seem fairly harmless,
and sometimes quite cute
looking as children.
But in the case of Griffiths,he was seen by many people
mutilating animals very cruelly.
JOOLZ DENBY: A lot of the timehe felt quite invisible, as
if he didn't count, as
if the child that he was
was of no consequence,
really, to anybody.
And that however
much he shouted,
it was as if he wasshouting inside a glass jar
and nobody could hear him.
NARRATOR: After a lonelybut uneventful childhood,
Griffiths mental statedeteriorates in his late teens.
He was becoming very
frustrated with the kind
of things he could do inlife and where he would get
satisfaction and his abilityto control the situation,
because he was entering intolife that was becoming more
and more uncontrolled
as an adult.
He couldn't relate
to others very well.
NARRATOR: He leaves
home abruptly
and begins living rough.
Then he reveals his dark side.
The first serious
offense which
can be linked to Griffithstook place in 1987 in Leeds.
He'd gone into a shop witha view to shoplifting.
He was spotted by the shopkeeperwho tried to apprehend him,
and Griffith produced
a knife and slashed
this man across the face.
I think those initial
forays into violence
showed him something, he sawwhat that kind of behavior did.
How it terrified people, howit made him feel powerful.
The sight of blood, thesight of flesh being cut,
whatever that did to
him fired something up.
It lit a fuse.
NARRATOR: He's sent
into youth custody
for one and a half years.
CYRIL DIXON: The
act he had committed
in itself was sufficient
to identify him
as a very dangerous young man.
But I think the full dangerspotential of Stephen Griffiths
wasn't realized until
some five years later.
NARRATOR: Griffiths isassessed by psychiatrists.
He is not found to be insane,
but he is a psychopath.
DAVID HOLMES: He was diagnosedas psychopathic, skitzoid,
obsessive, controlling.
He was very aloof and didn'treally emotionally connect.
He was certainly-- had
very little empathy
with normal human beings.
Probably didn't even see
himself as being part
of the human race, which isreally very dangerous in terms
of threat to others.
People start saying,
something very worrying,
very dark about this kid.
CYRIL DIXON: In fact, theysaid he had a personality
disorder, which in itself is nottreatable as a mental illness.
He can't be locked up,
basically, until he's
actually committed a crime.
NARRATOR: And it wouldn't belong before he committed crimes
that would make
slashing a shopkeeper's
face look like child's play.
Griffiths emerges intothe economically depressed
Bradford of the early '90s.
He is unable to get a normaljob due to his criminal record,
but he is bright andfascinated by the human mind.
He enrolls as a student ofpsychology at Bradford College.
Initially, Griffiths isnot an outcast at college.
But he soon earns a
sinister reputation.
In a common room in
the college Griffith
is convinced the fellowfemale student is mocking him.
Instead of arguing withher, he becomes dangerous.
MARK BILLINGHAM: Hethreatens a girl with a knife
because a group of girlshave been laughing at him.
So this poor girl has
a knife to her throat.
NARRATOR: The girl'sfather confronts Griffiths.
MARK BILLINGHAM: Hethreatens him with a knife.
He ends up going down for that.
And that's when thingsreally start to escalate.
NARRATOR: Griffiths isarrested for the second time.
He's turning into a
very dangerous man.
In January, 1992,
Griffiths is convicted
for his aggressivebehavior and the possession
of a dangerous weapon.
He is sentenced to twoyears in Wakefield prison.
Here, his fantasies
become darker.
CYRIL DIXON: He used to makekill lists in which he had
mentioned the names
of staff who he felt
hadn't recognized his trueworth, or who in some sense
had disrespected him.
NARRATOR: Alongside
writing kill lists,
he develops a disturbing newinterest in serial killers.
At the top of the list
of his favorite killers
is Bradford born,
Peter Sutcliffe,
the Yorkshire Ripper.
Griffiths, obviously,
from a very early age
has this interest
in serial killers
that develops right from
when he's at school.
And that sort of blooms
and turns into something
extremely strange.
CYRIL DIXON: It was
at this time that he
used that expression, that hewould outdo Peter Sutcliffe.
