May 14, 2025 • 44 mins
Patrick MacKay: Britain’s Devil Worshipping Nazi-Loving Serial Killer
Patrick MacKay is one of the most disturbing figures in British criminal history — a man who called himself The Devil’s Disciple and idolized Hitler. Convicted of multiple brutal murders and suspected of many more, MacKay’s crimes were fueled by a twisted obsession with violence, death, and evil. From a violent childhood and early signs of psychopathy to chilling confessions and the possibility of dozens of victims, this episode takes a deep dive into the mind of a self-proclaimed servant of darkness.
We explore his sadistic methods, disturbing ideology, and the terrifying possibility that his true body count may never be known. Patrick MacKay remains one of the UK’s most terrifying serial killers — and one of the least understood.
Listener discretion is strongly advised — this episode contains graphic content, disturbing themes, and references to extreme violence.
Patrick MacKay, The Devil’s Disciple, Nazi psychopath, UK serial killer, British true crime, satanic killer, Patrick MacKay murders, serial killer psychology, child psychopath, Hitler obsession, real crime stories, psychopathy, disturbing true crime, violent killer, satanic influence, Patrick MacKay podcast, British serial killers, unsolved murders, mental illness and crime, true crime podcast, UK criminal history
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/best-true-crime-documentaries--6015157/support.
Patrick MacKay is one of the most disturbing figures in British criminal history — a man who called himself The Devil’s Disciple and idolized Hitler. Convicted of multiple brutal murders and suspected of many more, MacKay’s crimes were fueled by a twisted obsession with violence, death, and evil. From a violent childhood and early signs of psychopathy to chilling confessions and the possibility of dozens of victims, this episode takes a deep dive into the mind of a self-proclaimed servant of darkness.
We explore his sadistic methods, disturbing ideology, and the terrifying possibility that his true body count may never be known. Patrick MacKay remains one of the UK’s most terrifying serial killers — and one of the least understood.
Listener discretion is strongly advised — this episode contains graphic content, disturbing themes, and references to extreme violence.
Patrick MacKay, The Devil’s Disciple, Nazi psychopath, UK serial killer, British true crime, satanic killer, Patrick MacKay murders, serial killer psychology, child psychopath, Hitler obsession, real crime stories, psychopathy, disturbing true crime, violent killer, satanic influence, Patrick MacKay podcast, British serial killers, unsolved murders, mental illness and crime, true crime podcast, UK criminal history
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/best-true-crime-documentaries--6015157/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
In the nineteen seventies, London's police were baffled by a
series of bizarre murders.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
They were struggling to find any clues, They were struggling
to find a real pattern, and they were getting murders
all over the Metropolitan area.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
The perpetrator was a disturbed young man called Patrick mackay.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
He was like little terrorist. He seemed to have a
split personality.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
And the last of his crimes was to be the
most horrific of all.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
He'd been murdered with an axe, with many, many blows
to the head.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Even as a child, the warning signs were there.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
One of the teachers described him as a potential murderer
of women.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
But was Patrick mackay born to kill?
Speaker 5 (00:50):
If ever the term cold blooded applies to anybody, it
was Patrick McKay.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
The London areas of Chelsea and Knightsbridge have always been
home to the wealthy and powerful, full of luxury shops
and high end restaurants, but in the mid seventies the
piece here was shattered.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
The Metropolitan Police was confronted with a fairly extraordinary set
of crimes. They were muggings, robberies and also hambags matches.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The area of London, where these offenses started to take
place was very affluent, very trendy. They all came off
the King's Road area. They spread down to the waterfront
which faces onto Battersy and even today that is a
very very affluent area.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
There was somebody out there who was mugging old ladies
in a few isolated occasions killing them, so certainly there
was a feeling that there was a predator who was
stalking them.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
The mugger seemed to be befriending wealthy women, gaining access
to their homes, and on occasion he would murder them
in cold blood.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
Here you were dealing with a dangerous psychopath who could
kill at any time and without warning.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
In early nineteen seventy four, one such heinous crime would
shock London.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
It was Abela Griffith, the widow of a surgeon, and
she lived in Cheney Walk, that's a very smart street
in Chelsea facing the River Thames. She was physically assaulted,
probably strangled, but the murderer then also stabbed her.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
The body of eighty four year old Isabella Griffiths lay
undiscovered for almost two weeks.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
She was found in the kitchen stabs through the solar
plexus just below the heart with a knife, which was
then rammed into the floor.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
It appeared that Isabella Griffiths murderer had established some kind
of trust relationship by carrying her shopping or doing some
other chores for her. At all events, he knew exactly
where she lived and was able to persuade her to
let him into her home. That's where the crime took place.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Isabella Griffith's murder provided no clues as to the perpetrator.
The police was stumped and the bag snatching and petty
theft continued around London's more affluent areas. Then almost thirteen
(04:23):
months later, on the tenth of March nineteen seventy five,
the killer struck again.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Adel Price lived in Lounge Square. That's another fairly smart
part of London. She was obviously a wealthy person, and
just like the Griffiths case, the murderer had persuaded her
to let him in to her premises to try and
get a glass of water or some other pretext. At
(04:52):
all events, Once he was in there, he attacked her.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
The offender strangled the lady and she had a granddaughter
lodging there who came home, and the granddaughter actually saw
the offender. She didn't know it's the offender at the time.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
Leaving the premises, the murderer let himself out, and the
granddaughter passed somebody coming up the stairs towards the flat.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
When she got to the flat, she found one of
the rooms was locked from the outside. She let herself
in and her grandmother's body was there.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
And of course she raised the alert, not knowing that
the person she saw was undoubtedly the killer.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
And a police constable came and looked for suspicious circumstances.
When the granddaughter mentioned to him that the door of
the room had been locked from the outside at that moment,
the PC said, hold everything, this is a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Police were worried this might be just the beginning of
a gruesome spree, but were struggling to find a motive.
Speaker 7 (06:09):
There's myth about serracosis. They're all sexually compelled, not by
a long shot. Many are motivated by greed, anger will
motivate some power. Some have no particular reason at all.
They just start doing it, and then they keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Police were faced with a mystery.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Forensics were nowhere near as well developed as they are now.
So what evidence you did have didn't really lead you anywhere.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
The Metropolitan Police were struggling. They were struggling to find
any clues, and they were getting murders all over the
Metropolitan area. There was a patent building up that worried them.
They drafted something like fifty offices that the Metropolitan Police
as a supplementary murder squad, because if that spaite continued,
(07:05):
it could have been the worst serial killer they've ever known.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
With the murderer on the loose in the streets of London,
the police were feeling the strain. However, the next revelation
in this case was more bizarre and brutal than anyone
could have possibly imagined. In London in the mid nineteen seventies,
(07:38):
the Metropolitan Police were faced with a series of mysterious killings.
