RedHanded - Episode 104 - Stephen Griffiths: The Crossbow Cannibal of Bradford

Episode Date: July 25, 2019

On the 26th of May 2010 Peter Gee, caretaker of a block of flats in Bradford was checking the CCTV when something going on outside flat 33 caught his eye. The man who lived there often had sex workers over so when Peter saw a woman going into the flat he wasn't surprised, but he was not prepared for what happened next. A few minutes later he saw the woman running out of the flat, the man was chasing her. Then, he took out a crossbow and shot her. The man was the self-proclaimed "Crossbow Cannibal".    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed. I didn't know that much about this one. I think it's one of the ones that, like, if it happens when you're sort of alive and in the world,

you just hear it on the news one week and then you forget about it. But, like, I was amazed by how bonkers this is. Same. You just sort of think that you know the case because it sort of floods your senses because it's, like, all over the headlines and stuff. And it's like, crossbow cannibal, crossbow cannibal. And I'm like, I think I know that. It was kind of like the Fred and Rose West case, to be honest. Then we dug into that and I was like, bloody hell, I had no idea.

So, very recent case, we're back in the UK. We're in the north of England, we're in West Yorkshire. I think we've done two weeks in America now, I can't remember. So yeah, we're back on home turf. Not that I've ever been to Bradford, but Homer. I've never been to Bradford or Yorkshire but I hear it's beautiful have you not I used to live in Yorkshire I used to have the broadest Yorkshire action you've ever heard when no I did I genuinely did and then I moved down here well moved to Amersham for my dad's job and I remember so clearly the day I was like I'm just not going to speak like that anymore

I'm going to speak like this because no I thought no one was taking me seriously can you still do it no I can do like no I can't I can't do it I need to practice I should have warmed up that's brilliant I think maybe for the patrons you should just record once you've practiced just have you reading out passages in a Yorkshire accent my broadest Yorkshire all of the non-UK people are not going to know what we even mean by a Yorkshire accent. It's great. I really like it. It's like quite... I just said Yorkshire. Yorkshire. They genuinely did it so straight. That's so funny. I had no idea. But when you're a kid like you can you can you're quite malleable language wise. You lose accents like you lose accents you lose languages like that. I learnt that the hard way.

Right, so if you're lucky, I might crack out my bestie actor later on. But I probably won't because I'm scared of you. On the 24th of May 2010, Peter Gee was going about his business. He was the caretaker of a block of flats in Bradford, which is in West Yorkshire, as we have detailed reasonably extensively at this point. And the block of flats was called Homefield Court. It had once been a mill, which is a bit of a callback to Bradford's industrious past. Bradford is an industrial city in the same way that Sheffield is.

There's quite a lot of, I don't know, because Sheffield is steel mills, but I don't know what Bradford's specific thing is. I have no idea. We'll find out in half an hour after this goes out. A lot of those sort of northern cities, a lot of those sort of West Midlands or Midland cities, they were like the powerhouse of like the industrial revolution. Yeah, industrial revolution in this country. So yeah, so that's what that was. So the block had actually been called Soho Mills when it first became a residential building. But it had changed its name after the brutal rape and murder of a sex worker called

Caroline Creevey in 1996. That's not what our story is this episode, but that crime bears many similarities to our story this week. And in a way, it kind of precipitated it. But back in May 2010, Peter Gee was sure that all of that was behind him and behind the now-Homefield Court. Unfortunately for Peter, he was wrong. Peter regularly checked the CCTV footage of the building to check for any break-ins, thefts or anything that looked even a little bit untoward. A few occupants of the flats in Homefield Court regularly entertained sex workers. It was very close to the infamous Bradford Red Light District, which is called Thornton Road. So Peter Gee kept an eye on the cameras,

checking that nothing was overtly wrong, but he basically left everyone alone. The cameras had been installed after the building's owners had learnt that the occupant of flat 33 had spent time in prison. And that occupant is the subject of today's episode. His name was Stephen Griffiths. And as Peter was reviewing the CCTV footage one night, he saw something that he would never forget. Security camera 14, which was directly outside flat 33, showed Stephen Griffiths entering the flat with a woman that Peter didn't recognize.

This footage was recorded on the 22nd of May. Stephen regularly had women come over, many of them were sex workers, so this wasn't particularly anything out of the ordinary. The pair were chatting and nothing seemed threatening. But then, just minutes later, at 2.34am, the same camera showed the woman running out of flat 33. The woman was chased down the hall by Stephen

Griffiths. He appeared totally changed. He was wearing black gloves and he was baring his teeth and in full view of the camera he grappled the woman to the ground and shot her point blank in the head with a crossbow twice. When the woman stopped moving, Stephen dragged her by her legs back into flat 33. And then he came back out, still clutching the crossbow, and waved it at the camera. He knew he was being watched. So much so that he gave the camera the middle finger. And in all of the articles I've read about this, all of the like sort of more, um, the fancier newspapers, just can't bring themselves to say that he just like flipped them the bird.

He's like, oh, and in a vulgar gesture, a one fingered vulgar gesture, he pointed at the camera. And I'm like, why is this such a big deal? He's just shot someone in the head with a crossbow and you're making a point of saying like the middle finger. Exactly. I love that they would have described that horrifying scene that we just described, but they couldn't bring themselves to for someone to swear with their hands that is shocking yeah truly shocking reading this bit

just sent chills up my spine it's like it's like a luther scene yeah can you imagine being peter gee bloody hell just doing your job having a look checking for break-ins i don't know what i would do i would just go home and stand in a scalding shower and then put myself to bed and maybe never leave my house ever again. Honestly, I think that's one of the most scary scenes or like high tension scenes that we've ever talked about on this show. You can find it if you want to find it. We are not going to post it. God, it's one of the worst things I've ever seen. Cue everybody rushing to YouTube. So when Stephen Griffiths had been chasing the woman in the footage, he looked furious. But when he returned to look straight at the camera, he was nothing short of triumphant. A few hours later, the CCTV footage showed Stephen Griffiths re-emerging from his flat several times, carrying bin bags and holdalls.