He wanted to exceed theachievements in inverted commas
of Peter Sutcliffe.
He regarded Sutcliffe assomebody who hadn't really
done things properly, but,
he, Stephen Griffiths,
was going to do much better.
NARRATOR: The seeds of hisinterest in serial killers
date back to Griffiths
former school.
Among the old boys
was John George
Haigh, the Acid Bath Murderer.
Children that
went to this school
were shown the desk ofthis famous serial killer.
The dark history of theschool was very much something
they were all familiar with.
NARRATOR: For
Holmes, Griffith's is
a killer determined to buildon the horrific achievements
of his idols.
So you can see elementsthat were in former killers.
John Haigh, the
Acid Bath Murderer,
fitted the bill that hesaw as being particularly
a notorious killer
that he could emulate,
or kind of beat in a verykind of upstaging way.
NARRATOR: And it is this
exhibitionist mentality
that would reach horrificextremes later in his life.
Particularly in
his violent attack
on Suzanne Blamires in
2010 that seemed to be
performed for the CCTV cameras.
After being released from jailin 1993 he returns to Bradford.
He moves into a flat in thered light area of the city.
He now has a persona toproject to the outside world.
MARK BILLINGHAM: He's surroundedby DVDs, by books, by knives,
and swords, and cultivates
his image as if he's
some kind of master criminal.
He's wandering around inbizarre long leather coat.
He wants to be recognized.
He's hiding in very plainsight, he's going, look at me.
And, of course, people are
thinking, he's a weirdo.
Without knowing quite
how weird he is.
NARRATOR: Despite his
problems, Griffiths
manages to maintain a numberof romantic relationships.
He would manipulate and
try and charm and pull
people into his control.
But once within his
control, they began
to see a different Griffiths.
Because inside there in thecore was not a human being,
this was some kind of
robot who was acting out
the part of a human being, whoseideas and fantasies and desires
were not human.
NARRATOR: One woman, whoprefers to remain anonymous,
has a two year relationship
with Griffiths.
He did like to watch
slasher horror films.
And he used to
laugh because I used
to sit with cushions over meface, not wanting to watch it.
And he used to pull
the cushion down,
he used to go, oh,
watch it, it's funny.
NARRATOR: Despite
being mildly eccentric,
he is the model boyfriend.
He had his little
quirks like putting
cotton wool in his ears,because he didn't want spiders
getting in there
when he went to bed,
didn't like his hair touching.
I thought Stephen
was attractive,
but I won't say, well, likehot, I didn't go, oh, yeah, drop
dead gorgeous and all this.
But I did bring a
photograph of him.
It was his first day, whichI thought would have been
weird, actually, looking back.
He was just absolutely
fine with me.
Nothing out of the ordinary,until I saw his flat.
NARRATOR: Later in
their relationship
she finally enters his flat.
EX-GIRLFRIEND: Stephen
said, a girl had
been murdered in the next flat.
And I said to him, oh,God, how can you live here?
And he just shrugged his
shoulders and he went,
it's fine.
And he went, now, sitdown on the [inaudible],,
and I sat down, and it's
just instinct to look
around at what there is.
And he had like this hugebookcase just full of books,
but they weren't all nice book.
They were all just likereally macabre, about horror,
serial killers, and thenthere were samurai swords
in the wall, and crossbow.
And I was just like, what?
And I just got a really
horrible feeling.
And I didn't even have my cupof tea, because I said to him,
I said, oh, I feel
really sick, do you
mind if you just take me home?
NARRATOR: Griffiths'
flat is deeply alarming.
When I came back fromStephen's flat I rang me cousin
and I told her.
And she's like, Oh my God,you need to bring the police.
And I always feel really
guilty about that,
because I think if
I'd rung the police
and they could've like
kept an eye on him.
NARRATOR: When she
ends the relationship,
Griffiths doesn't
react in a normal way.
I rang him the nextmorning and I said, look,
it's not working out.
I don't think we should
be together anymore.
He was just like, yeah, fine,that's all right, OK, bye.
And that was it.
NARRATOR: Cathy Hancock,
a later girlfriend,
sees his darker side.
They will only go
out for a year,
but he will make her life hell.