At least two women had been brutally murdered in their
own homes.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
The Metropolitan Police were realizing that this was becoming prevalent,
and they didn't know did it. They had no idea
where to go.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
However, the killer would next strike in the unlikeliest of
locations and in a way that would shock and terrify
a small community. Sean is a peaceful village near Gravesend
on the outskirts of London.
Speaker 8 (08:22):
It's such a pretty picturesque village, very very good community
and spirit. It's a perfect piece to live and work.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
It was home to Father Anthony Crean, a well respected
member of the community who was known for helping out
the needy.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Father Crean was a priest at the Corpus Christie home
called the Malthouse in Shawn. He had something like twelve
nuns living within his confine.
Speaker 8 (08:56):
He loved nature and he always was a companied by
his Jack Russell. Where he went, Jack went. He often
called on parishioners just to pop in for a chat
and say hello. And I don't think Jack was always welcome, however,
made no odds to Father Crean.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
On the twenty first of March nineteen seventy five, the
piece in sewn was to be irreversibly shattered. Detective Inspector
Ken Tappendon was at a black tie event with colleagues
fourteen miles away in Maidstone.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
We had a call about half past sight from Gravesend
Police to say that Father Crane had not returned home,
although he Jack Russell had, so there was the only
thing that put anything of suspicion in one's mind. Nothing
came in for another couple of hours, and eventually we
(10:01):
get another call saying he still isn't home, and now
it's dark and people are beginning to get quite worried
about it. A number of us go straight to the scene,
straight from the hotel. In our DJs.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Nothing could prepare Ken Tappendon for the gruesome scene that
confronted them.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
A nun was actually screaming and it would appear that
the priest had been found dead in a bath filled
with blood. He was in the bath in his Duffel coat,
he was in his wellingtons, and he had a wooly
hat on.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
This was a horrific, horrific murder. This was a frenzied
attack with a medieval weapon that caused horrific injury and wounds.
He was floating in a hideous mixture of blood and water.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
The detective superintendent who had come from headquarters, found an
axe with blood on it under the stairs which is
next to the bathroom. And this is the weapon that
killed Father Cree, and it was covered in blood. But
there's no doubt the blunt end of it was used
(11:32):
to smash the skull I know you get used to it,
but there's every now and again you'll find the murder
scene that is disturbing, and when you see the frosty
in which he was attacked and killed, you can't help
but keep thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
News spread fast through the tight knit community of Sewn.
Speaker 8 (12:00):
When we heard Father Crean had been murdered, everyone was
completely in chalk about it. Somehow we were all kind
of that thing couldn't happen on our doorstep, you know,
and we really felt very, very sorry for him to
(12:23):
have such a bad end to his life.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Desperate to find the killer, Detective Inspector Tappendon had a
moment of inspiration. He remembered a case involving Father Crean
from eighteen months earlier.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Having sat up all night puzzling through this one, what
came to my mind was a young man in his
early twenties called Patrick Mackay.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Father Crean had been helping Patrick McKay stay out of
trouble when Mackay betrayed his trust.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Father Crean had tried to befriend mackay, tried to give
him a helping hand, and in return, what does Mackay do?
He robbed the Catholic priest of a check altered the
check and cashed it.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
The day we told him he is being charged with
the check, he went quite berserk and I thought, then
this man's disturbed and something disturbed me about him.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
For fraudulently cashing the check. Patrick McKay had been defended
by Robin Clark.
Speaker 9 (13:54):
We're in a deprived part of Kemp where it is
a struggle for youngsters to get jobs, and he just
struck me as being part of that background. He's just
a normal criminal charge with the fences involving Father Green.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Remembering the connection between the priest and Patrick McKay, Ken
Tappendon acted quickly.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I asked Bob Brown and Mitt Wickluck, who were two
of my officers. I just said, I think it's mackay.
I don't know where he is, go and find him.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Two detectives were assigned to find where he was living.
He was living actually at by that time in a
hostel on the Great North Road in London, a hostel
for ex offenders ex prisoners, but he wasn't there.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
The hostile owner actually said that he was staying with
a family called Cowdry.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
They had no option but to simply go to the
electoral register and find all the cowdres who lived in
South London. And they had a remarkable stroke of luck
because the first family they knocked on the door, not
only was it the right family, but mackay was actually
in the house, sitting on the sofa.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Mackay quickly admitted the murder, but shockingly, he would not
stop there. Patrick McKay would go on to reveal a
litany of crimes that would stun the interviewing detectives. So
just who was this man seemingly capable of such horrific
and bloody murder. Patrick David McKay was born on the
(15:50):
twenty fifth of September nineteen fifty two. He grew up
in Dartford with his parents and two younger sisters. Rowland
Hayes went to school with him.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
In the playground. We was all like young animals running
around and some good people, some bad people, and Patrick
mckaye was one of the bad people. He was in
a special class what will be called special needs children
these days, but in those days they were just trouble
and he was like a little terrorist. There'll be a
(16:30):
girl standing there talking to her friend and he'd come
running in from a side that he couldn't be seen from,
blindsiding her, and he would shove a pincher, a pusher
and then run off again. The girl would be a
crying stuff like this, and he'd be laughing, looking over
his shoulder, laughing and running off, playing his next move.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
You know, I think it could be said that mackay
had a very stressful childhood. McKay's mother, Marion, was a
Creole lady from Guyana, and his father, Harold McKay, had
(17:06):
served in the army in the Second World War and
was very, very traumatized by the experience.
Speaker 9 (17:14):
When Patrick was young, Farther often laid Patrick into what
had happened in those years, how it scolled his life.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
If the father finds great satisfaction in regaling children with
these gory stories about people getting blown apart or him
killing people in the war, and that's going to have
a child, you know, imagining what that looks like, and
how do I get close to this? How can I
(17:47):
feel part of this?
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Harold McKay was a seemingly mild mannered accountant, but he'd
been traumatized to the extent that he turned into a
very violent and alcoholic character who often assaulted his wife
and often attacked the little boy. Patrick mercifully appears not
to have attacked his two daughters, and it was in
(18:15):
this atmosphere of domestic violence. I'm afraid that Patrick Mackay
grew up.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
Whether it's beating mom, getting drunk, following people, being belligerent,
whatever the father's doing, if the son thinks that's where
power lies, that's going to influence what the son later becomes.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
There are so many clues that Mackay's childhood was unhappy.
For example, his habitual cruelty to animals is tearing the
wings off birds. He's even putting a most disgusting thing.
He put a tortoise on a fire and then when
it was dead, through the caucus over the adjoining fence.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
People who develop into killers later, who are bullies are
going to be looking for living creatures that they can
easily control and that they can experiment on. And obviously
the closest thing to that would be the family pet
or neighborhood pets. Are you go out in the woods
and torture animals out there, you're basically looking for some
(19:30):
living creature that will feel pain so that you can
see what it's like to inflict this, and we certainly
see that in the past of a number of serial killers,
because that was a to their minds, a very good
starting point.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Mackay's strange behavior did not go unnoticed by his school friends.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
After school, we used to go walking around the town
a little bit and we used to go exploring that.