Peter Gee, not quite believing what he had seen, called the police, who were waiting for his call. They already knew that West Yorkshire, once again, had a serial killer of sex workers specifically on its hands. Now, our main man in this week's episode, Stephen Griffiths, was quite the character. In 2010, he of all things was six years into a PhD in criminology at the University of Bradford. Again, it's like the plot line to

Luther or to like Wire in the Blood, which actually I think is set in Wakefield. Quite interesting. Oh, okay. When I was reading about this this week, I was like, this is how I'm going to go down. Like when I die in some horrible murder accident, something, they're going to be like, oh, true crime podcaster whose house was adorned with photographs of killers. Is that that murder board you've still got? Do you know what? Okay, so we did a shoot the other week. Photo shoot, photo shoot. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, photo shoot. I made a murder wall for it. You'll see the shots are coming out soon. We've done some fun stuff with them. So I made this massive murder wall,

like with the string and like all the pictures of loads of cases we've covered and like micro pigs and like sorrenti and loads of stuff. I resent that this is a big thing now. I couldn't be happier, honestly. Did you see? Did you see somebody? I'm sorry, I can't remember who this was. But somebody when we posted an episode on Patreon, plug Patreon people get early release episodes, this person commented on that episode being like, I'm a bit confused. I feel like sometimes you're called Saruti and sometimes you're called Saranti and sometimes Hannah calls you Saru. Like, what's your name? I was like, my name is what I say at the start of this episode. My favourite one that happened, I think it was our tour announcement where they were like, Hannah and Saruti, like my name is what i say at the start of this episode my favorite one

that happened i think it was our tour announcement where they were like hannah and saruti like do the blah blah blah and someone commented on the tweet saying uh it's spelled saranti i laughed for like seven minutes i'm over it fuck off all of you anyway so now the murder wall is hanging in my living room so i put it up as a joke and we just haven't taken it down but my flatmates were like watkins has got to go I'm not having Ian Watkins on my living room but Fred and Rose and Myra and Ian are fine apparently apparently I mean if you do get murdered the Daily Mail are just going to explode when they see that in the crime scene in the crime scene photos of your house it's the micro pigs that will really

throw them off and the complete nonsensical way that the string is i'm just making it up props props props making props yeah sorry go on yeah so he is um as we said this is just like such a like wire in the blood slash luther plot line if you haven't watched either of those shows oh my god go watch those shows because they're everything fucking phd in criminology at the university of bradford like you couldn't make this stuff up. So Griffiths was also working on a thesis at the time entitled, and I just find this so pretentious, I find this so pretentious, Homicide in an Industrial City, Colon, Lethal Violence in Bradford, 1847 to 1899. If you think that is the most pretentious thing we are going to hear this episode, you are sadly mistaken, I'm afraid.

No, I know, I'm ready. I'm ready for all the pretentiousness. So Stephen grew up in Wakefield, which is just under an hour's drive from Bradford. Think that sounds about right? Like I don't drive. I would just get the train everywhere. So the train is probably like three hours. But I think you can drive there in about an hour on a good day. If the wind's blowing in the right direction and you've made your sacrifices to the road gods. So Stephen was born on Christmas Eve in 1969 and he was an incredibly bright kid and everyone knew it. But his family didn't have much money. His dad was a frozen food salesman and his mum was a telephonist.

What is like a secretary? What's a telephonist? I misread it initially as typist, but it's not as telephonist. Maybe it's like the people that, oh no, that's it. Or maybe it's the people with the wires who are like connecting you now. Maybe. Somebody knows. Tell us what a telephonist is. Like I said, they didn't have much money, but they knew that they had a very intelligent small person on their hands. So they got all the money that they could get together to send their son to the very prestigious, independent Queen Elizabeth

Grammar School. And for our international listeners, because I do think the UK school system is quite confusing, if a school calls itself independent, you have to pay money to go there. Probably quite a lot of money. But equally confusingly, a private school also means you pay money, but a public school also means that you pay money to go there. Public schools are like the posh, posh, posh private schools schools i think there's only like officially there's like eight of them that are like the original public school the original public school which is like eaton harrow exactly so public schools are like the top tier and i think not i think money alone won't get you in there i think you need money and connections i think into an independent and private school

money alone will get you in there then you have have the state schools. I think you still have to do entry exams. Probably. I don't know. I went to a fucking special measures state school. And another fun fact about Queen Elizabeth's independent school, where our mate Stephen Griffiths went, it's also the school that John Haig of Acid Bath Killer fame also went. What's going on in that school? That's what I want to know. He did go there like a hundred years ago.

Don't, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Two is too many, two is too many. So Stephen Griffith's parents split when he was very young. His mum was eventually convicted of benefits fraud and sent to prison. But Stephen's dad continued to graft to keep his son at Queen Elizabeth's. And this was the moment, it seems, that Stephen Griffith's hatred for women was born. We see this so often. Serial killers just hate their mum for something that, I mean, this isn't out of her control.

