Railway killer John Duffy was brought back to the

Railway killer John Duffy was brought back to the Old Bailey today (Fri) to be sentenced for the series of rapes which made him Britain’s worst sex attacker.

Duffy, 42, was serving a minimum of 30 years for two murders and five rapes when he admitted to another 17 sex crimes.

His confessions implicated his boyhood friend David Mulcahy, also 41, who was jailed for life earlier this year for three murders and twelve rape attacks.

Together the pair were the ‘Thriller Killers’ relishing the hunt for victims carried out to the soundtrack of Michael Jackson’s chilling smash hit.

Duffy today returned to the famous No 1 court where he was sentenced in 1988 and where he gave evidence against Mulcahy last year for the final chapter of their horrifying story.

Both the victims of childhood bullying, Duffy and Mulcahy were drawn together from their first days at secondary school and became inseparable.

They were also joined by deep seated feelings of sexual inadequacy – Duffy’s low sperm court led to an obsessive hatred of women and Mulcahy difficulties in maintaining an erection led to crimes of ever increasing perversity and violence.

After a series of petty crimes they turned to rape and murder, ambushing women at stations using Duffy’s knowledge of the railway network gained when he was a British Rail carpenter.

Wearing balaclavas and armed with a rapist’s kit of knives and tape they killed raped and murdered at will, exercising a reign of terror over London and the south east for more than 13 years.

Clean shaven Duffy, wearing a green waistcoat, matching trousers and a short sleeved shirt, stopped whispered conversations dead as he emerged into the dock.

He turned to glance at several of his victims and six male jurors, who had returned to court to see him sentenced.

Prosecutor Mr Mark Dennis told the court today that the Crown accept Duffy was suffering from memory loss when he was behind bars ‘shielding’ his accomplice after his life sentence.

‘The prosecution recognise that John Duffy was undoubtedly subject to major stress factors following his arrest and charge in November 1986 which are perfectly capable of triggering what is widely recognised as a psychological defence mechanism.

He added: ‘John Duffy wanted to come to terms with his offending.

That involved facing up to his past conduct and revealing it all so as far as he was concerned he could set the record straight and put that offending behind him.

‘He wanted to put the record straight having confessed all.

‘

In a series of counselling sessions with Dr Jenny Cutler at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire, Duffy confessed to the full extent of his appalling crimes.

Mr Dennis said: ‘Her work has been worthy of much commendation.

‘

Duffy admitted that his first sex crime was in 1975 when he broke into a flat in Kensington to rape a woman there.

The plan was not carried out and a rape plot at a
Ladbroke Grove home was also aborted.

A 21-year-old who was walking home from a party in Kilburn clutching a teddy bear, was to become their first victim in October 24, 1982.

Using sticking plaster to stifle her screams, they dragged her into a garden where she was stripped, blindfolded and raped.

The victim recalled: ‘I put my hands up and the taller man said: ‘Don’t worry, it is a knife.

‘

‘I was really scared.

I knew what was going to happen.

‘

Afterwards both men were on a high of pure excitement and vowed their first victim would not be their last.

In March of the following year they targeted a 29-year-old restaurant manager who was walking near Finchley Road railway station.

But the woman bit Mulcahy’s hand and despite being kicked and punched she put up such a struggle they let her go.

An American social worker aged 32 was attacked on Barnes Common almost a year later on January 20, 1984.

Mulcahy and Duffy who were in the area decorating Duffy’s parent’s home, stripped and raped the woman
on Barnes Common.

Their fourth victim was a 23-year-old grabbed at West Hampstead railway station and dragged across the tracks on June 3 of that year.

She told the court: ‘They had a knife and said they would cut me if I didn’t do as I was told.

All I could say was: ”Please don’t hurt me”

They laughed as they passed the distraught woman afterwards in their getaway car joking that they should offer her a lift.

A girl of 22 was gagged with tape after she was seized on Highgate West Hill a month later on July 8, 1984.

Fortunately a neighbour who overhead an the rapists fled when he shouted he had called the police.

When the girl was comforted she still had pieces of tape on her wrists.

Tragically the tape was not tested for fingerprints later detected by police, which could have stopped the pair before they killed.

A week later on July 15 two 18-year-old Danish au pairs were attacked on Hampstead Heath as they walked arm in arm laughing together.

One said: ‘We were holding each other because we were nervous.

Suddenly when they went around us one of them grabbed me from behind.

‘They told us to do as they said and nothing would happen.

He held a knife to my neck.

‘

Her friend recalled: ‘I don’t know how or when it happened but suddenly the man with the knife was now holding me and the other man dragged my friend away in the opposite direction.

‘He told me to take off all my clothes and lie down.

