[soft ambient music]
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[footsteps thudding]
- Okay, ready. - Okay, cool. [indistinct]
[tense music]
- I was enjoying my fish and chips and the BBC news was on
and it came on a 40-year-old man in Bradford,
arrested, body parts found in the river.
- [Reporter] Police divers continued to search the river air near Shipley,
where Suzanne Blamires' dismembered body was discovered.
[tense music continues]
- I made this funny noise, I don't know,
kind of sucked air through my teeth or something
and I just said, "My brother, I bet you that's my brother."
[Tense music continues]
- [Reporter] Sniffer dogs on the streets and in the alleyways,
searching the drains and bagging up potential evidence.
The handle of a suitcase pops up out of the water.
The diver drags it to the shore.
[tense music continues]
- Stephen Griffiths is formally arrested
for the murder of Suzanne and they begin questioning him.
"Do you know anything about Shelly and Susan?"
[tense music continues]
- He told us that he was responsible for the murder of all three victims.
- [Detective] Why did you feel the need to- to kill her?
- I don't know.
Sometimes you kill someone to kill yourself.
- He wanted to be infamous.
He wanted to be a serial killer.
[tense music continues]
- He wanted to be known for the most extreme aspects of his crime,
which was the crossbow, and the cannibalism.
[tense music continues]
- I watch true crime programs and I think that's terrible.
And then I think God, my brother did worse than that.
[tense music continues]
You hear about people chopping people up and that,
and you think, awful.
And then the words 81 pieces come into your head.
[tense music continues]
And you never really come to terms with it.
But it's real, it happened.
- Griffiths couldn't answer the one question
that we all wanted to know. Why?
If you try and analyze the mind of a serial killer,
you will never know.
Because they don't think like us.
They're not like us.
He is not of this world.
[tense music continues]
[tense music]
- Homefield Court is a big converted mill building
on the outskirts of Bradford Town Centre.
On one side, it was the city center, on the other side,
was the Red Light District.
It was one of these beautiful buildings,
fantastic architecture, which had been part
of the city's famous textiles industry.
But of course, as that declined,
it became a little bit shabby, a little bit rundown.
It became disused and eventually was converted into flats.
[tense music continues]
On the 24th of May, 2010, the caretaker
at Homefield Court turned up for work,
began his usual routine of checking the CCTV from cameras,
which were dotted around the building.
And on a normal Monday, very little would happen.
You know, there'd be maybe a bit of vandalism,
some drunks causing trouble.
[tense music continues]
He was in the habit of flicking through the CCTV
on fast forward, basically.
[tense music continues]
And the caretaker has to do a double take
because what he witnesses appears to be a violent attack on a woman.
[tense music continues]
What he sees initially are two people coming out
of the lift on the third floor and going into a flat.
He recognises one of them as the loner, Steve,
who he's been told to avoid, because he can be a bit volatile.
The person with Steve is a woman
with a small stature with dark hair, both go in the flat.
They disappear for a period of time, just a few minutes.
And then the woman runs out fleeing in terror.
[tense music continues]
The caretaker, obviously he's terrified by this,
and the first thing he does is call his manager.
They watch the footage again together,
and then they call police.
[tense music continues]
- I booked on as normal.
I was on a day shift, collecting my firearm,
and fairly early into the shift,
I received a call asking me to blue light immediately to Dudley Hill,
which is one of our sort of major planning stations.
I met with Silver Commander and CID team who briefed me
that there had been an incident
where a male had been caught on a camera.
He'd been involved in an altercation with a female.
[tense music continues]
- As soon as she got into that flat,
there was something that startled her,
and she ran out of the flat at some real speed,
almost hitting straight into the wall that came out
into a corridor.
[tense music continues] [heart beating]
- The male ran after her and incapacitated her.
He appeared to knock her out, or she was unconscious
on the floor, slightly off camera,
and then came out with what was assumed to be a crossbow.
[tense music continues]
We were unsure if the crossbow had been fired or not,
but the male dragged the female back into the apartment,
and then the door was closed-
[tense music continues]
- I've seen a lot in my operational activity in policing,
but seeing somebody run out the flat,
as she did, was startling
because what she must have seen in that flat was so scary.
Oh, it was shocking.
[tense music continues]
- By analyzing the CCTV from around Homefield Court,
police made another amazing discovery.
- The CCTV at 3:35 shows him trying
to lure another woman back to his apartment,
shortly after the incident with the assault.
But fortunately she must have got some sort
of vibe that there was something really not right.
- And she declined to come in.
So, again, that raises the threat level.
He's wanting to find more people to bring back
to his flat for whatever purpose.
[tense music continues]
- As far as we were concerned
we've got a female who's been incapacitated,
so we have hostage situation whereby,
she's been held against her will, clearly.
We're dealing with a collapsing timeframe,
so every second counts.
[tense music continues]
- Amongst the officers viewing the footage,
are some from Bradford's Vice Squad
who immediately recognise the victim as Suzanne Blamires.
[tense music continues]
- Suzanne came from a lovely family,
very well known family in the area.
And she was destined for great things.
- Her father was a successful businessman,
and so her childhood was one of foreign holidays and ponies.
And, you know, she'd done well at school.
She was popular, she was pretty.
She had every reason to believe that she was going
to have a successful life.
- She wanted to become a nurse.
She'd got far into her training
when she met the wrong people.
[tense music]
- She had adopted a hedonistic lifestyle,
which involved going out late, drinking a lot,
and unfortunately taking drugs.
- And very quickly she became an addict
and her life spiralled and the family had
to sit back and watch it happen.
- There came a time when the drugs became harder,
more addictive, and she had no other way
of funding the habit other than through prostitution
and street prostitution.
And that's what she did.
[tense music continues]
- Suzanne met a friend who had also worked in the sex trade,
but had left and escaped.
And they had a little bit of a meetup, had a coffee,
laughed and giggled, shared some old memories.
And then the friend went on her way and said,
"Just be careful, just take extra care."
[tense music continues]
Next day, Suzanne's boyfriend,
noticed that she was missing, went to speak
to her family to see if she'd been in touch with them.
The answer was no.
He was extremely worried about her.
So he went straight to the police.
[tense music continues]
- It was in the mid-'90s
that the prostitution moved from Lum Lane to Thornton Road.
- It's a very busy thoroughfare, Thornton Road.
It's what goes on behind there that people don't see.
[tense music continues]
There was at least 50, 60, 70 women selling sex
in that small area.
Many had given up their friendships,
any chance of prosperity, their families.
They were waifs, they were six stone.
They were standing in freezing cold conditions
wearing very little.
[dramatic orchestral music]
- At the time I was on the streets, it was 10 pounds
to buy a vulnerable young woman.