She was doing benefits fraud. But like, if the dad leaves, then it's your fault. She was probably doing benefits fraud to keep him in that posh school. But it's interesting, in a lot of serial killers' cases, I know that's not what happened here, but like, you see, when the dad leaves, their son, who becomes a serial killer, hates the mum because he says, you made him leave. Whatever they do, they're going to end up hating you

and end up hating women and going on to murder a bunch of women. Yeah, it's hard out here. It is hard out here. In murder land. That's why I will never have children in case they hate you. Stephen's childhood and also his teen years were plagued with mental health problems, incredibly severe ones. He was never a normal quote unquote kid. And a neighbour from the estate that Griffiths grew up on vividly

remembered him swallowing a baby rabbit hole. Just right in there, glass of water, gone. It's very Richard Chase-y all of a sudden. Oh my god. Did you see that guy in Australia? I mean, oh, so gross. He swallowed a gecko on a dare and then died two days later. What? I know. Geckos are fucking poisonous. Everything in Australia wants to kill you.

Don't put it in your mouth. I know. He was married with kids and he swallowed a gecko on a dare. I felt so ill when i read that article i didn't even just read the headline i read the entire article whoa serious business in this day and age i need my news in headlines and bullet points only seriously though i'm very busy and important what do you mean i have to go outside zone two etc all of the above it gets worse. Stephen was arrested for the possession of an air rifle that he used to shoot birds. He would then go and collect the birds that he'd shot and take them to his bedroom and dissect them. And then in 1991, he was diagnosed as a sadistic schizoid psychopath.

But he couldn't be sectioned under the Mental Health Act because he did not display any signs of a treatable illness. Basically what we'll find as we sort of go on, like he appears to have an untreatable, incredibly severe personality disorder. I think he was prescribed medication at like various different points during his life. He also spent time in a residential mental institution. But I think when he was prescribed drugs he was never on them for very long classic again very I mean I'm not saying he is like Richard Chase because he's very very different but kind of a similar trajectory and also like when I first read about the sort of like

shooting the birds and taking them to his room and dissecting them I was like well maybe some kids are just curious he's 20 when he gets arrested for doing that he's not a kid this is this is well in this is well ingrained into his behavior before his diagnosis when he gets arrested for doing that. He's not a kid. This is well in. This is well ingrained into his behaviour. Before his diagnosis, when he's a teenager, when he's just 17, he's shoplifting loads and a store manager tried to stop him. So Stephen slashed the manager across the face. This landed young Griffiths a three-year prison sentence.

While he was in custody, he told officers that he had vivid fantasies about serial killing. He was even specific enough to tell his probation officer that he would start his murder career when he was in his early 30s, although in reality, he would leave it until he was 39. While he was in the big house, Stephen lost all contact with his family. And I can kind of understand why he spent all that money on school, and you're just going to shoplift and stab people in the face. But I suppose like he is he is unwell too. So suppose there's that element so maybe i should just calm down at this point not when the murders happen this was very interesting also during this period of time griffiths developed a phobia of penetration and we're not talking about sexual penetration we're talking about things physically getting in inside him like ears eyes nose he was convinced that

there were insects living in his ears and he could hear them all the time so he would sleep with cotton wool buds in his ears otherwise he just he couldn't handle it like if he was sleeping somewhere else and he like forgot his cotton wool he would have to go and get it like or he couldn't sleep what we have there is like a very obvious symptom of psychosis like obviously there weren't bugs living in his ears but he's having an auditory psychosis from very, very young. He was hearing things that weren't there, which is bad news. Terrifying. So after he got out of prison, Stephen went on to the University of Leeds, which again is a very good university. And there he read psychology and got a first. So with that,

he barreled straight into a PhD in Bradford. While at uni, Stephen partied a lot. He had some friends, but it seems that a great deal of people generally tend to keep their distance from him. He was a habitual drug taker, but it was more of a habit, not an addiction. I think what we need to be careful with with him is like, yes, he did take a lot of drugs, but I don't think it was the drugs that was driving what he was doing. And like, we see quite a lot of that, but I think he, I don't think it was the drugs that was driving what he was doing and like we see quite a lot of that but I think he I don't think he had it under control but I don't think it was what was controlling his life I would agree with that so Stephen Griffiths moved into Holmfield court when he was 27 no one who knows him remembers him having a job basically ever he doesn't strike

me as the kind of man who can really um turn, punch in, get your head down, punch out. No. So he basically had to survive off benefits and grants. But just because nobody saw him ever working or doing very much else doesn't mean that he didn't leave an impression on his neighbours. Stephen really liked to be noticed. He wore a long black leather coat and sunglasses all the time, even in the dark. And he bought himself two lizards that he would regularly put little harnesses on and walk around Bradford with. Can you imagine?

I've been trying to imagine someone dressed as fucking Neo. The Matrix. Yeah. Wandering around with two little lizards on a lead. And he wouldn't stop there because he would put his little reptilian friends in a rucksack and take them out to nightclubs with him. To the club? Like, oh, have you met my lizards? Mate, he's peacocking. He's the OG. If someone whipped out a lizard at me in a club, I would die.