He becomes increasingly
jealous and violent.
CATHY HANCOCK: Oh,
he broke my nose,
he stabbed me in
numerous occasions,
cut with a piece of glass.
NARRATOR: And after
a miscarriage,
he presents her
with a tiny coffin
in memory of their lost baby.
DAVID HOLMES: These were
really scary things.
And his obsessiveness
that actually
showed that there was somethingvery disturbed in there.
His lack of ability to beflexible with other the human
beings, and only can relateto them by controlling
them, manipulating them.
NARRATOR: Even after
she leaves him in 2001,
Griffiths persistently
stalks her.
An incredible seven
years later, in 2008,
with his goth period
long behind him,
he leaves terrifyingmessages on her mobile phone.
STEPHEN GRIFFITHS:
I'm trying to help ya.
I'm not going to go away,so I guess, you'd better--
[maniacal laughter]
[smack]
NARRATOR: Eventually,Griffiths, struggles to maintain
relationships with women.
A highly intelligent man, hisobsession with serial killers
blossoms into fullyfledged academic research.
He begins a PhD on 19thcentury murder in Bradford.
He lives alone in his
flat in the red light
district and the Thorntonroad area of the city.
He begins paying for sexand befriending prostitutes.
JOOLZ DENBY: A lot of thewomen said he was a nice guy,
they liked him,
they trusted him.
And I think in those
few brief moments
he was almost like he wastrying to be a human being,
because a lot of
the time he was just
pretending to be a human being.
NARRATOR: Griffiths alsobegins indulging in drugs.
Speed, amphetamines is a cheapdrug, it's crude, it's quick,
and it's brutal.
And it allows you to
do things repeatedly.
I once described it asbeing like gold on a rocket.
NARRATOR: As his normalrelationships with women come
to an end, he slides
deeper into an addiction
to online pornography.
JOOLZ DENBY: He
spent a lot of time
in that world where women arethe brutalized sperm receptacle
who was used and discarded.
Who are kind of
meek puppets who are
raped and brutalized on film.
And if you add into thatmix a lot of amphetamines,
then it's a strange, darkworld with colossal velocity
all aimed towards
one thing, extremity.
What is the most extremething that you can then do?
NARRATOR: Griffiths gets toknow many of the Thornton road
prostitutes.
For some of them,
this relationship
will end in a horrific death.
Bradford, a former
industrial powerhouse
of the north, economic declinehas had a devastating effect
on the inner city.
More and more women,
many of them addicts,
are forced to sell their
bodies on the streets.
Late July, 2009, a year beforeGriffiths is caught attacking
Suzanne Blamires
on CCTV, posters
spring up around Bradford city.
They appeal for informationover the whereabouts
of 43-year-old mother of
three, Susan Rushworth.
CYRIL DIXON:
Obviously, her family
were very, very concerned.
They reported herdisappearance to the police.
And the police put out appeals
through the local media.
NARRATOR: She works
the red light district
in the city center.
So Susan Rushworth goes
missing, a drug addicted
prostitute, but the
police don't really
take an awful lot of notice.
JOOLZ DENBY: The women
are treated as pariahs,
they're regarded as scum.
As a society, we
dehumanize these women
who need our protection
more than anyone.
If one of them goes
missing, who cares?
NARRATOR: Rushworth
is never seen again.
With no leads to speak of, thepolice are getting nowhere.
It reveals the attitudeto those in the sex industry
from certain areas
of law enforcement.
They are, in
criminological terms,
classic low hanging fruit.
NARRATOR: Just
under a year later,
another sex worker, ShelleyArmitage, goes missing.
The police are aware thatGriffiths is violent,
particularly towards women,but he is not brought in
for questioning about
the disappearance
of Rushworth and Armitage.
In a could of, should
of, would of world,
maybe they should have
gone and looked at him.
But there wasn't any
real reason for them
to do that, because nobodypointed the finger at him
and said, that guy, he
hung around with her.
That guy is really weird.
I have been in his flat.
He does nothing but sit therechewing his own lips off and
watching hardcore pornography.
Maybe they should have
done, but they didn't.