We used to climb up this through the trees and
then to some waste land and we used to play
around up there. The first time I went up there
actually with Patrick McKay, he picked a bell shaped flower,
filled it up with his urine and drunk it in
front of me, which I was absolutely gobsmacked, you know
(20:16):
when he did that, which was the reason he did it.
It was just to shock me, you know. You know,
he seemed to have a split personality, you know, I mean,
you could talk to him. He seemed to be normal enough,
but then he would suddenly run off on these long
legs and snatch something off of a pub table and
run off with it or something like that, you know,
or run into the front of a shop snatching run
out again. That was the sort of thing he did.
(20:37):
And then he would come back, you know with me,
and then he would be normal again.
Speaker 7 (20:42):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
As he grew older, Patrick McKay's behavior would become ever
stranger and more extreme. Where it would lead him would
stagger the nation and earn him the dubious title of
the most dangerous man in Britain. In the early nineteen seventies,
(21:05):
London had been plagued by an unexplained crime wave of
muggings and murder, culminating in nineteen seventy five with the
discovery of Catholic priest Father Crean in a bath of
his own blood. Twenty two year old Patrick David mackay
was arrested for his murder. As investigators looked into his past,
(21:29):
they would uncover a disturbing tale of madness and violence.
When he was ten years old, an event would occur
that would have a profound effect on the already unpredictable
young boy.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
One day, Harold mackay left for work as usual. The
last thing he said to Patrick before he left was
remember to be good, and on his way to his
office in London, he had a heart attack and died.
He was only in his early fifties. Patrick never saw
him again, did not attend the funeral which took place
(22:09):
in Scotland, and to all intents and purposes, his father
had just walked out of his life and there had
been no closure. He Mackay never really adjusted to the
fact that his father was dead.
Speaker 7 (22:29):
When the father dies, that will rip a huge hole
in his world because his identification lies with the father,
and it's almost inevitable that he will now take on
the father's characteristics and become sort of replace the father.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
When Dad died, don't forget it was only ten and
he took over his armchair straight away and bullied the
whole family, beat the girls, beat mother, just like father
had done.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
I knew him before his father died, and I think
that the die was already set. Maybe he found himself
in a more excitable state. He was more emotional afterwards,
but I think you know he was even at that age,
you know what he always was.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
After Mackay's father died, Marion Mackay found life very difficult,
though Heaven knows, it must have been fairly difficult while
he was still live, but from that point on things
went from bad to words.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Mary and Mackay moved with Patrick and his sisters to
graves End, but it would not prove to be a
happier family home.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
Mackay was always angry. I mean not least because of
the kind of awful upbringing that he'd gone through, and
it didn't take very much to provoke him. The police
frequently were called to domestic disputes of the house, and
Patrick Mackay was behind all of them.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
We had NSPCC officers here. Police were called out either
he was beating up his sisters, sometimes beating up his mother.
He would actually scream and shout. The neighbors would get alarmed,
they would call the police. Sometimes mother called the police
because she couldn't handle him.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
One local officer, in particular, Amy Tapp, was called to
the Mackay family home on many occasions, as often as
four times a week.
Speaker 10 (24:38):
He was just like a caged animal. He was emotionally
sort of very disturbed and at the time very mental.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Amy Tap bore the brunt of so much of this
because she knew him backwards. She could always talk to him,
she could always make him become rational again. And yet
she said he'd kill well.
Speaker 10 (24:58):
I felt that he should be at least put somewhere
and shut away so that nobody could be damaged as
a result of what his sort of mental reaction to people.
He was violent and obviously would hurt somebody in the end.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Whenever things got too bad, mackay would be placed in
various institutions to try and improve his behavior.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Extraordinarily in spite of the trouble, violence and dissension that
he caused in his home to his mother and his sisters,
Missus Mackay, his mother always agitated and campaigned to get
mackay out and back home, and very very often succeeded.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
There was only ever stable when he was away, and
yet mother always wanted him home, and when he got
home it was nothing but upheaval for the whole of
the family.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Between the ages of twelve and twenty two, Patrick McKay
would be in and out of various special schools, juvenile
remand centers, psychiatric units, and prisons. On no less than
eighteen occasions, he.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
Was in and out of mental hospitals, but nobody seemed
to appreciate the seriousness of his personality disorder to actually
do something about it.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Every time he was put away he was troubled, he
would get out on the roof of the Stone House
Mental Hospital, ripped the slates off, he went into court Lee's,
which was an approved score. In mard home, they beat
him and locked him in cupboards. He had a very
bad life himself.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
He would have resented being there, He would have hated
being there, and he would have been treated very badly
when he was there. And this isn't the way that
a young boy can be corrected. You know, you're only
going to make them worse like that.
Speaker 11 (26:55):
You know, those who evaluated mackay early on called them
a psychopath, and I think that's probably obviously correct. He
had no interpersonal bonding or attachment to anybody, But it's
more than that because he was just so strikingly antisocial.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
It was just him against the system, and the system
was very harsh.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
The authorities and psychiatrists were at a loss to know
what to do with the disruptive Patrick McKay, and rather
than improving, his violence and depravity would escalate. In addition
to numerous petty crimes, mackay turned to arson, attempting to
burn down a church.
Speaker 11 (27:48):
Fire setting is arousing individuals who had set a house
on fire, a car on fire, a field, and they
feel incredibly powerful by watching what they had done. So
those are good signs at all in somebody's background.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
He was sent to approved schools one after another. Interestingly,
at one of the approved schools, when he was only fifteen,
one of the teachers described him as a potential murderer
of women.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Despite this chilling prediction, Mackay was once again permitted to
return home.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
About a year later, when he was being treated in
a nearby mental institution, one of the psychiatrists described him
in writing as a cold psychopathic killer. Amazing foresight, as
it turned out.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
In nineteen sixty eight, age sixteen, Mackay was diagnosed as
a psychopath, someone showing signs of antisocial behavior and a
lack of remorse.
Speaker 7 (28:56):
We are finding that psychopaths in particular do not have
the same brain structures as normal people. Clearly, something's going
on with their decision making process that is involved neurologically
and not just psychologically.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Mackay's erratic behavior led to yet another stint in Moss
Side Psychiatric Hospital, where he demanded to be known as
Franklin Bolvolt the First, a name he proclaimed to be
feared and remembered like Hitler's. In fact, Mackay developed an
(29:40):
extreme and bizarre fascination with the Nazi regime.
Speaker 11 (29:47):
Mackay became interested in Nazis and Nazi atrocities because this
interested him. He was interested in committing atrocities. This is
what Mackay's psychology was. He wanted to hurt people in
any way he could, and so reading about or seeing
others like the Nazis what they did to other people
was immediately interesting to him.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
He had himself photographed with a Swastika on one arm.
