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[dramatic music]
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- [Mackay Voiceover] I wish to make a statement.
I want someone to write down what I say.
I have been told I need not say anything
unless I wish to do so
and what I say may be given in evidence.
♪ Sometimes I feel like I'm blowing away ♪
♪ And the sky is broken
♪ And floods like a vein
♪ And I pray and I pray
♪ But the answers don't come
- [Mackay Voiceover] I grabbed hold of him by his arm,
I think the right one,
and we both fell on the floor in the hallway.
I struggled and he struggled on the floor
and he seemed to get extremely nervy.
He said, "Don't hurt me."
This seemed to get me even more excitable myself
and then I started to strike him
on the side of the head with my hand and with my fist.
[gentle music]
[birds chirping]
[gentle music]
The next thing I knew he had broken loose from my grip
and ran into the bathroom, which is just off the hallway.
[gentle music]
Whilst I had been on the floor of the hallway myself,
I picked up an ax from a box, lying just under the stairs,
and began to feel even more excitable.
[gentle music]
♪ Sometimes I feel like I'm floating away ♪
♪ And the tide is up
♪ It covers the pain
- [Mackay Voiceover] I have had
the above statement read over to me.
I have been told I can correct, alter
or add anything I wish.
♪ The answers don't come anymore ♪
- [Mackay Voiceover] This statement is true,
I have made it of my own free will.
Signed P. Mackay.
[gentle music]
Good gracious, this still, it's vivid today,
you know, you can remember all those years ago.
There is Father Crean in, really a bath of blood now.
[dramatic music]
This is where Mackay really attacked him.
You can see the damage he's done under his nostrils.
He really took a heavy lot of punching there.
[dramatic music]
By this time he had actually killed him
and he had killed him with an ax.
- [Reporter] Police have searched the house,
the sizable garden and a plowed field behind it
for signs of the murderer or his weapon.
- This is the ax that was found under the stairs
in Father Crean's house.
[dramatic music]
And this is the ax that actually
battered Father Crean to death.
It had brain and blood,
still probably has if you was to DNA it.
And down the handle you got blood.
[dramatic music]
But there's the ax and it's still today got the label on it
as an exhibit label in this case.
Christ, this is Patrick,
when you see him actually getting worked up
into a bit of a frenzy.
You look at this photo and this is where you can see,
if you're trained at it, the eyes of a killer.
Never be unconscious to people when you are looking at them.
[dramatic music]
Look 'em in the eyes,
they're like an Alsation gone wild.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] I feel terrible
about what happened all the more.
[crow cawing]
Because I do not know why or what made me do it.
I find it all a confusing matter.
You see, I'm scared of myself.
At times I often try to wonder why,
but it's just plain hell.
[dramatic music]
I'm Ken Tappenden, retired commander of Kent Police.
And in March, 1975
I was the Detective Inspector
in charge of Gravesend and Dartford Police.
[gentle music]
Gravesend has always been the place
that people never wanted to be posted to.
And there was a fair amount of rough hooliganism going on.
Lots of burglaries, lots of GBHs,
and in my time there, I think I had about five murders.
[typewriter keys clacking]
[dramatic music]
We came into what I call, on that 21st, a normal day.
But we were looking forward to our celebration do
in Maidstone, when we were all going out
in our DJs to enjoy the evening.
We all went to what was then the Great Danes in Maidstone,
for this dinner.
And that's when the first indication we had
that there was something wrong back in Shorne.
[dramatic music]
The village of Shorne was a very respectable
and very nice village.
[dramatic music]
Father Crean lived in the Carmelite home.
There was nine nuns only there.
He had been a vicar in Spain.
He had been a vicar in Gibraltar.
He'd been around the world a bit
before he came over to Shorne.
[dramatic music]
A nun had gone into the bathroom
and found the gruesome sight
of Father Crean in a bloodstain bath,
holding his head with like a towel on top of it
with his brain coming out.
So we knew then we had problems.
[dramatic music]
- I was awakened by one of the sisters
who said that Father had been found dead in his bathroom.
I thought, naturally, he had a heart attack.
I hardly got dressed and came across.
When I got there I saw Father in the bathtub, fully dressed,
submerged in the tub and bashed in the face,
blood all over the bathroom.
- We then left the function,
leaving our wives over there still in Maidstone
to return to Shorne, all in our DJs,
at about half past 12 in the morning.
[dramatic music]
As soon as we got there, we saw the ax,
which was under the stairs, in a box still,
but it was blood stained.
The minute we got into the room
you knew that was the weapon.
[dramatic music]
We then walked in.
We didn't have far to walk.
You go in, you see the bath on the right, as you go in,
you see his head hanging out,
you see the curtains were drawn,
blood was all over the walls.
The water that was in the bath was pure red.
It was blood.
It was so macabre.
I mean you've seen a lot of murders,
I've seen a lots of murders,
I've done 169 post-mortems.
But I hadn't seen a head
smashed from the skull down the nose before.
[dramatic music]
The human part is,
how can someone do it?
But then you've gotta revert to a detective.
You've gotta catch some bastard for it.
[dramatic music]
On the way back to the nick, I'm mulling over
and I'm mulling over.
But the minute I sat at my desk,
it just vividly came over me.
[dramatic music]
This could be Mackay.
[dramatic music]
- I'm Nigel Nelson.
I was formerly the crime reporter on the Kent Evening Post.
The people I was dealing with at the time
were the head of CID there, who was Lou Hart.
The detective inspector who I spent most of my time with,
which was Ken Tappenden.
And quite clearly they really were,
even though they'd seen some pretty horrific sites during their career,
they were both pretty hard bitten police officers.
They found the whole experience actually quite traumatic.
The timing from a newspaper point of view
was absolutely hopeless
because the killing happened on the Friday,
nobody knew about anything until the Saturday morning.
My problem was going to be
that we didn't publish until the Monday.
I talked to police contacts during that time.
One of the things they told me was,
they had a suspect and they were pretty sure
they would get an early arrest.
- My name's John Lucas.
I'm a journalist with National Newspapers
and I wrote a book about Patrick Mackay
called, "Britain's Forgotten Serial Killer."
In May, 1973, Father Crean met Patrick Mackay
whilst walking through woodlands,
near the village of Shorne.
They got chatting in the woods and retired to a local pub
where they drank quite a lot of alcohol.
Mackay was used to spending all of his money in pubs,
winning the favor of of other people,
trying to make friends.
On this occasion, Father Crean bought the drinks.
And it seemed to be a match made in heaven for them both,
at that time.
It has to be said, Father Crean was a heavy drinker.
That is an explanation for the friendship.
They kind of bonded over this love of alcohol.
- Father Crean was trying to sort of
hold out a hand of friendship to Patrick Mackay.
And he'd come to the notice of the police
because he stole a cheque from Father Crean,
it was a cheque for £30.
- He crudely alters it, to say £80
and he goes and cashes it in at a bank.
Father Crean quickly realizes the cheque's been taken,
reports it to the police.
It doesn't take the police very long to figure out
that it was Patrick Mackay who took it.
As soon as he's arrested,
Father Crean asked if the charges can be dropped,
Kent CID turn around and say,
"No, we're gonna go ahead with this prosecution."
- He was only fined £10.
It was insignificant in a way.
But it just showed him that he can't just do what he wants
and get away with it.
- Father Crean and Patrick
do rekindle their friendship for a short while.
However, Mackay doesn't pay any of the money back.
Father Crean tells him,
"I don't want anything more to do with you."
And he storms off in his car,
leaving Patrick Mackay in the rear window
and he thinks that's the last time he'll ever see him.
[dramatic music]
- It was about 20 past three in the morning of the 22nd
and that cheque, it was in my mind.
And they say, you have a hunch, I dunno if it's a hunch,
I don't call it anything other than I thought,
I reckon Mackay's done this.
So I call Bob Brown and Mit Whitlock out,
who dealt with him for the check,
and I said, sorry gents, go and find Mackay.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] My life was wasted.
And I now realized that it is now wasted forever to rot.
[dramatic music]
Something terrible had to come along
in order to reveal the decaying disaster
that my life has been since 1962.
[dramatic music]
- Patrick David Mackay was born on 25th of September, 1952
to Marion and Harold Mackay.
The family initially lived in North London,
they later moved to Dartford in Kent.
- I'm John Penycate,
I'm the co-author of the Life of Mackay,
the book was called, "Psychopath."
Mackay's childhood, in many ways,
explained what happened later.