I mean, you'd notice him, wouldn't you? You would take notice. I would tell the story for the rest of my days. Exactly. Exactly. He's maybe he's the OG game guy, you know, how to peacock. We'll go on to that. He wants to be remembered. Like that's his. Absolutely. Fame and notoriety are very important to him. And so with his little shenanigans of taking lizards to clubs with him, this earned him the very unoriginal nickname lizard man come on Bradford he made it so easy though you don't even need to try it'd almost be a bit hacky to give him a better nickname than that I think the best piece of television ever made is when Lisa is like I am the lizard queen why has that moment not just that moment won an

Emmy that's what I want to know there you you go. Our Simpsons Quota episode reference for the episode is hit. Tick. Stephen, relatively unsurprisingly, given his wardrobe and lizards, wasn't much a one for the outside world. But he did love hanging out online. And in the 2000s, hanging out online meant MySpace and MySpace only. I remember so clearly when Facebook first happened. And I was like, I'm not getting a Facebook. I i'm just gonna stick with my space like i hate change so stephen griffith's

my space presence was really something he called himself then pariah pariah obviously meaning an outcast there oh did you hear that i said outcast it's coming coming. It's coming. I know. It's creeping. Meaning outcast. And then Ven. I don't really know about Ven. Maybe it's like Steve Ven. Maybe. It's like how he clearly has, obviously his name is Steven and he doesn't want people

to call him Steve or Steve. He's like, it's Ven, actually. And do you remember on MySpace you used to be able to say what your mood was? Remember, I didn't have Facebook till I went to uni. I never had MySpace. Oh, shit. I never on MySpace you used to be able to say what your mood was? Remember, I didn't have Facebook till I went to uni. I never had MySpace. Oh, shit. I never had MySpace. Because you could like walk to people's houses and talk to them in real life.

I just saw them every day. So I was like, okay, cool. I did have MSN Messenger, but that was it. The origin. So, well, on MySpace in the good old days, you could, well, if you weren't fighting about who of your friends was going to make it into your top 10, you could say what your mood was. and Stephen always had his listed as evil and he joined a lot of groups his favorite cause I suppose was the independence of Yorkshire and he was a very

encouraging of the local music scene commented on a lot of stuff went to a lot of gigs like very into it but this is this just takes takes it out of me um okay in an unbelievably pretentious move steven also posted the book of ezekiel quote made famous by samuel l jackson and pulp fiction he posted it on his on his myspace page and if you haven't seen pulp fiction number one what are you doing and number two basically what it is is it's a bible passage that if you say it in a scary voice and you are samuel l Jackson, it's very scary. And it starts with the path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. And it goes on to talk about vengeance and being the finder of lost children, etc, etc, etc.

A lot of wanky actors will use it as a warm up if they're playing someone evil. Should we use it as a warm up before we go on to it? I was thinking about this, but I think it's just a bit too like angry and it's like and i rain down vengeance upon them like no we need to like have you not seen pulp fiction yeah yeah i'm just saying should we should we not use that is that not what we're doing but actually i've been thinking about this all the warm-ups i know are like for 10 people plus so if anyone has good two-person warm-ups, please send them in. Because I refuse to do this one.

So Stephen, or rather Ven Pariah, described himself on Myspace as a misanthrope, which means just someone who hates people. And I think we could all have our misanthropic days, I certainly do, especially if I have to get on the tube. And he also posted all sorts of nonsense about how shit humans are. Here is one choice example. He wrote, humanity is not merely a biological condition.

It's also a state of mind. On that basis, I am pseudo-human at best, a demon at worst. Come on, man. The eyes are rolling. They're rolling. My eyes are just on the floor. They're gone.

And although he may not have been a demon, Griffiths was certainly not an exemplary human. Despite his distinguished studies, he had a string of girlfriends that he treated appallingly. He was possessive and controlling. Ex-Kathy Hancock even took out a restraining order against him, which he, of course, violated very quickly. He spray-painted the word slag on the side of her house,

slashed her car tires, painted the windows of her house yellow and left threatening messages on her voicemail. In one of them, he just laughs like a maniac and then says, I'm not going away. So I guess you'd better. I mean, fucking hell. He is so sinister. It's scary. That would scare the shit out of me. It's terrifying. Now, Kathy was only with Griffiths for 12 months, but that was more than long enough. Because he was violent, he threatened to kill her on multiple occasions, and he controlled every aspect of her existence. Cathy told the press in 2010,

All of it is a game for him. He has complete disregard for life. Totally. And after a few relationship breakdowns, Stephen spent more and more time with sex workers, paying them for sex. But he would also pick up drugs for them, chat to them on the road, and hang out with them. Bridget Farrell knew Stephen in the late 2000s. He was always kind to her. He cooked her dinner, washed her clothes, and let her crash on his sofa when she had nowhere to go. Now, although Griffiths could be kind when he lived alone in Bradford, his flat was something to behold. In between the lizard incubators and the live rats that he fed to them, Stephen Griffiths lined his walls with clippings of famous criminals.

All of the big guys were there. Bundy, Manson, etc. Hi, dear internet, please stop calling Charles Manson a serial killer and including him in serial killer lists because that is not what he is. Thank you very much. Hannah Maguire. And stop making serial killer lists. Full stop. what he is thank you very much hannah mcguire and stop making serial killer lists full stop top 10 serial killers you never heard of number one jeffrey darmer fucking try me ranker shut up shut up enough of the rage today um until it comes out later on so uh he also i feel like this is also just like classic with anyone who's got a bit of a weird house griffiths had samurai swords on the walls and also endless true crime books and a lot of people make a big deal out of this but he is also doing a PhD in criminology and what PhD student's house isn't filled with literature

on their chosen field but I think it's the context. I think if it was just the books fine but it's the live rats, the lizards, the swords. He put all that together but some people wonder that maybe he did start out reasonably normal and it was the isolation that came with his phd thesis that was the thing that turned griffiths from a person like us someone who's got an interest in serial killers into an actual murderer but then so on the other hand a lot of people think that his plan all along was to become a serial killer because he was so hyper intelligent. So maybe he chose to pursue criminology so he could educate himself on how to conduct the perfect crime. I'm not sure. I think it's possible that his chosen subject exacerbated his very complicated, untreatable personality disorder. I think let's stick a pin in that and come back to it at the end of the show.