His room at home, covered in memorabilia became a kind
of Nazi shrine. He was under the impression that he
was one hundred percent pure Arian, he was, of course,
one quarter black.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
With such a checkered past and erratic violent behavior, it
was no surprise Mackay's name was top of the list
when Ken Tappendon was investigating the horrific murder of Catholic
priest Father Anthony Crean. But with Mackay knowing custody, the
true depths of his depravity were about to be exposed.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
When we had him in custody, naturally his fingerprints had taken,
and those fingerprints turned out to be from the murder
of At our.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Price, Mackay's fingerprints had linked him to at least one
of the murders the Metropolitan Police had been unable to
solve for over a year.
Speaker 9 (31:24):
Let police got involved and very quickly it became quite
a drawn out police investigation.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
It was marvelous because they then went through a whole
succession of murders in the Metropolitan area where they'd been
searching for this person, and it was Mackay.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Mackay would admit to several other murders, but the extent
of the list of victims shocked even the most seasoned detectives.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
A lot of these murders came from his own word
of mouth, but we checked him out. They were murders.
One was the murder of Hydi Minilk on a train
at Catford. He opened the door and threw her out
on the track dead.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Frank Goodman was a tobacconist in North London. He was
bludgeoned to death in his shop just after he'd closed
and his shop was robbed.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
The murder of Missus Hines in Hackney, right next to
the Hackney Theater. He said when he's interviewed about that one,
that murder was as easy as washing my socks.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
The picture became clear Mackay had been responsible for all
the muggings, the murders of the old ladies, the murder
of the Catholic priest.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Now they had their killer in custody, the police started
piecing together the motives for these heenous crimes.
Speaker 11 (33:01):
Mackay started out killing elderly women. Why because elderly women
are a more vulnerable target as opposed to a younger
woman who has the potential to fight back.
Speaker 4 (33:16):
The odd thing about the crimes that Mackay committed he
was able to establish a relationship of trust with well
to do, middle class old ladies who were perfectly willing
for him to carry their shopping and to bring him
into their homes and offer him, I don't know, a
(33:37):
glass of water or cup of tea, whatever. But at
all events he had a manner sufficiently plausible, sufficiently charming
to take these old ladies in.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Robbing and murdering vulnerable elderly women made some sense to
the police. But why murder his supposed friend father cream
In amongst Mackay's belongings, police found photo booth pictures that
Mackay had taken the day before he killed the priest.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
He's snarling in them, and he's got his hands clawed
out like a cat, and you can see his eyes
are gone. They portray a person that schizophrenic, and I
think they portray a person that is so troubled that
the only place for him is to be in custody
(34:34):
or incarcerated medically.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
Patrick McKay used to use the word peculiar about himself.
He said that in the days leading up to a murder,
he felt peculiar, whatever that meant, and he then said
he felt peculiar in the days after a murder. So
I don't think he reveled in the crime. I wondered
at the time whether even he knew exactly what he
(35:04):
was doing.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
We're now in the center of Sean, only one hundred
yards from where Father Crean lived, and I know that
he frequented the Rose and Crown public house here, and
it was well known that he actually came with Patrick
McKay on the odd occasion.
Speaker 11 (35:27):
Mackay has an ability to pick out vulnerable people and
then he attacks them. Father Crean was very nice to him,
was a very supportive of him, and in Mackay's mind,
I believe he equated kindness with weakness. He saw our
weakness with Father Crean and he attacked them.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
When Patrick murdered Father Crean in that terrible way, I
think Patrick was kind of experimenting on what it would
be like to raise his level of aggression to that
point and see how it affected him, whether it disgusted
him or what he had done, or whether he loved it.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Mackay later described how after killing the priest, he filled
the bath and watched the battered body of his victim
floating in the bloody water for over an hour.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
He's calm by now, he tells us. I was very calmly.
It was just a wonderful, wonderful experience.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
There's something very mad about hanging around with the dead
body of the person you've killed. In the case of
Isabella Griffiths, he hung about with the body, filled the
sink with crockery and shoes. Again with Adel Price, he
hung around listening to the radio. He actually fell asleep
(36:53):
in a chair while the body was lying there. Very
difficult to get any kind of sensible, sane explanation for
that kind of behavior.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
He said. It was nearly as good as the experience
of when I saw a tramp coming over Hunger for
bridge who've been drinking methylated spirits, and he coughed, and
he said, I just thought he looked dirty and filthy.
And I picked him up and I threw him over
the bridge, he said, And what was wonderful about it?
(37:33):
He flattered down, just like a bird.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Mackay's psychopathic tendencies and extreme violence were clear, But was
he always destined to be a murderer? Was Patrick McKay
born to kill? Patrick mackay was arrested in nineteen seventy
(37:57):
five for the brutal slaying of six four year old
Catholic priest father Anthony Crean. The man who would later
simply be dubbed the Psychopath would be charged with several
counts of violence and murder.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
I saw in a newspaper a banner headline Patrick McKay
the most dangerous man in Britain. It was That's how
he was described, and it went on to say that
he had killed somebody and possibly others. His disbelief to
start with that I should have known such a person,
you know, and disbelief and shock and surprise.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Mackay was to be represented in court by the very
man who defended him when he fordulently cashed Queen's check
almost two years.
Speaker 9 (38:50):
Earlier, he'd have a good day and a bad day,
and on a good day, you know, you could be
talking like you and me. Now, bad day, more or
less phone the book at and walk out the door.
It became apparent that the number of years that he'd
been going through institutionalization, foster homes, unhappy circumstances at home,
(39:17):
drunken father who was a bit of a violent man,
and his mother who was quite volatile, that of itself
had taken its toll on Patrick. Life hadn't been good
to him, and I think it did leave its mark
on his character and personality.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
I mean, he went in and out of mental institutions.
The authorities must have known they had a very serious
case on their hands. There's no doubt he was released
by the authorities, unfortunately to kill.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
The police believed that MacKaye had committed up to thirteen murders,
but could only decisively prove three of them, Isabella Griffiths,
Adele Price and father Anthony Crean. His appearance at the
(40:34):
Old Bailey lasted a mere twenty minutes before MacKaye was
judged guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. Journalist
Nigel Nelson was there.
Speaker 5 (40:47):
Patrick McKay was a chilling presence. When you saw him
in court. It was almost as if his body didn't
belong to himself. It was like it belonged to somebody else.
And so if ever there was a case of demonic possession,
whether through mental illness or whether it's real, then Patrick
McKay was certainly it. The headline on our paper was
(41:12):
Devil's Disciple, and I think that sumed him up rather well.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Patrick McKay was sentenced to life imprisonment, but the question remains,
was he born to kill?
Speaker 11 (41:28):
I don't want to say anybody was born bad, but
if out of all of the individuals you look at,
mackay is probably somebody who had a very very strong
predisposition to behave in an antisocial way.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
Personally, I don't think that mackay premeditated these murders. I
just think something triggered this manic rage in him, some
little gesture, some action or other.