It was a very violent household.
His father had been in the army, in the war, drank heavily
and was very violent towards his wife
and to Patrick the little boy.
- Although Harold was extremely abusive towards Patrick,
they did share a really strange bond.
One of the only times they really bonded as father and son
was when Harold would sit Patrick on his knee
and he'd talk about his experiences during the war,
the gruesome things that he had seen
and experienced himself.
And through this,
Patrick developed a fascination with death, war, conflict.
- [Mackay Voiceover] My father used to get violently drunk,
shout, scream and always when he was like this,
beat me with the back of his hand, sometimes his fist.
He must have had a tremendous drinking problem.
But of course he would never say so.
I remember that my father never at all
hit my two sisters when drunk, but only me and my mother.
He would make a lot of filthy accusations towards her.
This would take place,
usually, Friday nights and Saturday nights.
It was plain, bloody regular.
- My name's Laura Reilly.
I'm a criminologist at Birmingham City University.
It's definitely the perfect storm,
if you wanted to create someone who is psychopathic
and you say, let's take someone whose father has PTSD,
let's make that father engage in substance abuse
and be an alcoholic,
let's give him a difficult relationship with his wife
and make him a domestic abuser.
Let's then have him abuse his son
and then let's also put him in a time
when there wasn't great safeguarding, great understanding.
In the 1970s, if you'd just said psychopath to somebody,
they probably would've thought bad person
who commits a violent crime.
If said it to someone now,
they might have some awareness
of some of the other traits someone might have,
like parasitic lifestyle, like criminal versatility,
committing more than one type of offense
and other sort of elements that aren't actually criminal
and can be really helpful,
like having glib or superficial charm.
So, our understanding now is very, very different
than if we were having this conversation in the 1970s.
[gentle music]
- My name is Dr. Vicky Thakordas-Desai.
I'm a forensic psychologist
and I specialize in areas such as trauma,
mental health and personality disorder.
[dramatic music]
As a result of Mackay's father's alcoholism,
the family didn't have the means to survive.
That sort of low socioeconomic status,
that level of poverty,
alongside the trauma that he was experiencing,
really started to set those foundations
for the types of behavior that we subsequently see.
- In November, 1962, Harold who's working as an accountant,
leaves for work one morning.
The last thing he says to Patrick is,
"Remember to be good."
Later that morning he drops dead at the train station.
[gentle music]
Unfortunately for Patrick,
the way he hears about his father's death
is from a neighbor,
as he's just casually walking home from school.
It shocks him into complete silence,
he becomes incredibly withdrawn.
And he seems never to be able
to get to grips with his father's death.
Outside of the family home, he is a playground bully,
he's a delinquent, a shoplifter
and he is engaging in lots of petty crimes at this point.
- In Mackay's case, his offending massively escalates.
He does sort of sanitize his previous offending
when he discusses it
and says that he was a bit of a tearaway before then.
But actually it's only after his father dies
that he goes off the rails.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] In one way, his death
was a relief to me, at the time.
But also on the other hand
it was a natural loss of a father who, like a lot of men,
have their good sides as well as their bad sides.
[gentle music]
But it was also the year
when I seemed to change within myself
to an extreme extent, all round.
[gentle music]
- The family moved to Gravesend in 1967,
this is after Harold's death.
Patrick would do things
like he will sit in his father's old seat.
If anyone tries to sit there, he will scream
in a blood curdling rage,
he'll throw himself on the floor
and almost appear to have a fit
where he's frothing at the mouth.
- He then took on the role
of being the man of the house, it seemed,
and almost adopted his father's behavior.
And that came out through his violent attacks
and abusive behavior towards his mother, particularly,
and subsequently his sisters.
[dramatic music]
- Sometimes we find that when children
grow up in a house with domestic abuse,
far from becoming protective of the abused parent,
usually the mother,
they actually begin to identify with the abuser.
That might seem really odd and counterintuitive,
but you've gotta think about it
in terms of the lesson it's teaching you,
the survival instinct.
It is saying you have two role models here,
passive mom who is a victim
and violent dad who is obviously an abuser.
Do you wanna be the victim or do you wanna be
the one who's victimizing?
[dramatic music]
- This is where Patrick lived with his family.
This was Frobisher Way in Gravesend.
The neighbors used to get quite concerned about this house
because as he was getting more and more unruly,
in the house, then the neighbors
used to call social services.
[gentle music]
- My name is Di Dooley.
I used to live next door to Patrick Mackay
and his mom and two sisters.
Most of the neighbors and the children,
they were in fear of him.
My mom used to tell me to keep away from him
because of the way he was.
He was very imposing.
He was just like this dark shadow in the street.
- I'm Pat Poulson, live in Frobisher Way,
have done since '67.
For a while, next door but one,
lived a family called Mackay.
They pretty much kept themselves to themselves
when they moved in.
But then there was a number of occasions
when I'd look out of the kitchen window
or the landing window and see one
or both of the girls lived there,
sitting on the garage roof.
And it soon came apparent that they were up there
to keep away from their brother, Patrick.
Try to be polite here,
he was a slightly strange looking young man, very skinny
and he just had, there was something about his face,
his eyes in particular
that just made you feel a little uncomfortable about him.
[gentle music]
- My mom, you know, obviously,
grew quite close with the mom and the girls next door,
so she was obviously worried about them.
So she used to always say to them,
"Look, you know, my back door is always open,
"the back gate's open."
They knew it was their safe place, somewhere for them to go.
You just knew something was going to happen.
You could hear it early on, hear it starting.
It would just get louder and louder.
So my mom would always be in the kitchen,
like at the window,
I think, waiting for them to come in.
You could see where he'd hit them
and they had bruises on their faces
and their arms and everything,
so you could see where he'd attacked them.
You could still hear him smashing things up in the house.
They just needed to get out of there
because of the way he was.
Two or three policemen would come
and try and calm things down
and they were never able to calm it down.
They would have to call for more policemen to come.
It would be like eight, 10 policemen
having to carry Patrick out of the house,
because he would be screaming and fighting
that he wasn't going to go anywhere.
[dramatic music]
- Patrick Mackay is a typical psychopath at this point.
He's experimenting with inflicting pain
on defenseless creatures,
so things that are more vulnerable than him,
the pet cat, the dog,
he's seen by neighbors killing birds in the garden
and throwing them up in the air as if they're toys.
- He would catch birds and pull the wings off them
and then he set fire to his tortoise
in the back garden there one day.
Well, the neighbors naturally
were quite alarmed about all this.
- Thinking back,
maybe everything that my mom had said to me,
it turned out to be true, didn't it?
Turned out to be true,
that he, you know, he wasn't a nice person.
- As a juvenile, he was committing crimes
all over the place.
And although he used to live at home with his mother,
eventually when he'd come into his mid-teens,
he used to slope off anywhere.
They didn't know where he was.
His mother would never let you know where he was.
She used to say he is a grown man.
A grown man at 16, 17, he wasn't.
[dramatic music]
- These factors are very much indicative of a really,
sort of, dysfunctional personality style emerging.
But even at that age, it would be hoped
that he would have had and received appropriate support
and intervention to change that trajectory.
But that wasn't the case for Mackay.
He went on to continue.
And those behaviors increased in severity and intensity.
Without appropriate intervention at the right stages
and without the right support,
he was moving along a trajectory
that suggested that he would and could
become a serious violent offender.
[dramatic music]
- I suppose nowadays that he would've been
removed from his home.
But at the time, his mother always forgave him,
always took him back.
And even right to the end, she said
that Patrick was not a monster,
he was just a very sick young man.
[dramatic music]
- He often used to disappear for periods on time,
when it was nice and quiet.
You wouldn't have known there was anybody living there.
But when he came home,
all of the neighbors soon got to the stage
where you thought, "Oh gosh, he's home.
"Are we going to have more problems?"
I mean there was one incident, in particular,
when we had a lot of police presence up here
and they had ladders outside the house
up to the small bedroom window.
And we learnt later that Patrick was actually
in the small bedroom and had positioned himself
between the end of his bed and the door
and had a bayonet positioned
so that the handle was against the door
and the point was against his stomach.
And just telling it, you know, "If you try and break in,
"you'll be responsible for killing me."
And the incident went on for some time.
I mean, the police came round to the houses,
asking us, "Definitely don't let the children out
"and if possible, don't go out of the house at all
"until this is over."
And eventually they did get into him and he was taken away.