Yeah, because I have some thoughts on it. In Professor of Criminology David Wilson's opinion, Stephen Griffiths is almost a wannabe serial killer. He wanted his 15 minutes in the spotlight. The infamy that a serial killer can attract is what Stephen Griffiths wanted. And he idolised one killer above all of the rest, the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.

We've never covered Sutcliffe on the show, and I'm not sure whether we will. But for those of you who don't know, here is a quick rundown. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Sutcliffe killed 13 women and attempted to murder seven others in Bradford and Leeds. He got away with it for so long, not because he was a genius, but because the majority of those women were sex workers and hardly anyone noticed that they were gone. The West Yorkshire police were investigated in 1982 in the Byford report, which concluded that the police were at fault and the investigation was poorly handled. This affects today's story in two ways. Firstly, and most obviously, Stephen Griffiths was obsessed

with Peter Sutcliffe. They were from the same part of the country and Sutcliffe had an extremely high body count, which Griffiths saw as a sign of success. And secondly, the way that sex work is policed in the UK changed drastically after the Byford Report. The Byford Report started the conversation about the less dead in the UK. No one cared about dead sex workers, but it was the first time that it had been widely publicised

that the police didn't either. As of 2003, the act of prostitution is not illegal in the UK anymore. But the problem is, working in a brothel is still illegal. Which means that the only place that you can now carry out sex work without getting arrested, fined and possibly imprisoned for it is on the streets. And obviously this could be the most dangerous place for you to be doing that. So if a sex worker is caught, and this is according to the law in the UK, if a sex worker is caught persistently loitering on the streets, they are sent to mandatory counselling sessions. But if they miss just one appointment, they either get fined or go to prison. There are some obvious

issues with this because if they get fined, the easiest way to pay that fine is through sex work. If they get sent to prison, they come out criminalized, possibly addicted to drugs, and with even fewer job prospects than they had before they went in. So again, just increases the likelihood that they will turn back to sex work. And according to, you know, how this is policed persistently interestingly means more than twice a month that seems like the wrong word to me yeah persistent i go to the gym maybe twice a month i wouldn't say i persistently go to the gym exactly and i also let's clear this up before we go on we're not saying that every sex worker in the uk is addicted to drugs that's not what we're

saying basically all of the women in the story today are. So that is why that's our frame of reference for this particular episode. But we are by no means saying that everybody who is a sex worker has a heroin problem or a crack problem. It's just a big part of the story in Bradford at this time. And so it's very relevant. Okay, so Bradford is unique in the UK in that according to the West Yorkshire Police, it is one of the most pervasively monitored cities in Britain. It has a network of over 100 street cameras that have an integrated car number plate recognition system called Venom. Sounds great, doesn't it? But there's one blind spot, the red light district.

So although prostitution itself isn't illegal, being a punter is. So no one is going to stop their car where Venom can see them. Sex workers will therefore go where the business is, which means that they are unseen by Venom and therefore unprotected by it. Retired detective superintendent Max McLean, who was part of the West Yorkshire CID for almost 30 years, said it better than anyone. Quote, This gives a clear message to those who work in prostitution. You're on your own and out on the streets.

Superintendent for Bradford South, Angela Williams, told The Guardian that there had been another major change to sex work in recent years too. When we're talking about recent, we're talking about contemporary to the case today, so we're talking late 2000s. In Superintendent Williams' experience, sex workers used to have nice houses and nice things. And they would go to work for set hours from midnight till 7am, for example. And then they'd give a cut to their pimp and then they'd go home.

Now, crack is the pimp. More often than not, in Bradford's red light district, sex workers are controlled by their addictions. They don't have pimps. So that means that they take higher risks and take on more dangerous clients to get their money to stop the hellish withdrawal symptoms. I'm not saying that pimps are a good thing before you all come for me. It's just the article I was reading, they called it the rattles or like the rattling. Then one of the women they were interviewing was saying, you know, you will do anything to make it stop. So you possibly would be more likely to take higher risks. In 2009, the murder rate in the UK was the lowest it had been in 20 years, but there was never a more dangerous time to be a sex worker. So when we look at Stephen

Griffiths, and even Stephen Wright, the Suffolk Strangler, who also exclusively murdered sex workers, or if we're talking about anybody who targets sex workers they kill sex workers because sex workers are easy targets less people care about them less people report them missing less members of the public care when they are found dead and even in one of the documentaries that i watched on this i found it really disappointing i can't remember which network released it but they were talking about one of the victims in the case today and they're like, and she made it easy for him by like being on the road at like this time of night,

being drunk or whatever. And I was like, come on, are we not past that now? Like... Apparently not. He made it easy for himself by being a murderer. Exactly. Now, another violent and predatory man who was attracted to the unrecorded Bradford Red Light District streets was Kenneth Valentine.

He moved into the Thornton Road adjacent Soho Mills. This is the old name of the building that Stephen Griffiths lived in. And if you remembered, you win a gold star. Now, Valentine was a paranoid schizophrenic, and he rented his bedroom out to sex workers for five quid a session while he watched through a hole in the wall. So yeah, nothing absolutely terrifying about that. In 1996, one of the women who used his room, 25-year-old Caroline Creevey, refused Valentine's advances, so he raped and killed her. Stephen Griffiths lived in the building while all this happened, and he paid extremely close attention to Valentine's movements.

So this takes us right up to 2009, when Susan Rushworth disappeared after she picked up a methadone prescription at 1pm on the 22nd of June. Susan was 43 and already a grandmother. She had a long battle with heroin. She had first taken the drug when she was just 16 and for the three years prior to her disappearance. She had been regularly engaged in know it fucks you up, all of that, because like we're taught about it in school. It's on TV all the time. It's talked about a lot. But for someone like Susan, I would find it unbelievable if the first time she ever took heroin, she knew what it was. Fully knew, fully understood.