Speaker 9 (42:03):
He's often said as an argument against corporal punishment, but
if you're violent, somebody, they'll be violent back. And taking
the analogy of Patrick MacKaye's childhood, one can't help but
feel that there might be something in that because of
the violence perpetrated on him by his father.
Speaker 7 (42:26):
I think with mackay the environmental influences are so dominating.
From the moment he's born, violence was a norm, and
he gravitated toward it. So that really is a nurture
issue much more than a nature issue.
Speaker 5 (42:47):
At the time, he was the personification of evil. There
is no question that while he was carrying out these
hideous crimes he was completely overtaken and obsessed by evil.
He never set out, as far as I can see,
to do any of these things. They just happened, and
(43:08):
that was what was so scary about it. If ever
the term cold blooded applies to anybody, it was Patrick McKay.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Was Mackay born to kill?
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Well?
Speaker 4 (43:21):
He had a very disturbed and violent childhood, But then
a lot of people have that and don't become serial killers.
There must have been some genetic kink or other in
there that set off the manic rages. The combination of
his background and this personality trait was a perfect storm.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Could he be plausible yes, Could he be friendly yes?
Could he be unpredictable and dangerous totally? And could he kill? Yes?
That if he's born to kill? But from the age
of ten, he was going to kill, and he did repeatedly,
In the nineteen seventies, London's police were baffled by a
series of bizarre murders.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
They were struggling to find any clues, They were struggling
to find a real pattern, and they were getting murders
all over the Metropolitan area.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
The perpetrator was a disturbed young man called Patrick mackay.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
He was like little terrorist. He seemed to have a
split personality.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
And the last of his crimes was to be the
most horrific of all.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
He'd been murdered with an axe, with many, many blows
to the head.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Even as a child, the warning signs were there.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
One of the teachers described him as a potential murderer
of women.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
But was Patrick mackay born to kill?
Speaker 5 (00:50):
If ever the term cold blooded applies to anybody, it
was Patrick McKay.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
The London areas of Chelsea and Knightsbridge have always been
home to the wealthy and powerful, full of luxury shops
and high end restaurants, but in the mid seventies the
piece here was shattered.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
The Metropolitan Police was confronted with a fairly extraordinary set
of crimes. They were muggings, robberies and also hambags matches.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The area of London, where these offenses started to take
place was very affluent, very trendy. They all came off
the King's Road area. They spread down to the waterfront
which faces onto Battersy and even today that is a
very very affluent area.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
There was somebody out there who was mugging old ladies
in a few isolated occasions killing them, so certainly there
was a feeling that there was a predator who was
stalking them.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
The mugger seemed to be befriending wealthy women, gaining access
to their homes, and on occasion he would murder them
in cold blood.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
Here you were dealing with a dangerous psychopath who could
kill at any time and without warning.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
In early nineteen seventy four, one such heinous crime would
shock London.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
It was Abela Griffith, the widow of a surgeon, and
she lived in Cheney Walk, that's a very smart street
in Chelsea facing the River Thames. She was physically assaulted,
probably strangled, but the murderer then also stabbed her.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
The body of eighty four year old Isabella Griffiths lay
undiscovered for almost two weeks.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
She was found in the kitchen stabs through the solar
plexus just below the heart with a knife, which was
then rammed into the floor.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
It appeared that Isabella Griffiths murderer had established some kind
of trust relationship by carrying her shopping or doing some
other chores for her. At all events, he knew exactly
where she lived and was able to persuade her to
let him into her home. That's where the crime took place.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Isabella Griffith's murder provided no clues as to the perpetrator.
The police was stumped and the bag snatching and petty
theft continued around London's more affluent areas. Then almost thirteen
(04:23):
months later, on the tenth of March nineteen seventy five,
the killer struck again.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Adel Price lived in Lounge Square. That's another fairly smart
part of London. She was obviously a wealthy person, and
just like the Griffiths case, the murderer had persuaded her
to let him in to her premises to try and
get a glass of water or some other pretext. At
(04:52):
all events, Once he was in there, he attacked her.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
The offender strangled the lady and she had a granddaughter
lodging there who came home, and the granddaughter actually saw
the offender. She didn't know it's the offender at the time.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
Leaving the premises, the murderer let himself out, and the
granddaughter passed somebody coming up the stairs towards the flat.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
When she got to the flat, she found one of
the rooms was locked from the outside. She let herself
in and her grandmother's body was there.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
And of course she raised the alert, not knowing that
the person she saw was undoubtedly the killer.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
And a police constable came and looked for suspicious circumstances.
When the granddaughter mentioned to him that the door of
the room had been locked from the outside at that moment,
the PC said, hold everything, this is a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Police were worried this might be just the beginning of
a gruesome spree, but were struggling to find a motive.
Speaker 7 (06:09):
There's myth about serracosis. They're all sexually compelled, not by
a long shot. Many are motivated by greed, anger will
motivate some power. Some have no particular reason at all.
They just start doing it, and then they keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Police were faced with a mystery.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Forensics were nowhere near as well developed as they are now.
So what evidence you did have didn't really lead you anywhere.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
The Metropolitan Police were struggling. They were struggling to find
any clues, and they were getting murders all over the
Metropolitan area. There was a patent building up that worried them.
They drafted something like fifty offices that the Metropolitan Police
as a supplementary murder squad, because if that spaite continued,
(07:05):
it could have been the worst serial killer they've ever known.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
With the murderer on the loose in the streets of London,
the police were feeling the strain. However, the next revelation
in this case was more bizarre and brutal than anyone
could have possibly imagined. In London in the mid nineteen seventies,
(07:38):
the Metropolitan Police were faced with a series of mysterious killings.
At least two women had been brutally murdered in their
own homes.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
The Metropolitan Police were realizing that this was becoming prevalent,
and they didn't know did it. They had no idea
where to go.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
However, the killer would next strike in the unlikeliest of
locations and in a way that would shock and terrify
a small community. Sean is a peaceful village near Gravesend
on the outskirts of London.
Speaker 8 (08:22):
It's such a pretty picturesque village, very very good community
and spirit. It's a perfect piece to live and work.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
It was home to Father Anthony Crean, a well respected
member of the community who was known for helping out
the needy.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Father Crean was a priest at the Corpus Christie home
called the Malthouse in Shawn. He had something like twelve
nuns living within his confine.
Speaker 8 (08:56):
He loved nature and he always was a companied by
his Jack Russell. Where he went, Jack went. He often
called on parishioners just to pop in for a chat
and say hello. And I don't think Jack was always welcome, however,
made no odds to Father Crean.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
On the twenty first of March nineteen seventy five, the
piece in sewn was to be irreversibly shattered. Detective Inspector
Ken Tappendon was at a black tie event with colleagues
fourteen miles away in Maidstone.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
We had a call about half past sight from Gravesend
Police to say that Father Crane had not returned home,
although he Jack Russell had, so there was the only
thing that put anything of suspicion in one's mind. Nothing
came in for another couple of hours, and eventually we
(10:01):
get another call saying he still isn't home, and now
it's dark and people are beginning to get quite worried
about it. A number of us go straight to the scene,
straight from the hotel. In our DJs.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Nothing could prepare Ken Tappendon for the gruesome scene that
confronted them.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
A nun was actually screaming and it would appear that
the priest had been found dead in a bath filled
with blood. He was in the bath in his Duffel coat,
he was in his wellingtons, and he had a wooly
hat on.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
This was a horrific, horrific murder. This was a frenzied
attack with a medieval weapon that caused horrific injury and wounds.