[dramatic music]
- My name's Dr. Harriet Garrod.
I'm a consultant counseling psychologist.
I have been working in forensic hospitals and prisons
over the last 20 years.
[dramatic music]
Mackay had had very little opportunity for support
and there was very little opportunity for help.
Particularly in his formative years, growing up,
he is in and out of psychiatric institutions
on a regular basis and reform schools
and behavioral institutions.
And what all of these places have in common
is that they're treating the symptoms and not the cause.
So they're treating the behavior,
but they're not asking why the behavior is happening.
Therefore, he doesn't get the help that he needs
and his behavior continues to escalate
as he continues to hate the world,
carrying his unresolved trauma with him.
- 26th of July, 1968,
Patrick attacks a 12-year-old boy in the street,
strangles him and steals his watch.
He later says that if he could have done,
he would've killed this boy.
He's taken to Astrid Remand Center
where he is seen by a psychiatrist.
This is the first time
anybody actually gives a proper diagnosis
of what could potentially be going on in Mackay's head.
He's found to have an explosive temper
and it's predicted that without intervention,
he'll go on to become a cold, psychopathic killer.
[dramatic music]
- That would not be something
that most professionals would feel comfortable doing now,
it would not be common even back then.
Normally, we don't diagnose children with psychopathy
because it's seen as something that you kind of,
it's hard to, some of the traits it's hard to define
whether some of this is something that you will,
as a judgment said to him, grow out of.
Nowadays, if he was to be diagnosed with anything,
it would be more likely to be conduct disorder,
which is often seen as a precursor.
It's about rebelling against authority,
acting out in a way that is, you know, very, very shocking.
- It was a very experimental time in psychiatry
where people didn't really know what to do with such people.
So there was a situation where a lot of criminals
and a lot of psychiatric patients with criminal behaviors
were essentially warehoused.
[dramatic music]
- The sad fact was
that he was a violent disturbed character,
but without mental illness symptoms.
And that the doctors and psychiatrists,
with whom he came into contact, were forced to conclude
there wasn't much they could do about it.
Therefore, they wanted him off their hands.
And he was released over and over, prematurely,
or shuffled from one institution to another.
[dramatic music]
- Court leaves treated him badly,
I think they shut him in cupboards.
He did take a few beatings, there's no doubt about that,
which didn't enhance his kind of persona at all.
Just made him worse, just made him what he was, a bully.
And even in the earlier days when he was just over 15,
Amy Tap, and she's a WPC at Dartford,
one day, couldn't get into him,
took four men with a mattress to get into the cell.
And Amy wrote that day,
"This person will kill before he is much older."
- He was in Moss Side.
The Mental Health Review Board,
at the urging of Mackay's mother,
twice let him out
because of his plausibility, his articulacy,
his seeming normality.
But that's the key word, seeming.
A psychopath is not normal.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] In Moss Side,
I was classified as a psychopath, but without mania.
I have always believed that I have not just a problem
of being psychopathic on its own,
but instead having psychopathic mania.
This has always been my personal opinion on the matter
and believed no one to judge one's mind better,
in most cases, than oneself,
since the mind is such a complex machine.
- What should have happened, and probably would nowadays,
would be, he'd have been picked up much earlier
as being a problem, you could see
what sort of danger he might pose in the future
and be dealt with.
And he never was. He went inside, he then went outside again,
carried on committing crime, back inside again.
Nobody ever seemed to actually understand the enormity
of what they were dealing with
and try and keep him where he should have been,
which was in a secure mental unit.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] When I was eventually discharged,
I can say that despite the sudden step
to the outside community as a whole,
I had at the time only the best intentions
in the living of my life.
But one cannot unfortunately always foresee
the certain type of stigmas that can form and come to be
for some people in such an imperfect world as this.
- He understood himself, he was the personification of evil.
The big film at the time that was going around
was, "The Exorcist."
And he absolutely loved that film.
He became obsessed with that film.
He collected Nazi memorabilia, he worshiped Hitler.
And when he talked about Hitler,
he tried to speak in a German accent.
[dramatic music]
- Mackay had a twisted devotion towards Nazi ideology.
It seemed, in a bizarre way, that he found something
that he could form a sense of belonging and identity with,
and it served to really reinforce
some really quite extremist and dark views that he held.
- Mackay went so far as to fashion himself,
a homemade Nazi uniform with a armband
and he would wear jack boots.
And on occasion he would goose-step outside in the street.
He also had a huge wooden eagle and Swastika,
which I've no idea where he would've
acquired something like that,
which he kept in his bedroom.
It was a shrine to the Nazis.
At one point he'd come up with a new name for himself,
which was Franklin Bollvolt the First.
And he thought that this was a name
that would ring out like Hitler's,
it would unite the world under his leadership.
And the thing that he always boasted about
was that if he was in charge,
he would kill all the useless old people.
- But he brought into a belief system
that was predominantly about a supreme race of people
and this idea that other people could be eliminated.
[speaks in foreign language]
- He was starting to really take on this ideology
and think about how he could make it his own.
And that appeared to excite him
and gave him a sense of purpose, in a way.
- He's very angry with the world,
he has many, many unresolved issues
related to his own traumas.
And when he sees others, he perceives them
to have what he does not have
and therefore he seeks to destroy that.
[dramatic music]
- By the age of 21, Mackay had racked up
at least a dozen convictions for various offenses
ranging from petty theft to assault, burglary,
possession of offensive weapon.
Things just seemed to be getting worse and worse.
And as he got older,
the seriousness of his convictions just increased.
[dramatic music]
- We didn't get police cars down this road,
so once they started to sort of come up
and park outside Mackay's house, on a fairly regular basis,
you would just sort of be wondering,
"What's he done this time?
"Is he going away?"
Your mind works overtime, doesn't it,
in those sort of situations.
But say, none of us imagined in our worst dreams
that he was capable of murder.
- [Reporter] The house stands at the edge of the village.
And at night there was no one around
to see or hear the murder.
- By then we'd started inquiries with Marion, the mom,
and she told us all kinds of lies.
She told us she hadn't seen him,
he hadn't been to the place.
We did find a number of neighbors
that had actually seen Mackay come out of the house
and walked toward Shorne.
So it was a fallacy for Marion to say he'd never been there.
Pat Poulson, a near neighbor, she witnessed the whole thing.
- I glanced out the window and saw Patrick walk past.
As we did every time we saw him thought,
"Oh, what's gonna happen this time?"
Even though he was walking away from the house,
that didn't mean he wouldn't come back.
[car engine revving] Lo and behold, the next day,
there was quite a large police presence in the street,
knocking on everybody's doors.
And when they knocked on mine, they just,
they gave a description of someone
and asked if I'd seen anyone
answering that description recently.
And straight away I said,
"Well, that description fits Patrick Mackay
"from next door, but one.
"And yeah, I saw him yesterday."
So they immediately said, "That's very interesting.
"We'll make a note of it.
"A senior police officer will be round later "to interview you."
And then that's when we found out
that he was suspected of of murder.
[dramatic music]
- When Brown and Whitlock left us,
they soon established that he had digs in North London,
on Great North Road.
They went to there and confronted the bloke called Brian,
who run a hostel really, as opposed to digs.
Whilst they were there,
Mackay actually rang the hostel owner, Brian.
Brown and Whitlock were aware it was Mackay
and just whispered to Brian, "Don't say we're here,
"just see where he is though."
But Mackay got the wind of it.
He just realized that something was amiss.
And the only clue they had where he could be
was that he went with a lad called Cowdrey,
and that was one of his best friends.
- Mackay was hanging out on some waste ground
in South London,
and he met a couple of young boys, the Cowdrey brothers.
This friendship developed somehow.
Mackay was invited to spend time
at the Cowdrey house in Stockwell.
The parents of the family, Bert and Vi Cowdrey,
who Mackay began calling mom and dad.
[gentle music]
- Brown and Whitlock went and knocked the door
of the first Cowdrey family that they found,
Mackay was standing in the doorway.
He was actually standing in the hallway.
So, of course they knew him well and they grabbed him
and I think they took him back to the local police station.
But even on the way back to the police station,
they'd cautioned him and he had coughed the job.
Mackay had admitted the murder.
[dramatic music]
When we got him back into Kent,
this was taken at Northfleet Police Station.
And I did know him as a younger boy,
but this is how I remembered him
when he first come into custody for the Crean murder.
I'll never forget that face, I'll never forget that picture
because to me that was Patrick.