So Susan was from a middle class Yorkshire family. She got married young in her 20s. I know it didn't work out. After that, there was a string of relationships, some of which involved drugs and some of which didn't. Susan maintained a close relationship with her family throughout all of this time, and her mum paid for her to go to rehab. But Susan only ever managed to keep clean for months at a time. And it was her mum who reported that she had gone to the police. Missing posters went up and there was even a TV appeal, but nothing came of it. And it wasn't long before another regular on Thornton Road went missing.

31-year-old Shelley Armitage was known to everyone on the Bradford sex work scene. She was last seen on the 26th of April 2010, discussing a price with a passing car. She was described by those who knew her as a confident, bubbly, aspiring model. Shelley's boyfriend, Craig, was entirely dependent on her for drug money. It was common for her to be gone for days at a time, earning money so both of them could get high.

So it took him a while before he reported her missing. He waited until she didn't pick up her benefits check. Even when he did report her missing, everyone in the community knew that there were now two sex workers missing, but nothing changed. None of the sex workers stopped treading the same path because they had addictions to feed, after all. Less than a month later, yet another woman went missing. On the 24th of May 2010, Shelley Armitage's best friend, Susan Blamiers, was seen for the last time.

So it's confusing, we've got a Susan and a Suzanne. Suzanne was well known on Thornton Road. She had a significant drink and drugs problem. She called herself Amber when she was working. She had been gang raped multiple times, but according to Donna, another of the Thornton Road group, Suzanne just slept them off like hangovers and would be back on Thornton Road the very next night. Suzanne was from a middle class family. She had her own pony growing up

and she was all set to become a nurse. But Suzanne started raving before she finished her A-levels and ecstasy led to heroin and soon her addiction completely ruled her life and she engaged in sex work on Thornton Road to pay for her habit. After she didn't come home for three days, Suzanne's boyfriend called her mum, Nicky, and Nicky, who hadn't heard from Suzanne either, called the police. As soon as the police got the call about Suzanne, they knew that they had a serial killer on their hands, again. So they got to work searching databases and sex offender registers,

looking for connections, but they had no luck until they got the call from Peter Gee. And remember, Peter Gee is our man with the CCTV. The woman in the CCTV crossbow footage that we talked about at the start of the episode was Suzanne Blamez. After Stephen Griffiths had shot her in the head with two crossbow bolts, he had dragged Suzanne back into his flat, dismembered her in his bathroom with power tools and his samurai sword. Then he casually carried her body parts in bags out of the building. He was caught dumping a rucksack near a train station on CCTV. The night before he had killed Suzanne Blamiz, Griffiths had posted on his Ven Pariah MySpace page, quote, 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. Obviously, the CCTV footage from outside Flat 33 was all the police needed to make an arrest. So they headed to Homefield Court to apprehend the criminology student from hell. As the armed policeman burst into his house, Stephen Griffiths was waiting and he said, He's been sitting and thinking about that for some time. He really is a showman, isn't he? Oh, God, he is. And there's really, you can find this footage incredibly easily of him being booked when they take him to the police station. And he's so polite. He's like, he's speaking very softly. And he's just like, doing everything he's told. He's like, oh, is

there any chance I can have a glass of water and all of this sort of stuff that's that um that's that private education yeah exactly even when they're interrogating him griffiths put up absolutely no fight at all and he told the police that he had killed suzanne and shelly and susan and that he had acted totally alone he had dismembered all three women in his bathroom with power tools a hammer and his samurai sword. He called his bathroom his slaughterhouse. He claimed to have cooked and eaten parts of Susan and Shelley. Then he had eaten parts of Suzanne raw because his cooker had broken, which was probably because he was trying to stuff whole humans inside it. There is some speculation about whether he actually ate any of them

because it is a bit of a sensationalist thing. I don't know, and there's no way sensationalist thing i don't know and there's no way they can prove it no and there's no way we can know he did swallow that you know dead rabbit but i don't know that's true actually i feel like if you can keep down a baby rabbit you can probably keep down some human flesh it's not going to be wriggling around is it no it's not and also i guess coming back to the whole idea of him being a showman coming back to what we talked about at the start of the episode about him really wanting notoriety, him wanting people to know who he is. What's a faster way to get yourself in the headlines than to be a cannibal?

And he does a lot of that as well. He also told police that he'd killed even more women. And the police asked him how many and he just said loads. Specifically loads. One loads. And he gave no further details i think it's because he hadn't killed enough for him to be like it was sufficiently impressive enough to him yet but there is speculation that he only killed three people because that's what you need to be technically a serial killer and if you look at him you know looking straight down the barrel of the

camera he knows he's going to get caught. Yeah, that's very true. Yeah, no, that's true. Either it is that just enough to be a serial killer. He's waiting for them. He's got his Osama bin Laden joke ready to go. He knows. He has.

You're right. You're right. But then he was so obsessed with like Sutcliffe and like his really high body count and stuff. Did he just know, I'm just caught? I don't know. I don't know. Who knows?

But yeah, interesting. Interesting. Something else else he did which is pretty despicable is that he never told the police what he did with any of the remains of the women that he had killed but he did uh mention to the police that he was misanthropic and had no time for the human race he even specifies he's like oh like i don't have a problem with like sex workers in particular like i just don't like anyone oh well that's all right then. And when he was asked why he had killed Susan, Shelley and Suzanne, he responded, quote, Sometimes you kill someone to kill yourself or part of yourself.