He was floating in a hideous mixture of blood and water.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
The detective superintendent who had come from headquarters, found an
axe with blood on it under the stairs which is
next to the bathroom. And this is the weapon that
killed Father Cree, and it was covered in blood. But
there's no doubt the blunt end of it was used
(11:32):
to smash the skull I know you get used to it,
but there's every now and again you'll find the murder
scene that is disturbing, and when you see the frosty
in which he was attacked and killed, you can't help
but keep thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
News spread fast through the tight knit community of Sewn.
Speaker 8 (12:00):
When we heard Father Crean had been murdered, everyone was
completely in chalk about it. Somehow we were all kind
of that thing couldn't happen on our doorstep, you know,
and we really felt very, very sorry for him to
(12:23):
have such a bad end to his life.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Desperate to find the killer, Detective Inspector Tappendon had a
moment of inspiration. He remembered a case involving Father Crean
from eighteen months earlier.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Having sat up all night puzzling through this one, what
came to my mind was a young man in his
early twenties called Patrick Mackay.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Father Crean had been helping Patrick McKay stay out of
trouble when Mackay betrayed his trust.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Father Crean had tried to befriend mackay, tried to give
him a helping hand, and in return, what does Mackay do?
He robbed the Catholic priest of a check altered the
check and cashed it.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
The day we told him he is being charged with
the check, he went quite berserk and I thought, then
this man's disturbed and something disturbed me about him.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
For fraudulently cashing the check. Patrick McKay had been defended
by Robin Clark.
Speaker 9 (13:54):
We're in a deprived part of Kemp where it is
a struggle for youngsters to get jobs, and he just
struck me as being part of that background. He's just
a normal criminal charge with the fences involving Father Green.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Remembering the connection between the priest and Patrick McKay, Ken
Tappendon acted quickly.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I asked Bob Brown and Mitt Wickluck, who were two
of my officers. I just said, I think it's mackay.
I don't know where he is, go and find him.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Two detectives were assigned to find where he was living.
He was living actually at by that time in a
hostel on the Great North Road in London, a hostel
for ex offenders ex prisoners, but he wasn't there.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
The hostile owner actually said that he was staying with
a family called Cowdry.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
They had no option but to simply go to the
electoral register and find all the cowdres who lived in
South London. And they had a remarkable stroke of luck
because the first family they knocked on the door, not
only was it the right family, but mackay was actually
in the house, sitting on the sofa.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Mackay quickly admitted the murder, but shockingly, he would not
stop there. Patrick McKay would go on to reveal a
litany of crimes that would stun the interviewing detectives. So
just who was this man seemingly capable of such horrific
and bloody murder. Patrick David McKay was born on the
(15:50):
twenty fifth of September nineteen fifty two. He grew up
in Dartford with his parents and two younger sisters. Rowland
Hayes went to school with him.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
In the playground. We was all like young animals running
around and some good people, some bad people, and Patrick
mckaye was one of the bad people. He was in
a special class what will be called special needs children
these days, but in those days they were just trouble
and he was like a little terrorist. There'll be a
(16:30):
girl standing there talking to her friend and he'd come
running in from a side that he couldn't be seen from,
blindsiding her, and he would shove a pincher, a pusher
and then run off again. The girl would be a
crying stuff like this, and he'd be laughing, looking over
his shoulder, laughing and running off, playing his next move.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
You know, I think it could be said that mackay
had a very stressful childhood. McKay's mother, Marion, was a
Creole lady from Guyana, and his father, Harold McKay, had
(17:06):
served in the army in the Second World War and
was very, very traumatized by the experience.
Speaker 9 (17:14):
When Patrick was young, Farther often laid Patrick into what
had happened in those years, how it scolled his life.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
If the father finds great satisfaction in regaling children with
these gory stories about people getting blown apart or him
killing people in the war, and that's going to have
a child, you know, imagining what that looks like, and
how do I get close to this? How can I
(17:47):
feel part of this?
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Harold McKay was a seemingly mild mannered accountant, but he'd
been traumatized to the extent that he turned into a
very violent and alcoholic character who often assaulted his wife
and often attacked the little boy. Patrick mercifully appears not
to have attacked his two daughters, and it was in
(18:15):
this atmosphere of domestic violence. I'm afraid that Patrick Mackay
grew up.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
Whether it's beating mom, getting drunk, following people, being belligerent,
whatever the father's doing, if the son thinks that's where
power lies, that's going to influence what the son later becomes.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
There are so many clues that Mackay's childhood was unhappy.
For example, his habitual cruelty to animals is tearing the
wings off birds. He's even putting a most disgusting thing.
He put a tortoise on a fire and then when
it was dead, through the caucus over the adjoining fence.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
People who develop into killers later, who are bullies are
going to be looking for living creatures that they can
easily control and that they can experiment on. And obviously
the closest thing to that would be the family pet
or neighborhood pets. Are you go out in the woods
and torture animals out there, you're basically looking for some
(19:30):
living creature that will feel pain so that you can
see what it's like to inflict this, and we certainly
see that in the past of a number of serial killers,
because that was a to their minds, a very good
starting point.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Mackay's strange behavior did not go unnoticed by his school friends.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
After school, we used to go walking around the town
a little bit and we used to go exploring that.
We used to climb up this through the trees and
then to some waste land and we used to play
around up there. The first time I went up there
actually with Patrick McKay, he picked a bell shaped flower,
filled it up with his urine and drunk it in
front of me, which I was absolutely gobsmacked, you know
(20:16):
when he did that, which was the reason he did it.
It was just to shock me, you know. You know,
he seemed to have a split personality, you know, I mean,
you could talk to him. He seemed to be normal enough,
but then he would suddenly run off on these long
legs and snatch something off of a pub table and
run off with it or something like that, you know,
or run into the front of a shop snatching run
out again. That was the sort of thing he did.
(20:37):
And then he would come back, you know with me,
and then he would be normal again.
Speaker 7 (20:42):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
As he grew older, Patrick McKay's behavior would become ever
stranger and more extreme. Where it would lead him would
stagger the nation and earn him the dubious title of
the most dangerous man in Britain. In the early nineteen seventies,
(21:05):
London had been plagued by an unexplained crime wave of
muggings and murder, culminating in nineteen seventy five with the
discovery of Catholic priest Father Crean in a bath of
his own blood. Twenty two year old Patrick David mackay
was arrested for his murder. As investigators looked into his past,
(21:29):
they would uncover a disturbing tale of madness and violence.