Then he pulled his trousers down to his knees and lay on top of me,’ she added.

Three months later the pair were arrested when they were stopped in Mulcahy’s Talbot Horizon with stolen building materials.

A black balaclava was found in the car but the pair escaped with fines after Mulcahy told police he used the mask when he was working as a plasterer on dusty ceilings.

On January 26, 1985 they attacked a 20-year-old German au-pair under a canal bridge at Brent Cross.

Her scarf was used as a gag and blindfold as she was bundled towards the nearby bridge.

‘The man without the knife sat down and undressed me.

He was not rough but he stripped me naked,’ she said.

‘He then laid on me.

Then he put his hand on my shoulders and pushed me back.

‘

The woman was left so traumatised that she was excused the ordeal of giving evidence by psychiatrists because the stress could have resulted in a complete nervous breakdown.

Once fluent in English, she has refused to ever speak or read the language again or tell her husband of the ordeal.

By January 30, 1985, the pair were back trawling Hampstead Heath where they selected a 16-year-old virgin.

Duffy told the court Mulcahy was becoming so violent he broke off the attack fearing his friend would kill the girl.

On February 2 they tried again with a French au-pair who was also grabbed near the heath but the attack was broken off when she screamed and struggled.

Duffy stuck alone at Hadley Wood train station, Herts, on February 24, 1985.

He claimed he aborted another attack on a 23-year-old with Mulcahy the following month because he worried about his friend’s behaviour when the victim was dragged to a flats near the heath.

Desperate for another victim, the pair selected a 25-year-old solicitor’s clerk on March 1 and raped her on a bench on the heath.

On the November 20, 1985 Duffy again struck alone why he preyed on a woman in Barnet, north London.

By now the sexual excitement on the hunt was not enough for Mulcahy, who was having more and more difficulty becoming aroused.

The pair then made the small step to the ultimate exercise of power – murdering their victims.

Four days after Christmas 1985 they targeted Alison Day, who had been due to meet her fiance at his printing firm in Hackney Wick.

The 19-year-old near was snatched at Hackney Wick railway station and dragged to snow covered playing fields nearby.

After both men had raped Alison, she tried to escape and fell or was pushed by Mulcahy into the freezing water of a feeder canal.

Duffy claimed he pulled her out, and Mulcahy was so excited by the incident he raped her again, then tore off a piece of her blouse to throttle her.

Giving evidence against his friend Duffy said: ‘I remember him going on: ”It is God-like – having the decision over life and death”

Duffy was cleared of Anne’s murder in 1988 but admitted raping her in March of last year.

On April 17, 1986, 15-year-old Dutch schoolgirl Maartje Tamboezer was knocked off her bicycle with a length of fishing line stretched across the path – a technique Duffy had learnt from the Anarchist’s Cookbook.

The teenager was marched across the fields and raped by Duffy, but Mulcahy suddenly lost his temper.

He smashed her head with a rock, then ripped off Maartje’s belt and looped it around her throat, telling Duffy: ‘I did the last one, you’ll do this one.

‘

Duffy said: I think I just got caught up in it.

It is very difficult to explain.

I just continued twisting until she was dead.

‘

Newly wed TV secretary Anne Lock, 29, still had the suntan from a dream honeymoon scuba diving in the Seychelles when she was ambushed getting off a train at Brookmans Park, Herts, on May 18, 1986.

When the pair spotted her bicycle in the station’s shed they hid in the bushes and waited until she returned.

Duffy said he raped Anne, then Mulcahy murdered her as he went to collect the car.

Anne’s decomposed body was found two months after she
was murdered in undergrowth just a mile from her home.

She had been suffocated with her own sock.

Her husband Laurence was initially a suspect and his father Alfred, 67, collapsed and died of a heart attack as he gave evidence at Duffy’s trial.

On October 21, 1986, Duffy alone attacked a 14-year-old in Watford who was to become his last victim.

He also admitted planning two rape two other unknown women, targetting one in Ruislip.

Mulcahy, of Beaumont Walk, Hampstead, was convicted of three murders, seven rapes and five charges of conspiracy to rape and jailed for life.

Duffy who last lived in Barlow Road, Hampstead, was convicted of two murders, five rapes, and one charge of buggery in 1988.

The sex monster was then dubbed ‘laser eyes.

‘

In March 1999, Duffy, originally from Dundalk, Eire, confessed to another nine rapes, rapes six conspiracies to rape and two burglaries with intent to rape.

ends

MEMO: WE HAVE FULL BACKGROUND TO THIS CASE SENT ON MULCAHY CONVICTION.

WE ALSO HAVE MUGS OF THE PAIR AND VICTIM SHOTS IF REQUIRED.

MEMO ENDS