Unfortunately, it's even less now,
it's five pounds because that's the cheapest bag
of heroin or crack cocaine.
So, you know, these men don't value the women and girls.
The women and girls are so desperate
and they've usually got a perpetrator lurking
in the background that they're supplying
their drugs as well.
It's pretty grim.
[tense music]
- Women working within the sex trade in this area
of Bradford in the Red Light District were working
in an area that wasn't highly policed.
They were vulnerable to the police targeting them.
And as such, they are in an environment
whereby they are vulnerable to predators.
[tense music continues]
- A lot of the time they're completely off their heads.
I mean, it was really difficult to keep myself safe
and I was straight, I wasn't under the influence of anything.
[tense music continues]
- As a firearms tactical advisor all you're looking
for is information.
You're just filling in gaps, finding out who's living there.
We find out this guy's called Griffiths.
[tense music continues]
[dramatic orchestral music]
- I'm Stephen Sean Griffith's sister,
but I will call him Sean
because that's how we knew him growing up
because my dad's name was Stephen as well,
so we called him Sean.
There was three of us,
myself, Sean, who was the older brother,
and then my younger brother,
and my mom and dad.
[dramatic orchestral music continues]
Sean started showing then, when he was young,
the first signs of like troubling behaviour.
He'd have been under 10 when he first started stealing.
At one point we didn't have a lot, so, you know, children,
you want things and Sean wasn't satisfied to just want them.
He had to have them.
So he took them and he got caught and he got into trouble.
And I think a lot of my parents' arguments
as well as arguing with each other,
they were arguing about him as well.
[dramatic orchestral music continues]
That was just the way he was, you know,
like he closed his eyes and I think he was asked
to open his eyes and he just didn't, he wouldn't,
and the more he was asked to open them,
the more he kept them closed.
[dramatic orchestral music continues]
- He was a little bit withdrawn, a bit of a loner,
didn't play with other children, wasn't seen in the street,
was very slight of build.
And in fact, one nickname for him at that time
was the Stick Man.
- He had a real fear of going to a school called Outward Grange.
It had a reputation back then as being quite a rough school.
And Shaun didn't want to, I remember him waking me up
one night because Outward Grange was on fire,
and I've no proof, but I've always suspected
that maybe he had something to do with that.
It just seemed so coincidental that this school,
he had such a fear of going to, and then the next thing,
it's in flames.
[dramatic orchestral music continues]
[fire crackling]
And then with the divorce, he just got worse.
It's like consequences didn't matter to him.
He would steal stuff from the neighbour's sheds.
He would go down to Wakefield on the bus
and he would come back with stuff he'd stolen.
He stole off my mum as well.
He didn't seem to see the problem with taking money from a woman
that was already struggling to provide.
Yeah, so from a young age he was problematic
and it just escalated over the years, got worse and worse.
[tense music]
As he got older, the age gap became more apparent.
Between him and my younger brother, it was six years.
So that is a very big age gap.
And I used to worry about what he was capable of.
He was quite mean and cruel
and could be violent towards myself and my younger brother.
He developed a point system and if we did something to Sean,
say we went in his stuff, you damaged something,
he would give you so many points and once you accrued
so many points, that was his cue
that he could punish you then.
And there was one night in particular
that I must have accrued enough points,
so he decided to launch an attack on me
and he would get you and he would kneel on your arms there.
So you were pinned, basically.
And then I managed to get one of my arms free
and there was a table with a glass ashtray
and I managed to get that and I hit him over the head with it,
which is not something I'm proud of,
but I felt like I had to do it.
And his head bled.
I mean head wounds do bleed heavily.
And we had to get mum back from a night out
and she wasn't very happy.
So yeah, he could be a mean, mean boy, a bad boy.
[tense music]
- He enjoyed quite simply shooting birds
and then not just watching them fall, but then dissecting them.
Neighbours spoke of them catching him pulling wings off dead birds.
This is not normal behavior.
[tense music continues]
- I had pet mice and we weren't supposed to have them
and Sean knew about my pet mice.
So he decided to get himself a pet rat.
Anyway, my stepmom found out
and she didn't want them in the house.
So I arranged to give my mice away to one
of my friend's schools, which was an option for Sean,
but he decided not to do that.
And I was upstairs in my bedroom and it was quite late.
Everyone was in bed and I heard this thump thump thump.
So I knocked, I was like, what are you doing?
You'll wake everybody up and he let me in.
He says, "Oh, I'm trying to kill the rat."
So what I'd heard was him hammering this rat
with this broken off hammer [hammer banging]
and it was all hunched and crawling around
and I don't think he was trying to kill it at all.
I think he was just enjoying torturing it.
That poor thing.
[hammer banging]
- When a child harms an animal, it usually is experimentation.
It will have entered their mind.
What is it like to hurt someone?
So they'll experiment on animals, and most children
who do that will soon find out
that they don't like doing it.
But with Stephen, he recognized
that that was something he gained pleasure from.
- He could have got rid of it, he could have killed it
much more humanely if he wanted to,
but I think he just was having fun.
[tense music continues]
- He was very socially isolated as a child.
He really couldn't connect or make friends
and he had violent thoughts.
As he went on to his teenage years,
we see this developed into not just harming animals
but harming people.
[tense music continues]
- I was always worried about him.
I knew that it was escalating
and that he had the potential to do harm to people.
[tense music continues]
My maternal grandparents, they lived in an upstairs flat
and Shaun was in front of me on the stairs.
and I'd said something to him and he back kicked me
in the mouth and knocked one of my teeth out.
[tense music continues]
He had a cache of weapons like had flick knives
and Rambo knives and he had a machete
and he had a crossbow even at that age.
I was up in my bedroom, the attic, and my brother,
my youngest brother, was about two, three was there.
And the next thing there was this thunk noise.
[arrow banging]
He must have known that he was there,
and he went ahead and fired this crossbar at the door.
My brother started screaming and crying.
To this day, I think, was he trying to kill him?
Was he trying to injure him?
It's just so disturbing the fact he's got a crossbow,
he's firing it through a door in the house.
My brother's there and I think
that was the last straw for my stepmom.
She was like, "Right, that's it.
Get him out."
My dad asked him to leave after that.
[tense music continues]
It's just another example of his exacerbating behaviour,
his escalation, more and more odd things.
It's almost like he had a tick-box exercise
for I'm going to be a killer.
And he was just filling it in as he went along.
[tense music continues]
- Stephen leaves school at 16, and then he begins to drift.
- He moved down to a bedsit in Heckmondwyke.
And his behavior, I don't think it had changed
because he was stockpiling weapons there as well.
[tense music continues]
He'd been to see dad and Dad had given him a bit of money
and then he went to the co-op and I think
it was just pathetic things like sweets and a bottle of pop
that he could easily have afforded to buy.