I don't know. I don't know. It's like deep issues inside me. And he also admitted to setting part of his flat on fire to get rid of DNA evidence and expressed some surprise that the caretaker, Peter Gee, didn't cotton on to something untoward happening in his house sooner. And the way he says this is very interesting. They're sort of talking to him and they're like, well, how did you know that fire would destroy DNA evidence? And he was like, well, to be perfectly honest with you,

I really was meaning to look it up, but I didn't quite get round to it and I just thought it would be better to do that than not so he's not really this master I mean maybe he's double bluffing but like if you're the mastermind criminal I don't know he's confusing I don't know either also I just think an interesting little tidbit about him obviously never telling the police where the remains were or anything like that we do have Helen's Law now in this country as of very recently because how do you prove they know where the body is anybody in the UK or maybe not even in the UK who doesn't know that and Helen's Law we're not going to go into a huge amount of detail maybe we'll cover it in a future I think we've got

it down for a future Patreon episode yeah we have yeah the murder of Helen McCourt basically very very recently like literally I think like a few weeks maybe like a month or something ago laws passed in this country called helen's law that if killers refuse to reveal the room like where the whereabouts of their victims bodies flat out parole refused no chance top Topical. I nearly put it in, but then I knew we'd get there eventually. So much faith. So after, you know, his arrest, everything, Griffiths was taken into custody and his flat, number 33, was searched. On Griffiths' computer, they found footage of Shelley Armitage hogtied to a pillow in Griffiths' bathtub. On her back, he had spray-painted,

My Sex Slave. And in the footage, Shelley is already dead. And Stephen Griffiths gives a chilling voiceover, saying, I am Ven Pariah. I am the bloodbath artist. Here's a model who is assisting me. Oh, he's such a... He loves it.

He loves it. I hate it. I hate it. So Griffiths had made a few very feeble attempts to get rid of the evidence in his flat by pulling up floor tiles around his bath and the aforementioned fire. But he didn't do the best job, really,

because Susan and Shelley's DNA was found on his cooker. Now, after interviewing other people in the area, police found that hours after he had killed Suzanne Blamers Griffiths was on the hunt again. He approached Rosalind Edmondson and offered her some crack in his flat. Rosalind walked with Griffiths for a bit but she didn't go into his flat and she escaped with her life. She literally just follows her gut that's it she's like he took he did some coke and he completely changed. And I was like, I'm getting myself out of here. Hours.

Not even hours. I think maybe even less than an hour. This is what I mean. I feel like he knew the net was closing in. So he was just on one to get that body count as high as he could. He probably knew when Peter Gee reviewed the CCDV footage. And I think that's it. Like Hannah said, I think he knew he needed the bare minimum of three to go down in history as a serial killer but I think he starts to be like well let me just get that head count

up as much as I possibly can before I'm caught yeah and then I get to whack out that great Osama bin Laden line the day after Stephen Griffiths's flat was searched a member of the public made a gruesome discovery they discovered a rucksack floating in the river air five miles away from Bradford inside this rucksack? I don't know. It's very sketchy on the details here. They'll either say they found a rucksack, they found a bag, they found 81 pieces of her body.

So basically they find 81 fragments of her. He didn't chop her up found 81 pieces of her body or so basically they find 81 fragments of her he didn't chop her up into 81 pieces but you see it sort of misreported so i don't i think they see it floating in the river and then they call the police and the police open it i don't think the civilian is opening it but i don't know because who's fishing rucksacks out of rivers and opening them the head was identified to be su Blamier's. The police would go on to recover, as I said, 81 fragments of her body in the river, and we are talking fragments,

like she couldn't fit into a normal human-sized coffin. A small portion of Shelley Armitage's spine was also recovered. But that was it. Griffiths' kill kit was also found in the river containing all of the tools that he had used to dismember his victims. Stephen Griffiths never said a word about what he did with Susan Rushford's remains. So they have absolutely no idea where she is. They have no piece of her at all. On the 28th of May 2010, Stephen Griffiths appeared in magistrate's court and when he was asked his name, he stood up and declared that he was the crossbow cannibal.

So yes, that is not a moniker that was given to him by someone else. No. He stands up and calls himself that. And when he was asked his address, he said, um, I guess here? What a comedian. Someone get the man a tour. He's like a 16-year-old petulant teenager. Yeah, that's exactly it. That's spot on. His trial wouldn't start until December of the same year.

And as he had pleaded guilty, the Leeds Crown Court was spared the graphic CCTV footage that had sealed his fate. The trial took just two hours and 20 minutes and Stephen Griffiths sat in a grey tracksuit and scowled the whole way through. As Judge Openshaw issued Griffiths a whole-of-life sentence, he said, quote, It is one thing to terrorise and kill a victim, but to terrorise, kill, dismember and then eat parts of a victim is to take the exercise of power to another level. It's very unlikely that Stephen Griffiths will see the light of day again. He has made several suicide attempts in prison, but as of this episode, he has been unsuccessful. He is in the Monster Mansion with our mate Robert Maudsley. Which is Wakefield if you're not up on your prison slide.

Yeah. Wakefield Prison. And has shown no signs of remorse. But apparently, he loves it when his name is in the press. He has the infamy that he always wanted. Before we wrap up, let's go back to what we put a pin in earlier. Do you think he was studying criminology because he wanted to be a serial killer or he became a serial killer because he was studying criminology? I don't think it was his intent when he probably started studying criminology to become a serial killer.