MARK BILLINGHAM:
I think the police
could certainly have done more.
The fact that he
knew all the victims.
The fact that he had
a record of violence.
The fact that he had alreadybeen assessed by a psychiatrist
as being a very
dangerous individual.
That's an oversight
that the police
are going to have to live with.
NARRATOR: Griffiths is
hiding in plain sight.
After a year of the policenot noticing that Griffiths
is a serial killer
in the making,
he is suddenly noticed
in the most extreme
manner possible in May, 2010.
On his social
networking site, he
announces the arrival of hissadistic alter ego, Ven Pariah.
CYRIL DIXON: This alter egoappeared to be what Griffiths
wanted to be in real life.
He was powerful, he wassuccessful, he was admired.
But also, Ven Pariah exhibited
the violent, sadistic,
psychotic side of Griffiths.
He was all about
creating the narrative
of his own killing spree,of being in charge of that.
He goes on to his
networking site
and puts this speech, which ismelodramatic to the nth degree.
He talks about himself
as being hatred
tightly wrapped in flesh.
How poor Stephen
tried to control him,
but couldn't, and now
he is finally emerging.
NARRATOR: For criminalpsychologist, David Holmes,
Griffiths has created
the dark shadow
of the [inaudible] superhero.
DAVID HOLMES: If
you could imagine
the kind of kick-ass filmsituation where somebody
kind of starts to kind of halfemulate a superhero and ends up
actually being one.
In this case, we've got akind of dark side of it.
NARRATOR: His attack onSuzanne Blamires in front
of the CCTV camera
announces his arrival
as Bradford's latest killer.
Once he did get caughtand he knew the game was up,
then he was just preparingfor his moments of glory.
He was preparing
for the moment of,
here I am, and this is, theworld will know who I am.
NARRATOR: Perhaps
being caught on CCTV
was always part of
Griffiths' plan.
CYRIL DIXON: My personal beliefis that he was happy for it
to be caught on camera,
because in his mind,
he wanted to be a serial killer.
And what he sought at theend of the day was fame,
and what better way
to achieve that fame
than have a cold blooded
murder caught on camera?
NARRATOR: Within
hours, armed officers
call at Griffiths' flat.
CYRIL DIXON: They steam upthe stairs along the corridor
to flat 33, knock on
the door, from inside
they hear this plaintiff voicesaying, I'm Osama bin Laden.
There's no resistance to such.
He goes with them withoutso much as a crossed word.
NARRATOR: The forensic analysisof his flat reveals blood
spatters that he had
attempted to clean up.
There is enough material
to provide a DNA match.
Despite his situation,Griffiths is relaxed and chatty.
Any chance of
a drink of water?
MARK BILLINGHAM: With
somebody like Griffiths,
once they're caught andthey have the power of life
and death taken away from
them, the power of being
able to rob somebody
of life, he has to find
another way to exert power.
And for him that becomes aboutadmitting to a whole bunch
of killings that he
then clams up about,
and the police go, what
do you mean six bodies?
And he's kind of like,
oh, did I say six?
Blah blah blah blah blah.
NARRATOR: Despite
teasing the police,
he admits to the
murders of Blamires,
Armitage, and Rushworth.
DETECTIVE: Are you saying thatyou killed Susan Rushworth?
Yes.
DETECTIVE: And what
was the other name?
Shelley Armitage.
DETECTIVE: Are you
saying that you've
murdered Shelley Armitage?
Yes.
DETECTIVE: And then last one.
Suzanne Blamire.
DETECTIVE: Are you sayingyou've murdered her?
Yes.
NARRATOR: The families ofthe three missing women
are in shock.
Rushworth's daughter canbarely cope with the news.
[inaudible] I've been 10years old is always saying,
why my mom?
There's millions ofpeople, why is it my mom?
I'm just tired of
seeing the world.
NARRATOR: After finding 81separate pieces of Suzanne
Blamires body in the riverAire, only one fragment,
a vertebrae is found
of Shelley Armitage
in the same body of water.
Despite an intense search,nothing of Susan Rushworth
can be found.
After the discovery of thebody parts of Suzanne Blamires,
Griffiths is interviewed
by the police.