But no he decided to steal them instead because,
because that's just the way he was.
And he got caught.
And what would've been maybe just a slap on the wrist, maybe a fine,
he just escalated it to the point where he pulled a knife
and slashed somebody down their face, stabbed somebody in the hand,
hurt somebody when he was running out the store.
[tense music continues]
- This poor guy needed 19 stitches,
and Stephen found himself arrested, taken to court,
prosecuted at Leeds Crown Court,
and was sentenced to three years youth custody.
[tense music continues]
- It is like a shock, but it's not a surprise.
You know, you could always see that it was going to happen.
Maybe not to that degree,
but I could always see him ending up in prison.
[tense music continues]
I remember seeing a photo in the local paper
and it had been taken of the arsenal of weapons
that he'd collected knives and throwing stars,
nunchuckers, machete, that kind of thing.
And it was like, God, it'd expanded.
It was more than what used to have
and lived at dad's and expanded in such a short time.
- Stephen Griffiths was assessed by a psychiatrist
in the criminal justice system for the first time.
He was assessed as having a personality disorder.
[tense music continues]
- Personality disorders are patterns of ingrained
inflexible behaviors and thoughts,
usually behaviors and thoughts
that go outside the social norm.
His narcissism, like his sadistic nature,
like being devoid of emotion,
they're incredibly hard to treat, if not impossible,
simply because they are so ingrained.
[tense music continues]
And often people with personality disorders are resistant
to treatment because they don't see
that there's anything wrong with them.
What is wrong is with other people.
[tense music continues]
He didn't kind of go into generalized psychology.
He went into abnormal psychology.
So he went into the field of psychology
that allowed him to feed his more darker desires.
[tense music continues]
- I had only just turned 18 really
when I moved up to Carlisle.
And after that our contact was minimal, really.
I kept in touch with my family by a letter
so me and my stepmom would write to each other just,
you know, about the family news,
and she would always mention Sean
because I would ask about him because obviously
I was worried about him.
- [Mum] Right now I'll get down to business
and I'll start with the worst first, Sean.
Your dad has kind of disowned him since he found out
about Sean befriending that dog,
then throwing it out the window three times and then killing it
because throwing it out the window hadn't killed it.
Your dad just can't come to terms
with the son of his being so cruel as to do something like that
and even laughing about it afterwards.
- So this next letter is dated the 25th of June, 1991.
Sean had been about 21.
- [Mum] Your dad had a phone call on his birthday
from Sean's probation officer telling him
that Sean is in the hospital wing at Armley
because he isn't considered stable enough
to be in the normal section.
He's on remand for threatening with intent to kill.
We don't know just what it's about,
but he was getting very neurotic
about people looking at him.
- While going about the campus one day, he imagined
that a group of girls had somehow slighted him,
and his response to that was to pull a knife.
[tense music]
He was sentenced for possessing an offensive weapon,
and I think affray, and found himself going
to jail again for two years.
[tense music continues]
- In prison, Stephen was diagnosed
as being a sadistic schizoid psychopath.
It's a merging of three different diagnosis really.
You've got the sadistic part, the sadism,
so this is gaining pleasure from hurting people.
This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect
of his personality.
Then you've got schizoid personality disorder.
So this is really about being detached emotionally,
not being able to connect with other people,
and it's that aspect of his disorder
that makes it easier for him to hurt people
because he hasn't got that emotional attachment.
And then you've got the psychopathology aspect of it,
which is really about having no empathy.
It's usually the empathy that stops most people
from crossing that line between violent fantasy
to actual behavior and making it a reality.
So together you've got a concoction of three very serious conditions
that make him a very dangerous man.
[tense music continues]
[tense music]
- The CCTV footage of a man
holding a crossbow sparked a major police operation.
They had to find out whether the young woman seen
in that footage was dead or alive.
- It really was an imminent threat.
[tense music continues]
When we found out subsequently
that there was two other sex workers missing,
you couldn't help but think back
to the Peter Sutcliffe days of the Yorkshire Ripper
and start to think, actually,
we don't want another Yorkshire ripper taking place
in the force area.
- I think Stephen was around six to 11
during the time that Peter Sutcliffe
was carrying out his crimes and, yeah,
he would've most certainly been aware of what was going on.
[tense music]
- The Yorkshire Ripper was active between 1975 and 1980.
It was a series of murders, 13 women, seven attacks,
and there was a build, it began in red light areas,
and it ended anywhere, anytime, any place.
And for five long years,
every woman in Yorkshire dare not walk the streets.
They dare not go out.
They literally held themselves in a group
of fear behind closed doors.
And that was the power he enjoyed.
[tense music continues]
- [Reporter] In her own ground floor flat in Bradford,
the body of 33 year old Patricia Atkinson.
She was last seen walking home from the pub
where she'd spent the evening.
- The idea that a serial killer is on the loose
will be prime territory for the media.
It is intensely newsworthy.
They are going to want to weave a narrative.
They want to get people watching the news.
- [Reporter] The Yorkshire Ripper's trademark is the unique
and vicious way
in which he mutilates the bodies almost beyond recognition.
- And as such people are talking about it.
We are gossiping.
It is inescapable.
And as such, it can play in the corners of people's minds.
And this feeds into a culture of fear
and an inability to truly switch off from what is going on.
[tense music]
People were frightened, people were questioning
who they could trust.
People were looking at neighbors, colleagues, friends,
and thinking, is it you?
[tense music continues]
- I've always talked of Bradford as a grim grey place.
That's how it strikes me.
And it was a grim time, all in all.
And the Yorkshire Ripper, it was like a dark,
miasma spread all over, you know.
Everyone was scared.
But Sean had an unhealthy interest in him.
[tense music continues]
- He had once even told prison staff
that he had one ambition and that was
to outdo the Yorkshire ripper.
[tense music continues]
- He once told me as well that if he couldn't be famous,
he would be infamous.
And that if I was famous and I was more famous than him,
he would find me and he would kill me.
[tense music continues]
- I do think Peter Sutcliffe re-emerged
into his memory when he was studying,
when he was deciding on the person he wanted to be.
So I think that he kind of re-emerged in Stephen's life
at a time when he needed a goal.
[tense music continues]
[dramatic orchestral music]
- Susan Rushworth had grown up on the outskirts
of Bradford in a very loving family.
She had loving parents, she had a brother.
She was a very quiet, in some ways, quite vulnerable girl.
- I know mutual friends.
I've talked to her brother.
She just literally went down the wrong track.
It was all going so well for Susan.
She was married, she had children.
She was a grandma.
[dramatic orchestral music continues]
- But then the marriage failed.
And I think that was a turning point for Susan.
She didn't really recover.
I think she suffered from depression.
I think her life began to unravel at that point.