I think he had a morbid fascination with it. And then I think when he started to read about them, he started to idolize these people and he wanted to be just like them. So I think he decided to be that. I guess at what point he decides to be, it's hard to say. But I think if he was doing it to get away with it, like some people people hint at he was smart enough to have studied law instead of criminology i think it's not what you do it's what you can prove after all i think he wants to get caught because if you get away with it nobody knows who you are yeah you know that's the exactly that's the conundrum that you know the the most successful serial killers we don't know their names he doesn't want that he wants the fame that's very true that's very true I think it's it's fascination

and idolization rather than prep yeah I but I think there's something I mean people go mad writing their PhD thesis all the time they do indeed but I think it was always in there though yeah I don't think we can blame the PhD system people who go through PhDs I think they have a tough time but they don't go out and murder three sex workers so no he was um swallowing rabbits long before that sounds like it's a sounds like that's like a proverb or a euphemism for something oh well he was swallowing rabbits back when i knew him so a lot of people have speculated whether there were actually only three victims and i'm inclined to say that yes because otherwise he would have he made no bones about trying to

hide anything he was like yes I did it and this is how I did it and they're like please have a look at this video footage and and I think he's so proud of it that if there were more he would have said I think but also there are a lot of unsolved murder cases in Bradford and Leeds that fit the same victim profile but as of now no further connections have been made but i did think this was an interesting point apparently in the netherlands i don't know how true this is but i did read in the netherlands where sex work has been decriminalized totally i saw it claimed that there has never been a case of a serial killer targeting those on the game so i think we're just at a point where sex work isn't going anywhere. It's always

been here. It's always going to be here. Surely there is something more we could be doing to protect those people who are involved in it. Completely. It's hard because I did watch like a couple of documentaries about the Amsterdam sort of sex scene. And this isn't necessarily about serial killers, but it is legal there. is legalized they are more protected but apparently still like the um sex trafficking the pimping all of that is still so pervasive even in a country like that where it is legalized oh totally but sex trafficking and sex work are two very separate things we're not separate they're different absolutely of course they're different things i'm saying that um that channel of feeding people that are being sex trafficked into the sex work industry is still very prevalent. Oh, for sure. I'm not saying that the Netherlands have the perfect system.

I think, obviously, the perfect system doesn't exist. No, that's all I'm saying is that that's the problem. We need to do so much more to protect sex work because it's not going anywhere. It can't. There's a reason we call it the oldest profession. And also, sex work is work. Go out and let's all go and change the sex industry this week. That's your challenge. That's the moral of this story. Yeah. More needs to be done. It can never be perfect, but more needs to be done. It could be better than it is. It could be actively better

than it is now. Absolutely. So yeah, thanks guys for listening to today's episode on The Crossbow Cannibal slash Stephen Griffiths. Apart from that, we have a few quick announcements to make. The first one being that we hit $6,000 on Patreon. So that's $6,000 a month on Patreon, which was the goal that we had set, which is very, very exciting. And to you sharp-eyed, sharp-eyed? Eagle-eyed eyed sharp eyed you pointy eyed fuckers out there you eagle eyed um patreon people out there you will have maybe noticed that the goal that we had set when we got to 6000 was that I would quit my job also like Hannah did four months ago and go full-time on reded. So because we always say what we always

do what we say we're going to do. I have quit my job. Party, party, party, party. I don't even know how to like, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be amazing. We're gonna get an office dog. We're gonna call him Marcus Barks. It's gonna be amazing. Yeah, it's crazy. And honestly, if anybody is listening out there, just thinking, you know, we've been doing this in our spare time for a year and a half. Then Hannah went full time and I've been doing this in my spare time. If you ever want to know how much you've changed our lives, we are both now full time doing this as our real and true proper jobs. So fucking hell, thank you so much. It's crazy.

It's the best thing in the world when you're like talking to someone you don't know. They're like, oh, what do you do? And you're like, oh, I'm a podcaster and they go no really and i say no really no that's what i do yeah it's amazing it's amazing seriously thank you from the bottom of our hearts we couldn't be more thrilled about all the possibilities that lie ahead for red-handed in 2020 and beyond so thank you thank you thank you and a specific thank you to those people who became new patreons this month this month this week fucking hell there are so many of you so i'm gonna do the usual i'll start and then when i start to you know have an episode i'll hand it back over to you so thank

you vivian hall sheena anderson and kala here yeah good job yeah l Lindsay, Carly Pettit, Angela Higgins, Ru-Shan Jiang, Emily Erin Hess, Elena, Lauren Butterworth-Taylor, Jacqueline Wright, Arumi Megoza, Paloma Scarpacci, Masa Novak, Greta Shah, Amelia Kuhn-Williams, Jenny Liu, Lisa Strathy, Alex Glu, my brain is like having a meltdown. It's very hot in these boxes. Lou Gucho, Laura Moran, Journey Han, Journey, what a great name,

Sarah Giles, Matilda Sattlin, Jasmine Harvey, Faith, Molly Hildebrandt, Selina Akram. And then you can go. Am I Mona Lee, Kim, Katrina Goodall, Parisia, Ben McNamara, Brandy Luray, Abigail Love, Mandy, Brendan Nelson, Sunu Matthew, Sarah, Gina, Becky Mowbray, Rebecca Hoff, Katie Louise Knudsen. Katja, I think. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I'm dyslexic, it's not my fault. Katja Louise Knudsen, Diane Fidalgo, Caitlin Wood, Kate Bennett, Kelly Bapka, Kate McIntosh, Tracy Morrison.

Thank you all so much. You have absolutely, genuinely changed our lives and we're going to keep doing this and see what happens. It's very seat of the pants at the moment. Thanks again, guys. Usual things. Follow us at Red Handed The Pod

on all the social medias. Get your tour tickets. Link is in the episode description and hopefully we'll see you in September. See you in September. Bye. Bye. Bye. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader.

Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary. That's excessive. She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. That'll cost you. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus.

In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is Season 2 of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+.

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