Might not know him now, but that was Patrick then,
you know, could go wild in the eyes.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] I went to Gravesend
by train last Friday afternoon,
21st of March, 1975.
I won a chicken in a raffle and took it home
for my mother to cook for me.
- That was not true and he admitted later,
in an ancillary statement,
that he had stolen it from a local store.
- [Mackay Voiceover] I talked with my mother,
but I was only at home for about 15 minutes.
I'm not at all sure about the times,
but I left the house about half past four.
I walked to Father Crean's house at Shorne.
From my own house, I went along Thong Lane
to a country lane that branches off from Thong Lane.
I walked all along that lane past the school at Shorne,
through Shorne Village, past the Rose and Crown
to Father Crean's house.
[dramatic music]
- This is the dangerous part about him.
Patrick could be quite affable.
Actually, I'm gonna say something now,
I never thought I'd say to you,
he could be quite likable.
Patrick could be calm, Patrick could be pleasant,
Patrick got upset, Patrick became aggressive.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] When I got there,
I saw the front door was just slightly ajar,
just enough to put a finger in.
I saw his car there and I saw smoke
from a bonfire in the back of the house,
so I knew that Father Crean was in.
I pushed the door open and a little dog brushed past my leg
and ran out of the door.
I went into the hall of the house
and called Mr. Crean, are you there?
There was no reply.
[dramatic music]
After about five minutes, I heard the front door open
and then saw Mr. Crean come into the hall.
He didn't seem to see me.
I walked up to him.
And when I was about an arm's length away, I said,
"Mr. Crean, it's me, Patrick Mackay."
He had his back to me.
He turned around and he shouted, "Oh God,
"I wasn't expecting to see you here."
- I think on the first approach,
Crean was worried sick to see him there at his premises.
When he got worried
and when he started getting agitated himself,
Crean, Father Crean, Mackay got agitated.
And as Mackay got more agitated,
then of course things went totally wrong.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] I said, I've come to talk things over
about the money I owe you.
He seemed to panic a bit
and started to run out of the house.
This seemed to upset me a bit.
- And by then there was a struggle taking place
between him and Mackay.
But you can just see the door post,
on the right hand side of this picture.
And he pushed him through the door there,
which then propelled the vicar into the bath straight away,
into a dry bath.
Father Crean was never gonna win that.
Mackay had the strength of probably six men
when he really got worked up.
And on this occasion, I would suspect
that's exactly what happened to Crean.
- [Mackay Voiceover] He then started to annoy me even more
and I kept striking at his nose with my arm
and the side of my hand.
I then pulled out my knife from my coat pocket
and repeatedly plunged it into his neck.
I then got a little more excitable
and stuck it into the side of his head
and then tried to plunge it into the top of his head.
This bent the knife.
- And this was a dagger.
You've got to do something
to bend a dagger in half in someone's skull.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] He had been
in the sitting up position with the knife,
but when I first hit him with the ax,
he sank down into the bath.
I then repeatedly got increasingly more annoyed
and lashed at him with the ax.
All this seemed to happen very fast.
- Every strike he delivers, and as the blood flows more,
Mackay becomes more and more excited.
He is engaged in what is called thrill-seeking behavior,
which is a typical trait of psychopathy.
Psychopaths seek thrills.
And as they seek more thrills,
the thrills become more extreme.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] I threw the ax to the floor,
ripped the plug from the wash basin
and rammed it into the bath, then turned on the taps.
- He said, "There was nothing more lovely
"than dunking him up and down in the water in that bath,
"still in his top coat, in his wellingtons,
"dressed as he would be if he went out
"for a walk with the dog."
Mackay thought that was quite a wonderful scene.
[dramatic music]
- This was the act of a seriously crazy killer.
But chopping somebody up with an ax, blood everywhere,
sticking him in the bath, running the tap,
sitting there watching the man die,
this was the extremity of Mackay's psychopathy.
This was the most horrible of crimes.
- [Mackay Voiceover] Then I stayed in the bathroom
for about an hour.
I was just watching him sinking
and floating about in the bath.
And I then walked out of the house
and walked around to the back of his house
picking up bits and pieces of cinders from the fire
and bits of soil, just mucking about, doodling in a sense.
Then I went back in the house and into the bathroom
and stayed there for about a quarter of an hour.
I then thought of the chicken at my mother's home
and walked out of his house altogether.
- We were about to go
to a local magistrate's court on remands.
He heard that his mother would be in court to see him,
and I could see he was getting more wild
about his mom's appearance at court
and more aggravated about it.
And then he said, "Would you do my shoes up?"
When you look at the eyes of a killer,
look at them and you'll know
you're looking at the eyes of a killer.
And when Patrick looked at me, I was quite concerned.
And I looked at his eyes and I said,
do your own fucking shoes up.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] The only thing I want to add
is it didn't seem to trouble me too much, what I had done,
on hearing it in the paper.
- As a crime reporter, a murder is your top crime,
of course, I was excited, it was a fascinating murder.
The restrictions at the time
were even greater than they are now.
So broadly once he was charged,
you can't use any details in the newspaper
about what has happened.
So apart from saying name, age, address, that kind of thing,
there was very little you could do.
So for the next few months after that,
I could say almost nothing about what had happened.
But then it did give you a chance
to actually investigate the whole thing properly.
So the next few months was spent largely
on looking at the various things
that Patrick Mackay had done,
trying to piece together his life
and also piecing together the various crimes he'd committed
over the previous few years.
Excitement turned into some dread
about what I might find out next.
And the more I delved into the personality of Patrick,
the more I found that really disturbing.
[dramatic music]
- My name is David Crinnion.
In 1975, I was a Detective Constable
at Gerald Road Police Station,
dealing with all the day-to-day crimes that were reported,
burglaries, assaults, robberies.
Gerald Road Division was basically Belgravia,
parts of Victoria and Victoria Station
creeping across towards Chelsea.
A very high net worth area, generally speaking.
Female victims were being attacked on the street.
And also the subject
of what are known as artifice burglaries,
whereby people talk their way into people's houses,
either by saying, oh, they've heard a noise,
or they've seen water running,
or sometimes just by basic threats.
Once in there they steal what they can and leave.
And they weren't just happening at Gerald Road,
they were happening at Rochester Road,
which was the adjacent division,
they were happening in Chelsea,
they were happening in Fulham,
they were happening all over the place.
- I'm Dr. Nell Darby and I'm a crime historian
specializing in looking at crime reportage.
When you think of the 1970s,
you do think about kind of economic struggles,
political crises, three day week.
There's problems in terms of high unemployment
and thus political dissatisfaction, alienation,
that kind of thing.
When you've got high unemployment,
you've got poverty related issues.
So if you are struggling to feed your family
to maintain a household, it's more likely then
that you are going to commit petty crime,
just to kind of get by.
- Well, you have to understand that London's a big place,
eight, 10, 12 million people living there.
A lot of people moving about.
It's 50 years ago that we're talking about now.
There wasn't the CCTV that there is now.
There weren't the other methods of identification.
It was much more difficult then
to pick an individual out of what was
a fairly transient population,
particularly when you have a number of underground stations
and Victoria Station underground.
How many people come through there every day?
It's difficult.
There was a certain theme
running through the robberies and the burglaries,
that the individual responsible for them
had said to the victim, "You better hurry up
"because I have to be back in Springfield Hospital."
Which is a mental hospital in Southwest London
by a specified time.
And of course anybody would be able to say,
"Well, that's clearly a link,
"that's clearly the same person."
[dramatic music]
- We all know that Chelsea and Kensington
and wealthy parts of London,
the properties are very expensive.
We also know that there's a large number of wealthy widows
living in that part of London.
And Mackay's career of mugging and robbery
was directed against these fairly,
often quite rich, ladies
who are of a certain age,
whom in many cases he'd sweet talked and befriended.
[car engine revving]
[dramatic music]
- Patrick Mackay was actually quite a charming individual.
He seemed to have an ability
to get the trust of these elderly ladies fairly quickly.
He was used to tall pubs,
and meet them in pubs,
he'd buy them a Guinness or something like that,
offer to walk them home.
So at that point, he must have been
quite a believable character.
- Mackay deliberately chooses victims
that are essentially defenseless.
They're not going to be physically as strong as him.
[dramatic music]
- Throughout his life, he's committing violence
on people more vulnerable than him.
So as a youngster, he's committing violence on young boys,
on his mother because she's weaker than him.