When he was ten years old, an event would occur
that would have a profound effect on the already unpredictable
young boy.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
One day, Harold mackay left for work as usual. The
last thing he said to Patrick before he left was
remember to be good, and on his way to his
office in London, he had a heart attack and died.
He was only in his early fifties. Patrick never saw
him again, did not attend the funeral which took place
(22:09):
in Scotland, and to all intents and purposes, his father
had just walked out of his life and there had
been no closure. He Mackay never really adjusted to the
fact that his father was dead.
Speaker 7 (22:29):
When the father dies, that will rip a huge hole
in his world because his identification lies with the father,
and it's almost inevitable that he will now take on
the father's characteristics and become sort of replace the father.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
When Dad died, don't forget it was only ten and
he took over his armchair straight away and bullied the
whole family, beat the girls, beat mother, just like father
had done.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
I knew him before his father died, and I think
that the die was already set. Maybe he found himself
in a more excitable state. He was more emotional afterwards,
but I think you know he was even at that age,
you know what he always was.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
After Mackay's father died, Marion Mackay found life very difficult,
though Heaven knows, it must have been fairly difficult while
he was still live, but from that point on things
went from bad to words.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Mary and Mackay moved with Patrick and his sisters to
graves End, but it would not prove to be a
happier family home.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
Mackay was always angry. I mean not least because of
the kind of awful upbringing that he'd gone through, and
it didn't take very much to provoke him. The police
frequently were called to domestic disputes of the house, and
Patrick Mackay was behind all of them.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
We had NSPCC officers here. Police were called out either
he was beating up his sisters, sometimes beating up his mother.
He would actually scream and shout. The neighbors would get alarmed,
they would call the police. Sometimes mother called the police
because she couldn't handle him.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
One local officer, in particular, Amy Tapp, was called to
the Mackay family home on many occasions, as often as
four times a week.
Speaker 10 (24:38):
He was just like a caged animal. He was emotionally
sort of very disturbed and at the time very mental.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Amy Tap bore the brunt of so much of this
because she knew him backwards. She could always talk to him,
she could always make him become rational again. And yet
she said he'd kill well.
Speaker 10 (24:58):
I felt that he should be at least put somewhere
and shut away so that nobody could be damaged as
a result of what his sort of mental reaction to people.
He was violent and obviously would hurt somebody in the end.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Whenever things got too bad, mackay would be placed in
various institutions to try and improve his behavior.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Extraordinarily in spite of the trouble, violence and dissension that
he caused in his home to his mother and his sisters,
Missus Mackay, his mother always agitated and campaigned to get
mackay out and back home, and very very often succeeded.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
There was only ever stable when he was away, and
yet mother always wanted him home, and when he got
home it was nothing but upheaval for the whole of
the family.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Between the ages of twelve and twenty two, Patrick McKay
would be in and out of various special schools, juvenile
remand centers, psychiatric units, and prisons. On no less than
eighteen occasions, he.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
Was in and out of mental hospitals, but nobody seemed
to appreciate the seriousness of his personality disorder to actually
do something about it.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Every time he was put away he was troubled, he
would get out on the roof of the Stone House
Mental Hospital, ripped the slates off, he went into court Lee's,
which was an approved score. In mard home, they beat
him and locked him in cupboards. He had a very
bad life himself.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
He would have resented being there, He would have hated
being there, and he would have been treated very badly
when he was there. And this isn't the way that
a young boy can be corrected. You know, you're only
going to make them worse like that.
Speaker 11 (26:55):
You know, those who evaluated mackay early on called them
a psychopath, and I think that's probably obviously correct. He
had no interpersonal bonding or attachment to anybody, But it's
more than that because he was just so strikingly antisocial.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
It was just him against the system, and the system
was very harsh.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
The authorities and psychiatrists were at a loss to know
what to do with the disruptive Patrick McKay, and rather
than improving, his violence and depravity would escalate. In addition
to numerous petty crimes, mackay turned to arson, attempting to
burn down a church.
Speaker 11 (27:48):
Fire setting is arousing individuals who had set a house
on fire, a car on fire, a field, and they
feel incredibly powerful by watching what they had done. So
those are good signs at all in somebody's background.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
He was sent to approved schools one after another. Interestingly,
at one of the approved schools, when he was only fifteen,
one of the teachers described him as a potential murderer
of women.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Despite this chilling prediction, Mackay was once again permitted to
return home.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
About a year later, when he was being treated in
a nearby mental institution, one of the psychiatrists described him
in writing as a cold psychopathic killer. Amazing foresight, as
it turned out.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
In nineteen sixty eight, age sixteen, Mackay was diagnosed as
a psychopath, someone showing signs of antisocial behavior and a
lack of remorse.
Speaker 7 (28:56):
We are finding that psychopaths in particular do not have
the same brain structures as normal people. Clearly, something's going
on with their decision making process that is involved neurologically
and not just psychologically.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Mackay's erratic behavior led to yet another stint in Moss
Side Psychiatric Hospital, where he demanded to be known as
Franklin Bolvolt the First, a name he proclaimed to be
feared and remembered like Hitler's. In fact, Mackay developed an
(29:40):
extreme and bizarre fascination with the Nazi regime.
Speaker 11 (29:47):
Mackay became interested in Nazis and Nazi atrocities because this
interested him. He was interested in committing atrocities. This is
what Mackay's psychology was. He wanted to hurt people in
any way he could, and so reading about or seeing
others like the Nazis what they did to other people
was immediately interesting to him.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
He had himself photographed with a Swastika on one arm.
His room at home, covered in memorabilia became a kind
of Nazi shrine. He was under the impression that he
was one hundred percent pure Arian, he was, of course,
one quarter black.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
With such a checkered past and erratic violent behavior, it
was no surprise Mackay's name was top of the list
when Ken Tappendon was investigating the horrific murder of Catholic
priest Father Anthony Crean. But with Mackay knowing custody, the
true depths of his depravity were about to be exposed.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
When we had him in custody, naturally his fingerprints had taken,
and those fingerprints turned out to be from the murder
of At our.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Price, Mackay's fingerprints had linked him to at least one
of the murders the Metropolitan Police had been unable to
solve for over a year.
Speaker 9 (31:24):
Let police got involved and very quickly it became quite
a drawn out police investigation.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
It was marvelous because they then went through a whole
succession of murders in the Metropolitan area where they'd been
searching for this person, and it was Mackay.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Mackay would admit to several other murders, but the extent
of the list of victims shocked even the most seasoned detectives.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
A lot of these murders came from his own word
of mouth, but we checked him out. They were murders.