DETECTIVE: So why
did you feel the need
to kill any of the girls?
I don't know.
NARRATOR: Finally,
he can play the part
of a famous serial
killer for real.
MARK BILLINGHAM: When yousee the footage of him,
he's going through the
lines he's rehearsed.
Well, I'm misanthropic.
I don't have much
time for human race.
MARK BILLINGHAM: You can seehim giving that performance
that he's dreamed about,that he's fantasized about.
This is what he's beenworking towards for years.
DETECTIVE: In what sort oflocation did you pull them?
And a weather robot a computerwill put them in a irrational,
emotionless operation
[inaudible]..
NARRATOR: Griffiths, anexpert on serial killing,
knows that he
needs three murders
to be classified
as a serial killer
and he reveals an
ambition to shock.
He wants to shadow [inaudible]that was too extreme
for his hero, Peter Sutcliffe.
MARK BILLINGHAM: There is noperversion that he's not going
to claim responsibility for.
NARRATOR: Stephen
Griffiths gives
little away to the police.
But the true horror ofwhat they are dealing with
is about to be revealed
in the courtroom.
Griffiths appears
to be in control,
but when questioned
about his motives,
he is more revealing
about his mental state
than he intends to be.
Well, I'm misanthropic.
I don't have much time
for the human race.
A robot, emotionless operation.
NARRATOR: For Holmes,
these few words reveal
Griffiths' psychopathic nature.
He actually did,
honestly, reveal
part of his real character.
When he dismissively
said, oh, I'm a robot,
or why did you do this?
Well, I'm misanthropic.
I don't have much
time for humanity.
He basically didn't
relate to humanity.
It didn't affect him ifpeople suffered, because there
was no humanity in his life.
NARRATOR: Griffiths
arrives at the trial.
First, he has asked
to give his name.
The hush court isrevolted by his response.
MARK BILLINGHAM: For me, oneof the most chilling moments
is that first
moment in court when
he is asked to identify
himself and he says,
I am the Crossbow Cannibal.
NARRATOR: Word has
gone out that Griffiths
claims to have eaten
the flesh of his victims
in police interviews.
The tabloid papers questionedhim the Crossbow Cannibal.
Griffiths is canny, he
knows a serial killer
needs a memorable name.
MARK BILLINGHAM: For him,that's the big moment.
That's the moment
he has dreamed of.
He's being able to stand
up in public and say,
this is who I am.
That's what I want to be.
Nobody else can be
the Crossbow Cannibal.
That's me.
It's like opening his shirt andrevealing the S of Superman.
This is who I am.
NARRATOR: As the CCTV ofthe attack hits the news,
one of his former girlfriendsrealizes how lucky she was.
As I was watching it,
I was physically sick.
I went into shock for days.
I was like, oh God, whathe did to them poor girls,
nobody deserves that.
Nobody.
JOOLZ DENBY: I was horrified.
How awful it must have
been for that girl.
I just wanted to cry.
I hated him.
I hated him.
He's a loathsome
reptile of a man.
NARRATOR: Griffiths goes onto reveal in sordid detail
the prolonged agony
that the women suffered.
[grunting]
[punching]
Mobile phone footage
taken by Griffiths
reveals the ordeal experiencedby his second victim,
Shelley Armitage.
MARK BILLINGHAM:
The second victim
he had already filmed
on a mobile phone which
shows poor Shelley Armitagekind of hog tied in the bath
and stripped and spraypainted with my sex slave.
I mean, you know,
he was on a roll.
And it kind of makes
your blood run cold.
NARRATOR: Forensic analysisof the flat corroborates
Griffiths confession.
Blood from all three womenis found in the bathroom.
His claims to cannibalizesound sensational,
but experts on the case
believe that he did
go to such gruesome extremes.
CYRIL DIXON: Knowing what wedo about Stephen Griffiths,
this is a man who setout to be a serial killer
of the most grotesque kind.
He used all those books abouthomicide and dismemberment
to make himself into
the worst serial killers
that his warped imaginationcould come up with.
So I do find it crediblethat he'd eaten his victims.