So he's looking for people
that he knows he's stronger than, that he can overpower.
There's not gonna be too much of a fight.
[dramatic music]
- He would follow them home,
wait until they've got their key in the lock,
and he would either barge past as they turn the key
or he would come up with some kind of ruse
to get into the property.
Some of these robberies were not particularly violent,
he would sometimes behave incredibly politely.
On other occasions he would, without warning,
just wrap his hands around somebody's throat
and start strangling them.
It's blind luck that he didn't kill more people,
during this period.
[typewriter keys clacking]
[dramatic music]
[typewriter keys clacking]
[dramatic music]
- Police were called to an address in Lowndes Square
in the early evening in March,
by Adele Price granddaughter
who'd found her grandmother dead.
[dramatic music]
It must be trauma, it's not gonna be something
you're ever gonna be able to forget.
Police attended,
it was a uniform police officer to begin with,
and then I went along there
with one of the sergeants, I think, or the DI.
Mrs. Price was lying on her bed, clearly dead,
marks on her neck.
There was a post-mortem examination and it was established
that she had been murdered, been strangled.
And a squad was formed
under Detective Superintendent John Bland.
And we very quickly, or Mr. Bland, very quickly
connected this murder to a murder about a year previously
in Cheyne Walk in Chelsea.
And we decided to link the two murders there and then.
[typewriter keys clacking]
[dramatic music]
- Isabella Griffiths was the 87-year-old widow of a surgeon.
She lived in one of London's most desirable areas,
in Cheyne Walk on Chelsea Embankment.
She was a member of the Chelsea Gardener's Guild.
She's a very well known, recognizable figure in the area.
Isabella had the misfortune of meeting Mackay
on one of her walks around the West End, in early 1974.
Mackay offered to carry her shopping back to the house.
She invited him in for a cup of tea and a biscuit.
They got on really well and she said,
"Well, look, I always need chores doing,
"why don't you come back again?"
Which he did.
Over the next few weeks, he came back a few times
and he would run errands, mainly going to the shops
to buy copious amounts of cat food
for the various cats that she kept in the property.
On the 14th of February, Patrick Mackay,
absconded from Tooting Bec Hospital.
He'd been admitted a couple of days previously
after supposedly trying to kill himself
at Stockwell Tube Station.
Wandering through London, he made the decision
to walk to Isabella's house at Cheyne Walk.
Unfortunately, Isabella's body wasn't discovered
for a further 12 days.
She had a friend who would often walk past
and she described how she always kept an eye
on her friend's milk bottle levels
to make sure they're okay.
[dramatic music]
- Neighbors were somewhat concerned,
called police, police attended,
and she was found dead in the house,
and clearly she'd been dead for some little time.
[dramatic music]
Unfortunately and extremely embarrassingly,
you'd have to say, the stab wound or killed her
wasn't discovered until she was at the mortuary.
When they undid the blanket in which she was wrapped.
- The police immediately knew
that this was a highly unusual murder
and whoever had done it needed to be found immediately.
[dramatic music]
- Good evening.
"Police One Five" this week moves out of his usual office
and into an incident room
where a full scale murder inquiry is underway.
The murder of this lady,
89-year-old widow, Mrs. Adele Price.
And with your help we've established,
she was last seen here,
on the corner of Knightsbridge and Brompton Road
outside the Scotch House at about five to five.
The next time she was seen was here,
at her flat in Lowndes Square, when her body was found,
she'd been murdered.
[dramatic music]
- By the time of Adele Price's death,
there was a squad of detectives
looking, not just at the killing of Isabella,
but a string of very similar robberies
of old ladies across the West End.
It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize
that whoever had killed these two women
was probably one and the same man.
- Mr. Bland decided that the robberies and burglaries
and artifice burglaries that has happened
were also gonna form part of the investigation.
And there were overall 40 or 50, I think.
Every offense of this type
received a visit from an investigative officer.
And I went to hundreds, I suppose,
during the course of my career.
And we sat down and we spoke to the victim,
took whatever information they could provide us,
worked out whatever clues there might or might not be,
and crucially had a scenes of crime officer
attend every one.
Sometimes they got something, sometimes they didn't.
But that's the nature of the game,
you don't always get what you want.
But we did get some fingerprints.
- On February 15th, 1975,
Patrick Mackay commits one of his doorstep robberies,
forces his way into the home
of an elderly woman called Margaret Diver.
[dramatic music]
- He'd come up behind her
as she was getting into her flat in Chelsea.
He then grabbed her, put his hands over her mouth,
pushed her from room to room inside her flat,
asked her to make him a cup of tea.
- She's very lucky to escape with her life,
and it's a bizarre encounter
where they actually sit at the kitchen table
for more than an hour, talking, drinking tea.
And Mackay sits there the whole time,
stirring his tea with a silver teaspoon,
which he then just casually leaves on the table.
- In those days, fingerprint examination
was done by a guy with a magnifying glass,
looking at a print lifted, using black powder
and sellotape from whatever surface it was.
A very, very time consuming and expensive process.
And we got an ident on Patrick David Mackay,
who at that time was already in custody for a murder.
[dramatic music]
- Unbeknown to us, the Mets have had a string of murders
and serious robberies.
Down come the Met, an amazing scene,
three detectives, including a man called Crinnion,
I think it was,
and they went right through like that,
picking up items and saying, "That's that murder,
"that's that murder, that's that robbery."
- We were able to identify some of them.
In fact, we were able to identify some of them
coming from a robbery that I'd dealt with,
and we were able to restore them to the victims.
- The Met officers just knew,
the minute they saw those artifacts
and the items on the table at Northfleet,
they knew they had cleared up their series
of murders and serious robberies.
- We arranged to go down to see them,
on the Wednesday when he's at court,
Gravesham Magistrate's Court
and we get him remanded into our custody,
rather than going back to jail.
I remember walking in to see him after the court appearance,
seen him in the cells.
Mr. Bland was introduced.
Mackay said, "Yeah, I know who you are."
He said, "You're here about the murder of Mrs. Price."
He said, "Yeah, I killed her."
He said, "And a year ago, I killed a woman
"called Isabella Griffiths in Cheyne Walk in Chelsea."
Right, okay, fine.
So we then took him back to Canon Row
and then we embarked on this marathon interview with him,
which resulted in a 60 odd page statement.
[typewriter keys clacking]
[dramatic music]
He sat there and he cooperated and he drunk tea.
Had Chinese food brought in for him.
Obviously it was in our interests
to keep him on side, anyway.
We wanted as much information from him
as we could possibly get.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] You know, I can't remember
the name of the woman in Cheyne Walk, unfortunately.
The only time it comes back to me
is when I walk over Albert Bridge.
[dramatic music]
I got to the door, knocked on the door, about evening time,
because I remember as I walked past the house,
I saw the light on in one of the rooms
and saw her sitting there.
[dramatic music]
She answered the door, but with the safety chain on.
At first, she didn't seem to recognize me.
Then she did and said,
"I don't need any shopping done today."
- He had befriended Isabella Griffiths before,
sort of a couple of weeks earlier,
he'd been doing shopping for her and her friends.
So there's an element of trust there.
And yet when he went back and asked to be let in,
she wouldn't let him.
So something seems to have changed there
where either she's recognized a look in his eyes
or he's done something to her in the intervening time
that he doesn't remember, and suddenly
that kind of relationship between them has gone.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] I struck the door and the chain snapped.
I gained entry and she backed along the passageway.
I realized then I had done something I shouldn't have done,
and I went a bit frantic.
The next thing I knew she was on the floor.
[dramatic music]
- She's denying him something,
but it's not just a childish tantrum, it's more than that,
it's the fact there's an established bond there.
He's not knocking on some random old lady's door
and expecting that she's gonna let him in.
This is supposed to be his friend
and she's not behaving as he thinks he's entitled to.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] I had grabbed her around the neck.
This was in the kitchen area.
I must have pressed her neck hard with my left hand
because she went unconscious.
I left her then and ventured into her front room.
She already had the wireless on.
I listened to a news bulletin on the radio
and felt a strong wanting to venture up the stairs.
I wandered all up the stairs.
I then went back down the stairs
and had a strong compulsion to kill her outright.
[dramatic music]
- That is the most chilling thing about Patrick,
the way that it would be a completely random thing.
He described killing as a kind of white mist came down
and suddenly he was completely out of control.
And it was very much as if he was possessed,
that suddenly something took him over and made him kill.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] I picked up a knife for cutting meat,
a standard kitchen knife,
about the length of a 12 inch ruler in the blade.