She began taking drugs.
The drugs got harder ending with heroin.
She became an addict.
[tense music]
- And when she needed drugs, she sold sex.
Susan's mum adored her, she was really close
with her brother.
And yet her brother used to see her on the streets selling sex
and used to wind the window down and say, Susan,
you can't keep doing this.
And she'd promise and promise to get clean.
And she did.
And then some other disaster would happen
and she would fall foul to heroin and crack cocaine.
[tense music]
- I was really fortunate that I got off the streets
just before they were swarmed with crack cocaine and heroin,
which was in the sort of late-'80s, early-'90s.
And certainly the women I've worked with, certainly
on the streets, the vast majority have
a very high addiction to crack cocaine and heroin.
And that must be, I can't even imagine
because the day I got into the sex trade,
I lost me.
I wasn't Fiona anymore.
I became an object.
I completely disassociated from myself.
With an addiction on top of the kind of emotional
and mental torture you're living with
is almost impossible
to get away from.
[tense music]
- Susan was a little bit older than many
of the women who worked the Red Light district.
She was 43.
It was actually a good time for her because she'd made a bit
of a recovery in her battle against heroin.
And she was actually planning to go on holiday with her family.
Normality had begun to sort of seem like a realistic goal for her.
However, in June, 2009, she went off to see a friend
and was never seen again.
[tense music continues]
- She planned to go into town and pick up her methadone.
And after a week, the family began to get worried.
Not only had she not picked the methadone up,
she hadn't been in contact,
but they knew that she wouldn't have her epilepsy tablets,
which she desperately needed.
And so they called the police.
[tense music continues]
- When missing people come in, it's something
that is treated with real seriousness,
because what you don't want, the worst case
is someone is murdered or is kidnapped.
You start with the family.
You ask the questions, where are the places
that they may visit.
Maybe that you are trying to do electronic tracing
round the telephone number.
And also trying to look at any CCTV that you may be able to find.
[tense music continues]
- There was a police appeal.
There was a police dragnet.
They carried out door-to-door inquiries,
they put up posters, they contacted the press,
but there's absolutely no sign of Susan.
There appeared to be no activity on her phone
or credit card after the day of her disappearance.
[tense music continues]
By the 24th of May, 2010 Susan Rushworth had been missing
for a year.
[tense music continues]
- We know that he's got a crossbow,
and they're extremely lethal.
It'll just go straight through you.
- It was established that we'd need
to do a planned firearms operation to arrest the individual.
Griffiths had previous convictions
for offences including violence.
He was otherwise so dangerous so that he needed
to be arrested by specialist armed officers,
and there was even a preemptive taser strike authorized
by the Silver Commander on Griffith.
[tense music continues]
- This is a sort of a method to control somebody
who you think might be violent,
and it's really to protect them.
We know that this guy's got a crossbow,
we know he has caused harm to this female,
and we know this female is in danger.
So our job is to go in there and essentially rescue her.
And we needed to get it done
as quickly as possible.
[tense music continues]
Our role that day was to do what's called
an emergency entry, which is the most dangerous entry
you can do as a firearms team.
But we were so limited in our options
because obviously we've got a female that we assume
is under duress and is being harmed.
So what we'll do in an emergency entry situation
is we will try and overwhelm the suspect.
[tense music continues]
- Stephen Griffiths lived on the third floor of this block.
He was a bit of a loner, bit of an oddball.
- He was also very socially isolated,
so he didn't like to spend time with people.
If he was seen out and about, it was usually at night.
- He dressed almost in a gothic manner,
a full length matrix style, black leather coat.
He slicked his hair back.
It was in ringlets.
- He had Nile monitor lizards.
He would walk them in the corridors on a lead.
He would take them to nightclubs in a bag
and show off amongst the other nightclub revelers.
And he used to feed them on live mice and rats,
which he kept and bred in a cage at the back of his flat.
[tense music continues]
- Stephen Griffith had amassed this huge library
of macabre books about murder, murderers, Nazis,
terrorists, Satanists.
[tense music continues]
He got himself on a PhD course at Bradford University
with a specialization in local history.
He wanted to study homicide and lethal violence
in Bradford during the second half of the 19th century.
[tense music continues]
- Stephen cocooned himself in a world of serial killers.
Not only was he studying it and studying it intensely,
but he decided to take the topic of homicide
in Victorian Bradford.
So the area he was living in.
[tense music continues]
It was almost like he was studying the evolution
of crime within that area so that he could become part
of that evolution and become part of that history.
[tense music continues]
- He was interested in mass shootings at schools in America.
He was interested in cannibalism
and he made references to all those subjects
on his MySpace page.
He seemed to use the internet and MySpace
to promote this kind of alter ego
that he'd invented for himself.
[tense music continues]
- Stephen had a pseudonym online, which was Ven Pariah.
So Ven it's kind of theorised that this could be venerable,
which means worthy of high respect,
or it could be a shortening of his name.
Stephen and Pariah is outcast.
[tense music continues]
- Online spaces give us the opportunity to embrace personas
that are not completely who we are.
They are who we would like to be or extreme forms
of who an individual could be.
[tense music continues]
- He's got lots of very interesting quotes online
from himself in this persona
where he's kind of describing Stephen
as more like a vessel to carry him, Ven Pariah,
the demon through the world and through life.
[tense music continues]
- [Stephen] "Humanity is not merely a biological condition,
it is also a state of mind.
On that basis I am a pseudo human being at best.
A demon at worst."
- So we see a real splitting here of Stephen's personality.
There was nothing really challenging
that world that he created.
So it was very hard to step outside
of that and kind of have that wake up call
that this isn't reality,
and there's something wrong with me.
[tense music continues]
- [Stephen] Ven Pariah has finally emerged into the world.
What will this pseudo-human do, one wonders.
Poor Stephen.
Pretended to be me, but he was only the wrapping.
He knew, towards the end,
that I supplied the inner core of iron.
Hatred bound tightly in flesh.
At very long last, the time has come to act out.
Think about the number four.
Maybe add a couple more.
All of this before the war.
Ven Pariah embraces destiny and he still smiles.
[tense music continues]
- There's a large movement now of resources
that have to go to Homefield court.
An awful lot of firearms, cars, a fleet of vehicles.
You need to make sure you've got enough
to surround the whole house.
- The team amassed at the property.
They went up the stairs.
We had a method of entry device that we used
to go through the door.
There was a shout from a bedroom.
Team rapidly entered into the bedroom,
and he was overwhelmed immediately.
[tense music continues]
- Griffith didn't put up any resistance
to the armed police whatsoever.
When the police officers entered his flat,
he introduced himself as Osama bin Laden.
[tense music continues]
- Once he was cuffed, he went from being compliant
to being haughty and quite cocky
and quite sneering at officers.