One was the murder of Hydi Minilk on a train
at Catford. He opened the door and threw her out
on the track dead.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Frank Goodman was a tobacconist in North London. He was
bludgeoned to death in his shop just after he'd closed
and his shop was robbed.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
The murder of Missus Hines in Hackney, right next to
the Hackney Theater. He said when he's interviewed about that one,
that murder was as easy as washing my socks.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
The picture became clear Mackay had been responsible for all
the muggings, the murders of the old ladies, the murder
of the Catholic priest.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Now they had their killer in custody, the police started
piecing together the motives for these heenous crimes.
Speaker 11 (33:01):
Mackay started out killing elderly women. Why because elderly women
are a more vulnerable target as opposed to a younger
woman who has the potential to fight back.
Speaker 4 (33:16):
The odd thing about the crimes that Mackay committed he
was able to establish a relationship of trust with well
to do, middle class old ladies who were perfectly willing
for him to carry their shopping and to bring him
into their homes and offer him, I don't know, a
(33:37):
glass of water or cup of tea, whatever. But at
all events he had a manner sufficiently plausible, sufficiently charming
to take these old ladies in.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Robbing and murdering vulnerable elderly women made some sense to
the police. But why murder his supposed friend father cream
In amongst Mackay's belongings, police found photo booth pictures that
Mackay had taken the day before he killed the priest.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
He's snarling in them, and he's got his hands clawed
out like a cat, and you can see his eyes
are gone. They portray a person that schizophrenic, and I
think they portray a person that is so troubled that
the only place for him is to be in custody
(34:34):
or incarcerated medically.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
Patrick McKay used to use the word peculiar about himself.
He said that in the days leading up to a murder,
he felt peculiar, whatever that meant, and he then said
he felt peculiar in the days after a murder. So
I don't think he reveled in the crime. I wondered
at the time whether even he knew exactly what he
(35:04):
was doing.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
We're now in the center of Sean, only one hundred
yards from where Father Crean lived, and I know that
he frequented the Rose and Crown public house here, and
it was well known that he actually came with Patrick
McKay on the odd occasion.
Speaker 11 (35:27):
Mackay has an ability to pick out vulnerable people and
then he attacks them. Father Crean was very nice to him,
was a very supportive of him, and in Mackay's mind,
I believe he equated kindness with weakness. He saw our
weakness with Father Crean and he attacked them.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
When Patrick murdered Father Crean in that terrible way, I
think Patrick was kind of experimenting on what it would
be like to raise his level of aggression to that
point and see how it affected him, whether it disgusted
him or what he had done, or whether he loved it.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Mackay later described how after killing the priest, he filled
the bath and watched the battered body of his victim
floating in the bloody water for over an hour.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
He's calm by now, he tells us. I was very calmly.
It was just a wonderful, wonderful experience.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
There's something very mad about hanging around with the dead
body of the person you've killed. In the case of
Isabella Griffiths, he hung about with the body, filled the
sink with crockery and shoes. Again with Adel Price, he
hung around listening to the radio. He actually fell asleep
(36:53):
in a chair while the body was lying there. Very
difficult to get any kind of sensible, sane explanation for
that kind of behavior.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
He said. It was nearly as good as the experience
of when I saw a tramp coming over Hunger for
bridge who've been drinking methylated spirits, and he coughed, and
he said, I just thought he looked dirty and filthy.
And I picked him up and I threw him over
the bridge, he said, And what was wonderful about it?
(37:33):
He flattered down, just like a bird.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Mackay's psychopathic tendencies and extreme violence were clear, But was
he always destined to be a murderer? Was Patrick McKay
born to kill? Patrick mackay was arrested in nineteen seventy
(37:57):
five for the brutal slaying of six four year old
Catholic priest father Anthony Crean. The man who would later
simply be dubbed the Psychopath would be charged with several
counts of violence and murder.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
I saw in a newspaper a banner headline Patrick McKay
the most dangerous man in Britain. It was That's how
he was described, and it went on to say that
he had killed somebody and possibly others. His disbelief to
start with that I should have known such a person,
you know, and disbelief and shock and surprise.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Mackay was to be represented in court by the very
man who defended him when he fordulently cashed Queen's check
almost two years.
Speaker 9 (38:50):
Earlier, he'd have a good day and a bad day,
and on a good day, you know, you could be
talking like you and me. Now, bad day, more or
less phone the book at and walk out the door.
It became apparent that the number of years that he'd
been going through institutionalization, foster homes, unhappy circumstances at home,
(39:17):
drunken father who was a bit of a violent man,
and his mother who was quite volatile, that of itself
had taken its toll on Patrick. Life hadn't been good
to him, and I think it did leave its mark
on his character and personality.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
I mean, he went in and out of mental institutions.
The authorities must have known they had a very serious
case on their hands. There's no doubt he was released
by the authorities, unfortunately to kill.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
The police believed that MacKaye had committed up to thirteen murders,
but could only decisively prove three of them, Isabella Griffiths,
Adele Price and father Anthony Crean. His appearance at the
(40:34):
Old Bailey lasted a mere twenty minutes before MacKaye was
judged guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. Journalist
Nigel Nelson was there.
Speaker 5 (40:47):
Patrick McKay was a chilling presence. When you saw him
in court. It was almost as if his body didn't
belong to himself. It was like it belonged to somebody else.
And so if ever there was a case of demonic possession,
whether through mental illness or whether it's real, then Patrick
McKay was certainly it. The headline on our paper was
(41:12):
Devil's Disciple, and I think that sumed him up rather well.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Patrick McKay was sentenced to life imprisonment, but the question remains,
was he born to kill?
Speaker 11 (41:28):
I don't want to say anybody was born bad, but
if out of all of the individuals you look at,
mackay is probably somebody who had a very very strong
predisposition to behave in an antisocial way.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
Personally, I don't think that mackay premeditated these murders. I
just think something triggered this manic rage in him, some
little gesture, some action or other.
Speaker 9 (42:03):
He's often said as an argument against corporal punishment, but
if you're violent, somebody, they'll be violent back. And taking
the analogy of Patrick MacKaye's childhood, one can't help but
feel that there might be something in that because of
the violence perpetrated on him by his father.
Speaker 7 (42:26):
I think with mackay the environmental influences are so dominating.
From the moment he's born, violence was a norm, and
he gravitated toward it. So that really is a nurture
issue much more than a nature issue.
Speaker 5 (42:47):
At the time, he was the personification of evil. There
is no question that while he was carrying out these
hideous crimes he was completely overtaken and obsessed by evil.
He never set out, as far as I can see,
to do any of these things. They just happened, and
(43:08):
that was what was so scary about it. If ever
the term cold blooded applies to anybody, it was Patrick McKay.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Was Mackay born to kill?
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Well?
Speaker 4 (43:21):
He had a very disturbed and violent childhood, But then
a lot of people have that and don't become serial killers.
There must have been some genetic kink or other in
there that set off the manic rages. The combination of
his background and this personality trait was a perfect storm.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Could he be plausible yes, Could he be friendly yes?
Could he be unpredictable and dangerous totally? And could he kill? Yes?
That if he's born to kill? But from the age
of ten, he was going to kill, and he did repeatedly,
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