I then rammed this through her solar plexus,
the bone of her chest, dead center or just a bit below.
I felt it embed itself into the floor.
- Mackay told us that he'd stabbed her so hard
that the knife had gone through
and stuck in the floorboard.
That was inaccurate.
He'd actually stuck in her scapular,
on the inside the shoulder blade.
- [Mackay Voiceover] I then left her there
and sat down in the front room
and produced a bottle of scotch from my pocket
and I emptied it.
It did not make me drunk, but made me inflamed.
You know how whiskey warms you up.
It rather stimulated me.
- What Mackay does next is very unusual.
He kneels over her body, he closes her eyes
and he crosses her arms across her chest,
in the style of an undertaker.
Then Mackay gathers
various items of clothing from the house,
drapes them over her body and tucks them underneath.
- [Mackay Voiceover] I did turn the tap on
in the sink in the kitchen at Cheyne Walk,
where I had left the body.
The first thing I threw in was a handbag,
a dish cloth and a towel, some knives, plates, I think,
a saucer and maybe some shoes.
It was mainly things that came to hand.
I remember her shoes had come off
because I saw her toes protruding through her stockings.
- Mackay was in no rush to leave this scene
for reasons that will only ever be known to him.
He decides to go to the sink
and grab various items of crockery,
put them in, fill it up with water.
Bizarrely, takes Isabella's shoes
and puts them in the sink as well.
This was something that really confused the detectives
when they turned up.
- [Mackay Voiceover] After I had taken the knife
out of her body and covered her up,
I had a good look at the blade of the knife.
I then contemplated ramming it into my own body,
but then felt that this was not the thing to do
at the present moment.
I then made an exit out onto the street,
taking the knife with me.
- He'd worked through the chronology of events
and John Bland said to him,
"Okay, I now want to ask you about Adele Price."
And Mackay took this deep breath in
and stood up
and almost swelled in front of you and stood up.
And I thought, shit, where we going from here?
And then he sat down and he said,
"Oh, I'm sorry about that."
He said, "I just had the red mist for a minute."
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] On that day, I went down to Belgravia
about a quarter past 12.
[dramatic music]
I did a continuance amount of wanderance
around Knightsbridge and then went into Harrods,
it's that large store.
The reason for which was to do a bit of circulating
for a likely pickup,
anybody who might be a fair chance to follow.
[dramatic music]
- On March 10th, 1975, Mackay had had no luck
finding a potential robbery victim outside Harrods.
He'd retired, quite disappointed to Lowndes Square,
and he'd plonked himself down on the bench
and was drinking from a bottle of whiskey.
He saw Adele Price returning home.
- [Mackay Voiceover] I looked across the street
and saw the lady involved in the murder,
cross the street onto my side.
I stopped as if lost,
awaited to see which building she would enter.
When she entered the building,
I made to fumble with my keys.
She had opened the door by this time
and I slipped in behind her.
She turned around, looked a little startled.
I waved my keys and said, "Oops, sorry, madam."
She then closed the front door
and I made my way up the stairs.
[dramatic music]
- Mackay overtakes her, but he puts on a tremble in his leg.
She notices this and he says, "Oh, are you okay?"
Mackay says, "Well, I'm feeling a little bit faint."
According to his account, Adele then says,
"Well, would you like to come in for a glass of water
"or a cup of tea?"
At which point he says, "Well, yeah, that'd be lovely."
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] She told me to wait in the parlor,
which was just inside her front door.
When her back was turned, I slammed the front flat door
and whisked into the room where the TV was
and into her kitchen.
She then came out of the bathroom
and I was out of her vision at this time
and heard her exclaim, "Oh, how odd."
She seemed to have the impression
that I had departed from the flat.
I think this was the general idea at the back of my mind
when I slammed the front door and whisked away.
She came into the kitchen, stated in shocked surprise
that she thought I had gone.
I then told her that I did not want any complications
and that I was feeling on edge.
I looked around the room and stated
that this was Belgravia, you must know what I'm here for.
She then said, "I can well guess."
I told her to go to the bedroom.
She went there.
I seemed to go into the bedroom with her.
- To see somebody like Mackay standing there,
it must have been terrifying, terrifying.
I wouldn't want to see that happen to me.
[dramatic music]
You suddenly think that's what the cops call,
in their really cultured way, an oh shit moment.
It must be, "This is not gonna end well."
I mean, I don't suppose that she'd ever been
confronted with those threatening type of situations
before in her life.
But that is a clear and serious threat.
And she must have realized then that
the best she was gonna get would be the worst of it.
Just shocking, shocking.
- [Mackay Voiceover] The next thing I remember,
I had my hand around her neck.
I don't remember what hand or how I did it,
or even why I did it.
It seemed to happen so much quicker
than in the Cheyne Walk one
where I seemed to have lots of time.
As I was strangling her,
she seemed to sink down onto the floor.
I didn't particularly think about
whether she was dead or not.
I went into the TV room, switched on the TV
and gazed out of the window for quite some time.
- This is weird, spooky, ghoulish behavior,
having killed somebody to sit with the body.
It was what he did with Isabella Griffiths,
and it is what he did with Adele Price.
And ultimately he sat in the bathroom
with the bleeding corpse of Father Crean.
This marks him out from most murderers.
Psychiatrists would tell you,
part of the abnormality of a completely ruthless
and unscrupulous person that we call a psychopath.
[dramatic music]
- It's almost like being an interested bystander.
Something has happened and you are curious about it,
and there's his desire to stay in the crime scene.
He wants to be there watching what he's done.
But it is as an observer,
it's almost as though he doesn't realize
that he's caused this.
And again, there's this distance between him and the victim.
There's no empathy towards them, there's no emotion,
it's just watching.
- [Mackay Voiceover] I started to think
what I had done with my life.
I didn't particularly think about murdering the old woman.
It didn't strike me particularly
that I was in a serious situation.
I don't what happened after that.
I may have dropped off for a while.
The next I remember was I heard a rattling sound,
and this seemed to wake me up.
- It was her granddaughter
who was trying to get into the flat,
which she couldn't do because Mackay had put up this latch.
Obviously at this point,
Mackay's probably thinking he's been caught.
But what happens is the granddaughter,
not being able to get into the flat,
goes downstairs to see whether she can get a neighbor
or someone to help.
In the intervening time, Mackay leaves the flat
and starts heading downstairs himself.
He passes the granddaughter who says,
"Oh, have you seen anybody up there?
"I can't get in."
Mackay puts on a Northern accent and says to her,
"You'd better go get the porter."
- He just leaves and passes her.
And you know, she's left to discover her grandmother's body.
So he lacks that kind of sense of remorse
or sense of empathy towards what she might be about to find.
- These individuals really struggle
with emotional connection,
having the capacity to understand, interpret
and connect with emotions,
whether their own or of others.
- It's very callous, it's very cool.
And again, it doesn't show
that he's got a full sense of awareness of what he's done
or the enormity of it.
- Came that close to being identified
and possibly that close to her granddaughter
being a murder victim too.
And then he's just melted away into the night.
[dramatic music]
- During the course of these interviews,
Mackay stuns detectives by suddenly revealing
that he has a fourth victim.
- He told us about a murder that he committed
on Hungerford Bridge,
when you could still walk across Hungerford Bridge.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] This was in the early hours,
2:30 a.m. I think, sometime in January, 1974.
It was before I killed the woman in Cheyne Walk.
I had been drinking in pubs in the Clapham area,
and when they closed, I walked from Stockwell
up to the embankment
and walked alongside of the River Thames.
Halfway over the bridge, I saw a vagrant.
He was late 40s or 50.
He wore a sort of cap affair, shabby, grease cap.
He had some growth on his face
as if he hadn't shaved for some time.
As he came towards me,
I could see that he had been drinking himself
and he shouted some abuse at me.
I can't remember what he said,
but something like F off or fuck off.
He was sort of growling.
He waved his arm in the air towards me.
It was at that time that I lost my temper.
[dramatic music]
I grabbed him by his pants at the backside and his neck,
that is the collar at the back of his coat,
and heaved him over the edge of the bridge
into the River Thames.
[dramatic music]
- When he was telling us, he started laughing.
He said, "It was funny."
He said, "His arms and legs were flying about."
He said, "He hit the water with a big splash."
So oh, so, Jimmy said to him, "So, what'd you do?"