[tense music continues]
I think he was arrested for assault
because we had nothing else other than that.
[tense music continues]
- After he's arrested by the armed team
he'd be removed from the flat.
One of the things that really stood out
was that there was obvious signs of violence
that taken place in the flat.
[tense music continues]
- Bear in mind these firearms officers go
to all sorts of scenarios and all sorts of places.
They said that there was something that made the hair
on the back of the neck stand up.
It was something quite unsettling about the apartment.
There was a duvet that was burning in the bathtub.
There was a strange sort of smell, like rotten meat.
There was blood smeared everywhere,
crossbow holes in the wall where he'd been using it
as target practice.
- There was a crossbow also located in the flat,
which was seized by the officers as well.
[tense music continues]
- The search through the apartment
was made by the officers for the female,
which was of course, the goal.
And sadly, there was no female in the apartment.
[tense music continues]
That's why why we're there.
We're there to save that girl.
And, you know, we were all gutted.
Unfortunately we were just too late.
We didn't get the report until Monday morning.
Yeah, we were gutted.
We were gutted.
[tense music continues]
- Shelly Armitage was a beautiful young girl.
She looked like a model.
She wanted to be a model.
She was confident.
One always thinks about girls who have been groomed
as being the weak, quiet ones.
It isn't that.
It's, it's the confident ones.
The gregarious ones, the ones who dare to skip school.
- She'd ended up becoming a heroin addict.
And in order to fund that habit had taken to sex work.
- Shelly was so loved by her family, her mom, her dad,
and yet they couldn't help her.
So many times, Shelly came back home,
and they never judged her.
And time after time, they gave this beautiful young woman
who could have had everything at her feet,
the opportunity to beat the drugs
that were absolutely killing her.
[dramatic orchestral music]
- This CCTV camera catches Shelly working the red-light area.
She's just walking up and down looking for punters,
basically looking for many cars who are looking for sex.
And she seems in good spirits.
- She's got a certain swagger with her.
She's pulling the cardigan
as she walks past Griffith's home.
And to me, that, that moving image sticks with me.
And that's the image I was asked to put out
on our news programme.
Have you seen this girl?
- I would emphasize that this is a missing
from home inquiry.
The appeal from myself is for Shelley or anybody
that may know Shelley to contact the police
so I can in turn update the family and bring some calm
to the anxiety that the family are suffering at the moment.
[tense music]
- Every day in the life or in the sex trade,
you would expect to have at least one or two men hurt you.
Some of the guys become regulars, so you see them,
you see them walking up and down.
They might live in the community
that you are selling yourself in.
They don't present as monsters.
They're ordinary men,
which is why you can never ever make it safe
because you never know when they're going to murder you.
You never know when they're going to attack you and rape you.
They're often smiley and friendly,
but what lies beneath that you just don't know.
[tense music continues]
- Griffiths knew the territory
and he knew quite a lot of the women,
and he had friendships, rather ambiguous friendships
with some of the women.
He would go and talk to them, share a cigarette with them.
He would bring some of them back to his flat.
He certainly had sex with some of them.
- Griffiths was seen as maybe just a little bit
of an outsider, slightly unusual,
but potentially not such a threat.
- [Reporter] This prostitute, who didn't want to be identified,
says he's well known in the area.
- [Speaker] He used to like come up to us, talk to us,
say that he'd been out for drinks
at student nightclubs, offer cigarettes.
He were nice to me really.
- Stephen was very good
at knowing people's vulnerabilities, knowing people
who needed something, and he was really tapping
into what these women needed,
whether it was just a nice cup of tea,
a bit of companionship, a chat over a cigarette.
He was trying to paint himself
as kind of like a harmless character, a friend,
so that they trusted him.
I kind of see Stephen as a bit of a hunter, really.
And the red light district was his hunting ground,
and these women were his prey,
and he's using these strategies to lure them in,
to put them at ease, to make his job easier.
The sad thing is that this
would've made it so much more shocking
for them when they got to his flat
and he'd suddenly turned from this kind companion
to someone who was going to take their lives.
[tense music continues]
- [Reporter] Griffiths himself paid for the services of prostitutes.
One who didn't want to be identified said
his behavior could be frightening.
- [Speaker] That always made me nervous.
When you were outside it were really nice or can I help you
with that love blah de blah de blah.
But then when you got inside,
it was like you weren't a human being no more.
He owned you. You were piece of meat.
What he were going to do, what he wanted to do.
[tense music continues]
- Yeah, I think he's got a real problem with women.
He had a relationship with one lass and she took him to court
because he'd attacked her with a belt
and I think he got found not guilty,
so he celebrated by having a tattoo,
"Diane lost the war."
As if he was celebrating getting away with it.
And he must have thought that was clever.
Not an iota of remorse for that girl or anything.
[tense music continues]
[dramatic orchestral music]
- I met Stephen in my late-20s walking back
from a club night in Bradford.
I used to have a thing for men with long hair,
that's all I saw as well as the intelligence.
And he was a good looking lad though.
He told me years later that he liked the challenge of me.
I'm fiery. [chuckling]
[tense music]
It's within two and a half weeks
of meeting Stephen that he first tried
to kill me by putting a drug in my tea.
I had two dogs and one night one of my dogs Taz,
part Collie, growled at him.
I then that night was over at his flat.
And as I was sat and to my right was the television,
I sat on the floor for some strange reason
and I looked and thought, what is going on with the screen?
And I turned to my left and I could see a smirk on his face.
And he went, "You're starting to feel the effects, aren't you?"
and he said, "I've poisoned you, I'm killing you."
I took myself to A&E at Bradford
and they kept me in overnight.
In the morning, went to my house in Wakefield.
And as we pulled up outside, the front door was open.
Where's my dogs?
Then my next door neighbour came in and basically said
to me it was him.
He was here at half three in the morning.
He came in, went in and took the dogs.
I completely fell apart.
It totally destroyed any thought process,
confidence, anything.
And Stephen said to me, "Look, you best stay
at mine until you've calmed down
and then I can go back to my house."
But then he never let me out again.
[tense music continues]
He was with me permanently
unless he went to do studying at the university,
then I were locked in anyway.
[tense music continues]
Daily life just consisted of walking on eggshells
and looking to see if, what his mood was like.
If I upset Stephen, it would end up
in mental torture or physical, but not at the time.
It can be a week or so later or a few days
and he'll ask you a question, a leading question.
And if you don't come back
with exactly the right thing he'd remember.
He broke my nose.
He stabbed me, he's burnt me.
Oh, all sorts.
But, they're easy to deal with because it's over with.
It's the mental torture that's horrendous.
[tense music continues]
It was his ex-girlfriend of his that took me
to the domestic violence unit in Bradford
who then told me what I was going to do to get away from him.