MARK BILLINGHAM:
Griffiths killed
in a very unpleasant way.
And again, it was as if
he was trying to tick
as many boxes as possible.
I'm not just going to stabthem, I'm going to tie them
up and torture them
before I stab them,
and I might throw a
bit of [inaudible] in
and, oh, I'll tell
you what, then
I'm going to tell thepolice that I've eaten them.
Some of them I've cooked.
Some of them I've eaten raw.
You know, there is no, noperversion that he's not going
to claim responsibility for.
NARRATOR: CCTV at the flat andat the local railway station
also revealed how Griffithsdisposed of the body parts.
For Samantha Lundrigan,
geographical profiler,
his approach is, both,
cool and calculating,
while at the same time
chaotic and confused.
So on the one hand,
we've got an offender
who will go to
great lengths to try
and conceal forensic
evidence of his victims.
One of the victims
has never been found,
so he was clearly verysuccessful at doing that.
On the other hand,
we have this offender
who's completely chaotic.
Who is fully aware that theCCTV imagery of him and he's
carrying out crime
in front of that.
And also, someone who decidesto get on public transport
with a black bin liner
full of body parts,
and take the trip to actuallydispose of the bodies.
NARRATOR: Despite his expertisein the field of murder,
Lundrigan thinks
Griffiths was simply
too unstable to be successfulin his chosen path to infamy.
So he was called a bit ofa Jekyll and Hyde character,
and he had a diagnosed
mental disorder.
So he did veer from
these two extremes.
NARRATOR: For Holmes,Griffiths' slapdash approach is
rooted in his mental illness.
It seems odd that in
certain circumstances
he appears to be blatantlystupid in forensic terms.
So he makes gross errors becausehe doesn't really understand
humanity and how we relate andhow we see flaws in others,
he just mechanically does it.
And there's no room
in his mechanizations
for any humanity.
NARRATOR: In his
own twisted way,
Griffiths, the psychopath,desperately wanted fame.
But instead of achieving
it by appearing
on Pop Idol or X-Factor, hewould kill to gain infamy.
Bradford local, Joolz
Denby, sees Griffiths
as the ultimate want-to-be.
JOOLZ DENBY: I think Griffithswants to be a superstar.
Fame seems to be, to peoplewho have not been famous,
that it will make everythingthat you feel is wrong with you
all right.
But it's not quite
as easy as that.
CYRIL DIXON: I think
Griffiths is obviously
a serial killer
produced by a world
which is obsessed with fame.
People want fame now.
MARK BILLINGHAM: He's almost thefirst reality TV serial killer.
If he could have killed peoplein the Big Brother house,
he'd had done that, thatwould have been his dream.
That would have been
the ultimate for him.
NARRATOR: Billingham believesa documentary like this
would be part of the plan.
MARK BILLINGHAM: One wonderswhether in the very filming
of a program like
this we are kind of--
you know, when this
goes out, Griffiths
is going to be sitting watchingthis in the room of some prison
quietly ticking that boxgoing, I got my documentary.
That would have been
something that he'd
have wanted way back then whenhe was wandering around town.
NARRATOR: Griffiths
pleads guilty.
Despite an attempt to
convince the authorities
of his insanity, so thathe is transferred to a more
comfortable mentalinstitution, he is incarcerated
in a high security prison.
Within five days of the
trial, another atrocity
hits the headlines inCumbria, Northern England,
a man kills 12 people
on a shooting spree.
MARK BILLINGHAM: Griffithsis massive headline
news all over the world untilthe next killer comes along.
And suddenly he gets knockeddown that Google search list,
and he's knocked
off that front page.
JOOLZ DENBY: And I do actuallyremember saying to my friend,
I would be really annoyed.
NARRATOR: Griffiths flicks thefirst of many suicide attempts.
MARK BILLINGHAM: He has
to find some other way
to get attention, whichbecomes suicide attempts, which
become self-harm.
Vaguely pathetic, trying tohang himself with a sock.
JOOLZ DENBY: I think he
will feel very unhappy
that he isn't, now,
the great celebrity
that he thought he would be.
NARRATOR: He can't
handle the fact that he
is already being forgotten.