He said, "Nothing."
He said, "It was his fault, shouldn't have sworn at me."
- [Mackay Voiceover] He started splashing
as though he couldn't swim.
I can't remember if he shouted, but I suppose he did.
He was splashing a lot.
I didn't care if he sank or not.
- But we never identified that guy
because Mackay's grasp on time and space
and so on and so forth, wasn't sufficient to say
that happened on Monday, the 12th of July or whatever.
So we were left with a period of time
of about four or five weeks,
during which time there were half a dozen bodies washed up
that roughly fitted the description.
But certainly not sufficient
for us to be able to say that happened.
I mean, you could say that Mackay said he did it.
But you've gotta be able to prove, first of all,
that the body you have is the one that he's talking about.
And it just couldn't be solved.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] These murders were so solemn,
when I think of them, yet so quick, so fast to take place.
You know, a man who has killed
cannot really say much more than the basics
from his point of view as he remembers it.
In my case, for instance,
I became very cocky about a few things that happened.
[dramatic music]
- Mackay felt a sense of control and enjoyment
at the fact that the police were very much reliant on his narrative.
He was central to this entire situation.
So I think that served to increase his feelings of control
and his own self-esteem, in all of the interactions.
- It absolutely gives him some degree of power.
The last word on these people's lives.
He's not only the last person that saw them,
he's not only the person that took their lives,
he's the person that gives us
our understanding of them in their final moments.
- There were other murders that he admitted
during the course of this,
but of course we had no knowledge of them,
no intimate knowledge of them at all,
because they'd happened in divisions away from us.
So there was not much we could do about them,
other than note the fact
that he'd said that he was responsible for them.
[train engine revving]
- July, 1973, there's a 17-year-old German Au Pair
called Heidi Mnilk, who is on a train.
She was stabbed multiple times
and her body was thrown from the moving train.
Mackay supposedly bragged about having killed this woman.
- You can see why that young blonde girl, Heidi Mnilk,
had to be a target for him 'cause he would've spoken to her,
found out she was German,
found out she was quite pretty in a way.
But he was on a train, she was going out the door.
I do believe he did that.
But what you got, a door that opens, a girl on the track.
You got nothing else.
[gentle music]
[train engine revving]
[gentle music]
- January, 1974, a lady called Stephanie Britton
and her four-year-old grandson, Christopher Martin,
were murdered in their house in High Barnet, North London.
This was an area that Mackay was very familiar with,
he'd worked there as a groundsman.
The suspect in this case was a young man,
seen loitering in the area.
Stephanie had been strangled,
Christopher had been stabbed in the chest.
There's never been another suspect other than Mackay.
- The bottom line is, for all of these things,
whatever somebody tells you, you've got to prove it.
There's no point in saying,
"He's admitted that he's gonna plead guilty."
Maybe not, you've gotta prove it.
It's not about the truth when you get to court,
it's about what you can prove.
It all has to be proved.
[birds chirping]
[gentle music]
- My name's Vic Davis.
My mother, Ivy Davis was murdered
on February the 4th, 1975.
To the outside world, she was happy-go-lucky, welcoming.
But as a private person, to her children,
she was very cold and sharp and direct.
She said, "Jump" and you said, "How high" sort of thing.
Different world in them days.
[dramatic music]
- She was a fairly well known figure in Southend.
She ran the Orange Tree Cafe, which was a beachfront cafe,
part of a row of little independent restaurants.
- In 1960, when my parents split up,
she took the two oldest children, both daughters,
and put the rest of us in the children's home
in Shoeburyrness.
When I became 15, they allowed me to visit my mother
on a Thursday at seven o'clock,
until I got into trouble with the police
and I was put in a young offenders institute.
That week, fortunately or unfortunately for me,
I was in charge of the TV.
Every week, it was allocated to somebody else,
rather than just people turning over
whenever they felt like it.
So the 5:45 news came on,
as nowadays, they give you the headlines,
what's coming up on the TV?
And then they said, "Murder in Southend."
At the same time, all these guys are saying to me,
"Vic, turn the TV over, The Monkeys is gonna be on."
"The Monkeys" TV show is due to start on the other side.
So I said, hold on a minute, there's a murder in Southend,
I might know who it is.
I'll turn it over when I find out.
Never thinking I'd have any idea who it was.
Bang, picture of my mother on the TV.
And I'm like
Froze, just froze.
And they all saying, "Do you know who is it?
"Turn over turn."
Yes, I fucking know who it is. Excuse the language.
I know who it is.
It's my bloody mother.
And TV went flying.
I don't even remember throwing the TV.
I just don't remember it,
but that's what they told me I did.
I just went into ice cold shock really.
- Ivy Davis fitted the Mackay victim profile
of an older lady who might have a bit of money at home.
The murder scene itself was reminiscent
of what happened at Father Crean's.
She'd been battered around the head with a heavy object,
turned out to be a metal pry bar,
which was just casually discarded at the scene.
- They think she was dragged down the stairs
with ligature around her neck.
She was found with a ligature around her neck.
Although they've confirmed that that didn't kill her.
They've told me that whoever killed her,
spent quite a bit of time in my mother's house,
cleaning up, moving furniture around, undressing my mother,
putting her in a night dress. And she was all bad on one side,
and so they laid her on her bad side
to make it look like she'd fallen asleep, watching TV,
left the TV on.
Anyway, I was contacted by this woman,
she said that she used to work in my mother's cafe
up until the time she was killed.
And one particular day
this man came into the cafe
asking if he could bring in some patients
from Runwell Hospital.
And so my mother said, "Who are you?"
And he said, "My name's Patrick, I'm a doctor.
"I'm just taking these inpatients out for a day out,
"give 'em some air."
So she said, "Yes, okay."
He brought 'em in and fed them whatever they wanted.
- Obviously Patrick Mackay wasn't a doctor
at a mental hospital, he was a longstanding patient.
Not sure whether he'd ever been in Runwell,
it's possible that he might have
admitted himself at some point
because he did admit himself occasionally and then abscond.
So it's quite possible.
But we just don't know
because sadly Ivy's not around to ask.
- The story he goes that
while he was on remand before he went to trial,
he admitted a few other murders actually naming my mother,
that yes, he killed her.
- If Mackay did know about The Orange Tree,
did know about Ivy,
it would be incredibly unlucky on her part
that a completely different psychopathic killer
has visited her on that day and killed her.
- He was there.
But you see, if I'm there,
it don't mean to say I've murdered you.
If I'm there and I've got your blood on me, that's better.
If I'm there and my fingerprints are around your throat,
if you've got something like a collar on, that's better.
But if I'm there, and you're dead,
that don't make me a killer.
- [Mackay Voiceover] At the request of the Southend Police,
we went to view this murder house.
She had apparently been hit, one killing blow on the head.
I was never charged with this, and I would think not to.
It certainly wasn't me they wanted.
- Psychopaths, like to create chaos.
So creating a situation where he makes a confession
and then at the last moment retracts that confession
is a means to retaining power.
- Mackay made numerous further confessions.
The two most serious ones
were the murder of a man called Frank Goodman,
who was a shopkeeper in North London
who'd been battered in his store.
The other was, again,
another elderly lady called Mary Hines,
killed in a very similar way to Isabella and Adele.
- [Mackay Voiceover] She was found stabbed, I believe,
and battered to death.
There is no evidence to tie me except statements I made
in a fed up and couldn't care less frame of mind.
- In June, 1974, shopkeeper Frank Goodman
was battered to death in his store in Rock Street, Finsbury.
The detectives involved in that case said
it was one of the most horrific crime scenes
they'd ever seen.
Essentially, Mr. Goodman's head was obliterated.
It has a lot of similarities
to the crime scene with Father Crean,
in terms of the ferocity of this attack.
- And then we found the shoes two years later,
still with Goodman's blood,
under the welt of Mackay's shoes.
We knew it was his shoes, he said where we'd find them.
We knew it was Goodman's blood,
so we knew that that one had to be true,
so he could have been charged with that one.
- However, these two cases, when it came to court,
Mackay said he was gonna plead not guilty to murder.
The CPS decided to let those cases lie on file.
- Perhaps the three murders that he went up for
were ones that,
I'm gonna use a police term, were bang to rights,
and the others were ones that,
if he went to trial and he went not guilty,
he could walk away with it.
[dramatic music]
- When I wrote my book, I looked at the unsolved cases
that were linked to Patrick Mackay.