[tense music continues]
- Although the relationship was quite brief,
Kathy spent probably the best part
of seven years trying to shake Stephen Griffiths off.
[phone whooshing]
- [Automated Voice] Message two, Saturday 10:23 a.m.
- [Stephen] Don't make me do this, Kathy.
I swear to God all I did was ring your mum and dad,
and I sent you some nasty texts,
that's all I did 'cause you pissed me off.
You've got so many enemies there
and you want to add me to them.
I don't want to have to do that to you.
- [sighing]
Getting away from Stephen was half the battle.
The other half was him pursuing my parents,
going to my friends.
He's slashed tyres on my cars on on numerous occasions.
He contacted the RSPCA, benefits people,
told the government I was importing cigarettes
from going abroad, anything he could.
[tense music]
[computer chiming]
- He sent voicemail after voicemail to Kathy,
just harassing her and not letting her escape him.
[phone whooshing]
- [Automated Voice] Message five. Wednesday 11:46 p.m.
- [Stephen] I really miss you as well, Kathy.
You've had the police onto me, but I still care about you.
- He's trying to gain control of the situation.
He really can't cope with the fact that she has escaped him.
- [Automated Voice] Message one. Saturday 8:38 a.m.
- [Stephen] If you're gonna blame me for doing things
to you, then I might as well start doing things
to you, all right?
I demand an explanation, and I will not fucking stop
until I get that, okay?
That's all I want.
[tense music]
- He rang me up one night distraught, almost
begging me to help but to not tell the authorities.
[tense music]
And then he told me that what he'd done
is he'd decided to steal a puppy, feed it Valium.
And he wanted to dock its tail
and do the ears like pit bulls in America.
And what he said was, he'd gone too far.
[tense music]
- This is one of the worst letters I received.
- [Mum] The next thing is about your brother Sean.
He's shoplifting and thieving big style now.
Last weekend he stole an eight-week old puppy.
He docked its tail, which he said was successful,
but when he tried to clip her ears to make 'em stand up,
it went wrong.
So he cut them both off and when I say off, I mean off.
Then he told us he'd bought it for us for Christmas.
- I begged him for me to drive from Wakefield
to Bradford to pick this puppy up
and deal with the situation.
I went straight to his dad's and banged on the door.
[tense music]
- [Mum] I don't know how you feel about it,
but we were disgusted
and so upset when we saw the poor little thing.
Sean thinks he did well letting it live because
as he said to your dad, he could have microwaved it.
We cared for the dog for a couple of days
before she went to the vets to be rehomed.
Kathy says he's losing the plot and going downhill fast.
For your dad's sake, I hope she's wrong.
- I was horrified, horrified, shocked.
I knew he was capable of that kind of thing but, you know,
to see it written down.
[tense music continues]
- This, for me, feels very much a manipulative behaviour
and a way to tap into Kathy's vulnerabilities.
This also shows us that Stephen
knows other people have emotion and they have empathy,
and they don't like to see animals hurt.
And I think he's using that to lure Kathy in.
[tense music continues]
- 2008, gone to Turkey for two weeks and ended up staying
for three months just because it
was like a different life and relief.
And then I came back to England to slag being written
on the wall and all of my windows painted bright yellow.
I ended up getting a court order,
a non-molestation order to keep him away.
I had a police alarm in my flat,
they'd blocked up the letter box.
[tense music]
When you get a court order at that point in time,
they were for a year.
So they run out at midnight,
and the only time throughout most of this
where I've been almost frozen to the spot through fear
was when he left a message at about 3:25 in the morning.
My answer machine had clicked
before I could get to answer the phone.
So I get halfway across my front room
and then there's just this noise that went on and on.
[tense music continues]
- [Automated Voice] Message seven. Thursday 3:23 a.m.
[Stephen laughing] [tense music]
- At the time my court order had ran out at midnight.
So I assumed he's laughing because I can't have him arrested.
[Stephen laughing] [tense music]
- When I listened to it, it's a very chilling,
elongated laugh, almost a cackle.
He's completely lost reality.
He's somewhere else.
[Stephen laughing] [tense music]
- We were in the incident room at the homicide
and major inquiry team when we got a call
that someone had been arrested in the Bradford area
for a murder.
We made our way across to Halifax police station.
We were waiting as Stephen Griffiths came in.
He started saying all sorts of significant statements
like, "I've killed loads of people," and all sorts
of things like that.
We had no idea whether any of the victims
were alive or whether they died or not.
So we organized for an urgent interview with him.
There's no legal representative present
and you can only ask questions where you're hoping
to save life, or recover urgent evidence.
[tense music continues]
We were in the interview room me, my sergeant
and Mr. Griffiths.
We were asking him is she still alive and if she is,
where can we go and find and help her and rescue her?
- Griffiths then drops a bombshell.
He asks whether this Suzanne, they're asking him about,
is the one known as Amber.
And he says that if it is, then she's gone.
He uses that word, gone.
[tense music]
- More or less straight away we realised
that we couldn't carry on with the interview.
We'd confirmed that the person we were looking for
was not alive.
[tense music continues]
He then was then taken back out to the custody area
and a solicitor was requested.
And believe it or not, it was the same solicitor's firm
that represented Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.
[tense music continues]
By this time we were aware that certain girls
had gone missing in Bradford area.
[tense music continues]
- West Yorkshire police had spent months trying
to find Susan Rushworth and Shelly Armitage.
- I think as a matter of routine in these kind of inquiries,
missing sex workers, the police compile a list of men,
punters basically, who they think might be suspects.
And I think the police did exactly that in this situation.
At no point during the police inquiry
was Stephen Griffith's on the radar as a suspect
in the disappearance or potential murder of these women.
They get him into an interview room,
and they begin questioning him.
- [Detective] Are you saying that you've killed Susan Rushworth?
- Yes.
- [Detective] And what was the other name?
- Shelley Armitage.
- [Detective] Are you saying
that you've murdered Shelley Armitage?
- Yes.
- [Detective] And then the last one?
- Suzanne Blamires.
- [Detective] Are you saying you've murdered her?
- Yes.
- He told us that he was responsible for the murder
of all three victims.
- [Detective] Why did you feel the need to kill her?
- I don't know.
I don't know.
Sometimes you kill someone to kill yourself,
or kill part of yourself.
I don't know, I don't know.
It's like deep issues inside me.
- It's just quite matter of fact, it felt in a way
to me personally a bit like he'd almost planned
what he was going to say if he ever got caught.
- [Detective] So, why did you feel the need
to kill any of the girls?
- I don't know. - Pardon?
- I don't know.
I don't know.
Well, I'm misanthropic.
I don't have much time for the human race.
- He was just so controlled about what he was saying.