When I started looking at it,
I fully expected to find that in the intervening years,
some of them have had been solved.
None of them have been.
Not only have they not been solved,
in those years, there have never been any serious suspects
put up by the police.
So you've got to question, what's going on here?
Some of these were horrific.
They were obviously carried out by a dangerous maniac.
So if Patrick Mackay didn't commit these crimes, who did?
[gentle music]
- I was there at the Old Bailey
on the 21st of November, 1975,
and the trial, with a blink of an eye, you'd have missed it.
I'd been to all the remand hearings as well
with them at magistrate's court.
So I was quite familiar then with being fairly close to him.
And his eyes almost looked like
they belonged to somebody else.
But the moment they turned on you,
he looked around the court for familiar faces,
so it was the police, it was me as the reporter
who'd been following him around,
and when they settled on you,
they sent a real chill down your spine.
I mean, you know, the phrase, cold-blooded killer,
could have been invented for Patrick Mackay.
He showed no emotion at all.
He obviously knew what was coming.
It was Mr. Justice Milmo who was presiding
and gave him a very quick life sentence
and said that he should not be released
until it could be proved
that he wasn't a danger to the public.
And that's where we are now.
So we're 47 years on from that,
and Patrick Mackay has now become
Britain's longest-serving prisoner.
- [Mackay Voiceover] The doctors whom I have seen
feel that I may not or would not respond to medical help
if it were to be given or offered to me.
It is in fact the direct opposite.
I would be willing, body and soul,
to accept medical help in a secure hospital
for many years to come if necessary,
for I know deep down that this is just what I need,
if there is to be any future for me to lead a normal life.
I must be helped, I can't remain in the state I am
for the rest of my life.
It is my last hope to survive as a human being.
[dramatic music]
- Although you were dealing at the time
with what we thought could potentially be
Britain's most prolific serial killer,
it kind of captured the headlines the day after,
it was certainly the front page
of all the national newspapers the day after,
after that it was forgotten.
[dramatic music]
The person who gave the most detail at the time
was Patrick Mackay's, adopted Father Bert Cowdrey.
He was the one who began to give me
some kind of insight into Patrick's mind.
- He was always coming here with women's watches,
necklaces, broaches.
Things that a man should never have.
Well, when I used to say to him,
"Where'd you get them then mush?"
"Oh, I'm looking after it for somebody."
We knew that he was buying drugs,
but where from or what he was taking, we didn't know.
And after dark had come down
and he'd had a few drinks,
got a few drinks in him, he absolutely turned violent.
He was capable of doing anything.
[dramatic music]
- If anything, this was absolutely terrifying
that Patrick had told him that he believed
that if Satan could come down in human form, he was it.
[dramatic music]
I'd put it to Bert Cowdrey,
are you saying that Patrick Mackay is the devil's disciple?
To which he said, "Yes,
"I think that's a fair description of him."
Which is how the headline appeared in the paper.
[dramatic music]
- We were all scared of kind of the bogeyman, you know,
or people breaking into our homes at night.
And so to use this kind of description of him,
however factual it might be,
it also kind of serves this purpose of
working almost as a horror story to the readers
or some sort of nightmare that we can all identify with.
You know, that these figures aren't in our heads,
they do exist.
- I mean, it was an absolutely tremendous front page.
But I think that with all these things,
you also are always conscious
that there are victims involved
and human tragedies behind it.
[dramatic music]
Patrick Mackay has been behind bars for 47 years.
Very little has come out about exactly what he's been doing
and what treatment he's been having.
And obviously the key now for the parole board,
when they're deciding on his release,
is whether or not something has changed
in that intervening 47 years,
or he still remains the danger to the public
that he always was.
- [Reporter] One of the most dangerous men in the country,
back on Kent Streets.
That's the prospect facing the county
with serial killer Patrick Mackay
potentially being moved to an open prison
with a view to being released.
- My name's Gareth Johnson.
I'm the member of Parliament for Dartford.
Before becoming a member of Parliament,
I was a solicitor specializing in criminal justice.
I received a phone call about three or four years ago
from someone who worked in the prison service
who was deeply concerned about Patrick Mackay
potentially being released back into the community.
They had had some very bad experiences with Patrick Mackay.
They felt that he was a potentially enormously violent man.
If I'm honest with you,
when I first received that phone call, like most people,
I'd never heard of Patrick Mackay before.
And so we had to do a little bit of digging
to find out exactly who this man was.
And the more and more we found out about him,
the more and more concerned I became,
that this is a man who could be released
back into society in his 60s
and potentially able to commit some of the
heinous crimes that he had committed before.
And what was also concerning,
there was two matters that were left on file
that were still there,
and also that he was suspected
of having committed other killings as well.
And it seemed to us that these other killings
hadn't been properly looked into,
and there seemed to be too much ease
at the way that those matters were left on file
just to gather dust for years.
And that's exactly how they've been to this day.
- There seems to be a worrying lack of curiosity
by the police on exactly what happened
to these cases that were unsolved.
Now, when Patrick Mackay was coming up for parole recently,
my understanding was the police
were doing a cold case review of some of these murders.
I did check that out
and police said, no, they weren't doing that.
But one of the reasons
why parole hearings were being postponed
was so these investigations could be carried out
to see if he could be charged with anything else.
As far as I can gather, nothing ever happened,
nothing ever came of that.
- [Reporter] Since 1995, Mackay's parole
has been reviewed on 10 separate occasions.
In each of those, he's been deemed too dangerous
to be integrated back into society.
- What we've asked for is if the parole boards
were to release him, which would be wrong, in my opinion,
that there's a lot of restrictions
that we would like to have placed upon him
so that he doesn't go to the Dartford area
or the neighboring towns.
He doesn't go back to areas where,
not only the victims used to live,
but also the victims for those murders
he's suspected of having carried out.
[car engine revving]
He should be monitored incredibly carefully
if he was ever to be released,
but I don't think any amount of monitoring
would be sufficient.
And that's why I don't think it would be right
for him to be released at all.
He benefits from his anonymity.
People don't know about him
and therefore it's an easier job
for the parole board to release him
without there being a public backlash.
Because the public aren't aware of Patrick Mackay
and they should be, they really should be aware of him.
[gentle music]
- I don't think that somebody like Patrick Mackay
should be able to be free
while he still has the physical ability
to put his hands around someone's throat
and squeeze the life out of them.
I think he should be kept away from the general public.
- I'm one of these people
that is convinced that a leopard can never change his spots.
Maybe I haven't got anything to be nervous about,
but as I say,
if he doesn't know that his mother's moved from here,
he might well come here looking for her
and then might start knocking on doors
to try and find out where she is.
And I would be much happier
if I didn't have any contact with him at all.
- This is somebody who is capable
of going back out on the streets
and carrying out his reign of terror.
The only reason he stopped killing people
was because he was arrested for those matters.
It wasn't a decision that he made himself,
he was stopped from killing any more people.
And therefore, in my mind,
he remains the most dangerous individual
we have eligible for parole in this country at the moment.
- Well he's had 40 odd years to be rehabilitated
and we don't know whether that's going to have worked or not
unless he is freed.
So it's kind of a bit of a game of Russian roulette,
that if you keep him locked up, you're never going to know.
But if he's freed, you might find out the wrong way.
- One would have to be very cautious
about whether he can be rehabilitated or not.
When I think about it and when I weigh up all the evidence
all over a number of years,
when I weigh up how many years he's been incarcerated,
I still probably have my doubts.
But I'm not anyone in the medical world, I can't read them.
But then neither could these people
in these kind of institutions he went to as a youngster,
they clearly couldn't read him.
'Cause every time they released him, he killed someone.
[dramatic music]
- Patrick Mackay
is what you could call a pure psychopath.
He didn't have to worry about living a double life
or keeping a veneer of respectability.
He didn't have a plan.
If he wanted to lose complete control and kill somebody,
that's what he did.
He took life with the same kind of impulsiveness
that a normal person might use
to pick up a bar of chocolate.
[dramatic music]
- [Mackay Voiceover] You know, when I look at myself now,
I could put a bullet through my head and through my brain
for the kind of bloody life that I have had,
but I do not know who would do me that service.
I have often thought to myself whenever I'm alone,
that it would be the best thing I could ever have done.
♪ Sometimes I feel like I'm blowing away ♪
♪ And the sky is broken
♪ It floods like a vein
♪ And I pray and I pray
♪ But the answers don't come when I'm gone ♪
[gentle music]
[gentle music continues]