He were going to tell us what he wanted to tell us.
- Griffith told officers
that Susan, his first victim, was killed with a hammer,
and he then dismembered her body with machine tools,
and he cooked and ate parts of the flesh.
[tense music]
He goes on to say he'd killed Shelly with a crossbow.
He told officers that he'd dismembered her in the bath,
but he also said they would find traces of her body on the cooker.
- Cannibalism is very rare.
I think for Stephen,
it was part of this hunting mentality he had,
where he would hunt his prey and then he would eat his prey.
I think it's the ultimate form of ownership, though,
to consume someone.
[tense music]
- I've had the discussions
with Stephen regarding cannibalism and him saying
that it's society that says what you can and can't eat.
What's justifiably okay and what isn't.
So I've had those conversations
about five years before he even murdered his first victim.
And he's told me that that's the ultimate
that people cannot cope with the idea of.
- Cannibalism goes beyond breaking a legal rule
of just killing someone.
So it adds a degree of violence
and almost specialness
to a violent crime.
It's like an escalation of a homicide.
[tense music]
- He said he'd killed Suzanne with a crossbow,
but, despite giving them lots of very gory detail,
Griffiths refused to give them any helpful information
about where he'd left the bodies.
- [Detective] And what sort of location have you put them in?
If you can't tell us where,
what sort of location have you put them?
- I don't know.
Where a robot, where a computer would put them, or,
you know, a rational, emotionless
aberration would put it.
- We were thinking of the family of the victims.
We wanted to try and help find out
where all the victims were.
And he wasn't up for doing that, he was, just wanted
to give us basic information to make himself
a serial killer and then not pass any more information on.
- I believe he was cryptic about what he did
to the bodies because, one was that need
to hold onto some of it himself
and to withhold some of it just
for that control he thrives off.
- After the first couple of interviews
he completely refused to talk to us again.
Wouldn't even come out of his cell.
He said, "Well, to become a serial killer
you only need to kill three people."
So he said, "I'm only telling you about three people."
[tense music]
- Stephen had huge aspirations
to possibly even outperform Peter Sutcliffe.
- He believes that Peter Sutcliffe wasn't as smart
or clued up as people seem to think because he used
to say to me, "Look at the idiot.
He got caught on something pathetic."
- In that police interrogation,
we are kind of seeing this deflated man
who looks nothing like the man we saw in front
of the CCTV camera.
Like this huge man with a crossbow looking scary.
Like they're complete opposites.
Stephen's ego would've been knocked significantly
by being caught on CCTV camera.
It wasn't the way he wanted his reign of terror to end.
[tense music]
- After the murder of Suzanne Blamires he emerges again,
carrying the crossroad again, making no attempt
to hide from the gaze of the camera.
He raises the crossbow towards the camera in one hand,
and raises the other hand
in a one-fingered gesture of abuse.
He goes back home and then he emerges again
with a bottle of lemonade, and he raises this
to the camera again in a toast.
[tense music]
- This to me, all seems like an act.
He wouldn't have liked that he was caught
and caught so stupidly and so easily,
and that the woman he was trying
to kill had actually been the one to get him caught.
So for me, this was an act of defiance,
and pretending that he doesn't care, but he would've cared.
- During the search of his flat,
police found a digital camera and a laptop.
On those devices were some incredibly disturbing images,
a video of Shelly Armitage's murdered body naked in the bath
with the words "My sex slave" written on her flesh.
Another video showed another victim's body,
never identified, which had been bound in green twine.
Griffiths provided a sick commentary,
in which he describes himself as a bloodbath artist.
He described Shelly as his assistant.
[tense music]
- I think a big, big part of this is the sadism
and the fact that he will rewatch this
to relive that pleasure that he got from it.
And also he's turning his actions
into some kind of artistry, almost propelling it
and making it seem something wonderful.
[tense music]
[Stephen laughing]
- When I listened to that,
for many years I thought he's laughing
at me because I can't do anything.
But that's not the case.
That's when he'd murdered his second victim.
[Stephen laughing]
So upon reflection it's like, is he laughing at me
or is it a manic laughing cry because of what he's done?
[Stephen laughing]
- If it coincides with a murder,
I think he could be just totally absorbed in the joy
that he got from carrying that out.
[Stephen laughing] [tense music]
- The day after Griffiths was arrested, a member
of the public who was walking by the River Aire in Shipley,
reported seeing something unusual in the water.
- He'd found a sports holdall discarded
by a side of the stream.
And when he picked it up, he'd quite a weighty thing.
He'd opened it and in there he'd found a human head.
It stands out as one of the most gruesome
and startling incidents we've ever dealt with really.
- When officers come,
they begin a huge search operation with police divers
and officers on the banks.
- This was a team probably of six or seven officers.
Incredibly well trained at underwater search,
but as you can expect, the River Aire,
they can't even see their hands in front of their faces.
They're having to feel their way around.
And subsequently found more body parts weighted down
in bin bags in the River Aire.
[tense music]
When the body parts were found,
there was consideration and thoughts
that perhaps the suspect could be a butcher,
because the body parts had been cut up so thoroughly
and so minutely.
[tense music continues]
- They also found in her head the shaft of a knife
and the bolt from a crossbow.
- It's unbelievable.
To have skinned people and sat in the bath with body parts,
you know, you just cannot believe
that humans can do stuff to each other.
- I think there's a number of reasons why Stephen mutilated
Suzanne's body, and I think a key one
is just how angry he was that she outsmarted him
for that moment and got away and got him caught on CCTV camera.
I think he had a lot of rage there.
He knew that this was perhaps going to be his last kill,
and he was getting out some of that sadism
that's so deep in him.
[tense music]
- Police were able to track him removing body parts,
not only after Suzanne was killed,
but after Shelly and families were forced to
come to the conclusion that those bin liners
contained their loved ones' remains.
[tense music continues]
- One of the other things that he did say
was that he'd dropped bones all over Bradford.
And this was in the height of summer,
so if you can imagine that the search teams were working
in really, really hazardous areas.
There's an awful lot of urban debris.
So there's a lot of rubbish.
There's a lot of food waste discarded.
There's bin bags, there's wheelie bins to look through.
You don't know what is and what isn't evidence
a used condom might be, might be something.
You'll find needles.
[tense music continues]
- A few days later, they find a canvas bag
and it's full of what can only be described
as a killing kit.
It's got hacksaws, it's got knives, it's got razor blades.
It's analysed and there's a certain amount
of tissue which can be traced back to Shelly Armitage.
[tense music continues]
- Shelly's family were among the loveliest families
that a journalist could meet in such horrific circumstances.
I went to her funeral, I saw them release the doves.
[gentle music]
But what struck me and does to this day,
was the devastation of finding so little of her.
I think for me seeing a family, not only traumatised,
seeing a family who had spent years fearing
that something like this would happen
to then have the dilemma as to what size of coffin
to use at their beloved daughter's funeral.
Because all they had managed to find was a piece
of her backbone stays with me to this day.
[dramatic orchestral music continues]
[tense music]
- I have authorized the police to charge him
with all three murders this afternoon.
The events of the last few days
have understandably been very upsetting for the families
and friends of Suzanne, Shelley and Susan,
as well as for the wider public in Bradford.
[tense music continues]
- When it first happened, when he first got arrested,
I just did not want anyone to know.
I did not want anyone to know.
Once he'd been named and the media just took it and ran
with it and his face was everywhere, everywhere I went.
So you're at work and there's newspapers in the canteen
and he's staring at you and you're going into a shop,
there's newspapers and he's staring at you.
[tense music continues]
Look at him, how proud he looks of himself
and he'd clearly gone and got changed.
He's killed the lass, dragged her back into his flat
and taken the time to change his clothes and do his hair
so he can come out and do this,
'cause he knows he's been caught.
- [Reporter] Police divers continued to search the River Aire
near Shipley, where Suzanne Blamires' dismembered body
was discovered.
It's a grim task, but necessary.
- And then after that it all came out
about the body parts and stuff
and it was just awful.
[tense music continues]
It wasn't even enough for him to just kill these women.
He just absolutely desecrated them like he wanted
to destroy them, just wipe all faces of them from the earth.
It was horrific.
And despite the fact I wasn't surprised
by the culmination as it were of his life,
it was still shocking and horrifying.
It was just a horrible, horrible time.
Very mentally distressing and I feel terrible saying
that because I can't imagine how it was for the families
of his victims, you know.
Those poor women.
[dramatic orchestral music]
I mean people ask me, "Do you write to him?
Would you go and see him?
Oh, you should write to him."
It's not that easy.
What am I going to say?
I'm going to say, who are you?
What happened to the little boy I knew?
Why have you done this?
What is wrong with you?
[tense music]
- On the Friday after Griffith's arrest,
he's brought up before magistrates at Bradford.
Court Number three.
When a defendant appears in court for the first time,
it's usually a very dry, short, nondescript affair.
Not with Stephen Griffiths though.
- He was asked to give his name.
You know, we were sitting there, we knew his name.
We were just waiting for Stephen Sean Griffiths.
And instead he kind of pulled himself up
and pronounced, "The Crossbow Cannibal."
[tense music]
The whole court gasped.
It was shocking enough as a journalist to hear that.
But imagine what it must have been like
for the families who were in court of those three women.
And he knew it would shock.
The look on his face was smug.
He was proud.
He had found a way to become infamous.
[tense music continues]
[gentle music]
- I know all the names.
I'll never forget the names.
Susan Rushworth,
Shelley Armitage, Susan Blamires.
Yeah, I can still see the faces as well.
The pictures they put in the papers and stuff.
Never leaves you.
Never. You know.
Just terrible.
Terrible waste.
Terrible waste of him and those three.
[sombre music]
Sorry.
I think he wanted to be someone.
I mean, it's not my idea
of someone you would want to be, but clearly to him it was.
[sombre music continues]
If it wasn't for the fact that that brave,
brave young woman had run out of that flat
and he had to chase her,
then maybe he would never have been caught.
And thank God she did really, I know what happened to her,
but still she stopped it happening to a lot more people.
She's a very, very brave girl.
[sombre music continues]
[tense music]
- We were told as journalists that he was pleading
not guilty and it would be quite a lengthy trial.
And then we saw his lawyers run.
[tense music continues]
I know the lawyer.
And he looked at me and he went,
once again a game had been played.
Griffiths at the last minute
told his defence team he wanted to plead guilty.
And at that moment, I suppose I was glad,
I was glad that the families would not have three weeks
of listening to the gruesome details
about what he did to their loved ones.
But make no mistake, he didn't do it for them.
He did it for himself to add a little bit of drama.
In fact, he turned to the public gallery
where the family was sitting and said,
"And what are you looking at?"
And there was just a moment when I thought somebody
was gonna leap over.
The tension was so high and then they led him away.
[tense music]
- Because Griffiths had pleaded guilty,
there was no need for a full trial.
So all the court needed was a summary
of what was being said against him.
[tense music continues]
People had a good idea of what he'd been up to
in that grotty flat in the center of Bradford.
But nevertheless, the details were truly shocking.
And at various points, there was the sound of sobbing
from the public gallery as the relatives of Susan,
Shelly and Suzanne were forced to listen
to what happened to them.
[tense music continues]
- When the police forensic teams
entered Stephen Griffith's flat, we learned today
that they would find blood samples from all three women,
blood which had been projected onto the walls,
over furniture and onto the carpets.
Griffiths would later describe his bathroom
to the police as the slaughterhouse.
[tense music continues]
- I think the depravity of Griffiths' crimes
was born out by the fact
that he's one of very few criminals
to get a whole life tariff, which means he will never,
ever be eligible for parole.
In fact, the judge described him as wicked and monstrous,
and indeed he is.
[dramatic orchestral music]
- Susan's family have never had a body to bury.
- I've spoken to Susan's family on a number of occasions,
and even now, more than a decade later,
they have not been able to say goodbye.
There is no grave for them to visit.
All that was found in Griffiths' flat was some blood,
but it was Susan's.
And what he has steadfastly refused to do
is to tell them what he did to her
and where he put her body and that haunts them.
[sombre music continues]
To not be able to lay a bunch of flowers,
to not be able to really grieve is cruel.
And it's part of his power game.
[dramatic orchestral music continues]
- While Griffiths admitted his offenses by pleading guilty,
he didn't actually show any signs of remorse.
[tense music]
- I'm not surprised he's shown no remorse.
I think this has all been about Stephen.
It's all been what he wants.
And these women have been a means to an end for that.
Stephen did know he was doing this.
He had mental disorders,
but he also made conscious decisions
to carry out these murders and crafted a life
where he could do that more easily.
[tense music]
- It's always there,
always there in the back of your mind.
I just want to ask him why, probably.
Why you did this and who are you?
I'd probably tell him that I loved him as well.
People might be shocked to hear that,
but he's my brother, my big brother.
I loved him. I love him.
I always will, probably, part of me.
Even though part of me absolutely hates him
for what he's done
and for what he's put so many people through.
[tense music]
- The most important people to remember in this story
are the three women, Susan, Shelly, and Suzanne.
It is so important that attention is always brought back to them
because for their families,
they were people that they loved,
people that they tried to help,
people that they were desperately worried about.
And their worst fears came true.
And they ended up meeting a psychopath,
a cold-hearted killer who wanted to be famous.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[tense music]