The serial sex killer who partnered ‘Railway Rapis

The serial sex killer who partnered ‘Railway Rapist’ John Duffy faces a life sentence this afternoon after after evading justice for more than 18 years.

David Mulcahy, 41, murdered three women and raped seven others with childhood friend Duffy after a ‘unique and wicked bond’ turned them into two of the most notorious criminals in British legal history.

To the soundtrack of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ they turned murder into a game to be enjoyed – selecting who would be first to rape their victims on the toss of a coin.

The pair are believed to the first two men to work in partnership as serial killers since the infamous grave robbers Burke and Hare.

Duffy, also 41, was jailed for a minimum of 30 years in 1988 but Mulcahy was not brought to trial until last year, despite the suspicions of detectives.

It would take the advances in genetic fingerprinting, the work of a third rapist and 14 days of Duffy’s testimony to put Mulcahy behind bars.

Sick father-of-four Mulcahy grinned broadly as the jury of six women and six men returned unanimous verdicts at the Old Bailey after deliberating for more than 19 hours.

He also turned to beam at the rape victims, who wept and hugged eachother as the decisions were announced.

Both the victims of childhood bullying, the ‘Thriller Killers’ were drawn together from their first days at secondary school and became inseparable.

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.

Armed with knives and donning trademark balaclavas they posed as joggers to carry out their first rape on October 1982.

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

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 and vowed to strike again.

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.

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, one of which would provide crucial evidence against Mulcahy.

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 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 claimed he aborted another attack on a 23-year-old the following month because he was again worried about Mulcahy’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.

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

Prosecutor Mr Mark Dennis told the court: ‘It was only a comparatively small step to the ultimate exercise of power – killing 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.

He recalled: ‘She was saying things like ”It is only his moustache I have seen, I won’t tell anyone, please don’t hurt me”.

I was watching David and the girl.

‘The next thing I noticed was he was putting some material round her neck and starting to twist it.

‘

Mulcahy later told his accomplice he had killed Alison because she might recognise them.

But Duffy said: ‘David actually enjoyed it, saying it gave him power – the decision over life and death.

‘I remember him going on: ”It is God-like – having the decision over life and death”.

Alison’s sheepskin coat was weighed down with stones and she was hurled back into the water.

She was found 17 days later, bound and gagged with her hands tied behind her back.

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 one of his favourite books, the Anarchist’s Cookbook.

The teenager was marched across the fields between Effingham and East Horsley in Surrey and raped by Duffy, who claimed Mulcahy suddenly lost his temper.

‘He was becoming very aggressive – hyper, shouting at the girl,’ Duffy recalled.

‘He then raised his fists and hit the girl.

She crumpled to the floor.

‘She was struck on the head, at the side.

It was a swinging blow.

I noticed he had a rock in his hand, or a stone.

‘She just crumpled up and fell on the floor.

I believe she was unconscious.

‘

Former altar boy Duffy said Mulcahy then ripped off Maartje’s belt and looped it around her throat, telling him: ‘I did the last one, you’ll do this one.

‘

‘He passed me the belt.

It had a piece of stick through it which was twisted and he gave it to me in my hand,’ Duffy told the jury.

‘I actually started twisting it while David turned away.

I think I just got caught up in it.

It is very difficult to explain.

I just continued twisting until she was dead.

‘

Duffy said they both left the scene but Mulcahy returned in an attempt to destroy the evidence and set Maartje’s body alight.

Newly wed TV secretary Anne Lock, 29, still had the suntan from a dream honeymoon scuba diving off the Seychelles when she was ambushed getting off a train at Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire 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 threw him the a bunch a keys and he went to collect the car.

He told the court: ‘David said he had taken care of it.

He was very evasive, like he was playing mind games.

He was saying ”She won’t identify us now”.

‘He was very excitable, buzzing.

He was even saying: ”Keep your eyes open for another one”.

‘

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.

Mulcahy, of Beaumont Walk, Hampstead, was convicted of three murders, seven rapes and five charges of conspiracy to rape after a trial lasting more than five months.

Duffy was convicted of two murders, five rapes, and another sexual assault but cleared of Anne’s murder at his trial.

In March last year he confessed to another nine rapes – including that of Anne Lock – six conspiracies to rape and two burglaries with intent to rape.

In August 1985, two months after his Margaret left him for another man after suffering years of abuse, Duffy knifed the man and raped his wife.

He raped a 16-year-old while he was on bail for that offence and was still free to murder Alison Day the following Christmas.

But Duffy’s had been entered into the police computer after his wife reported him for assault which was eventually to lead to his downfall.

Described by the judge who sentenced him in 1988 as ‘a predatory animal’ Duffy is now thought to be one of Britain’s most prolific rapists with up to 50 victims.

The killer is still awaiting sentence for the offences in admitted last year, which date back to 1975.

The Recorder of London, Judge Michael Hyam, will pass sentence on Mulcahy at 2.

30pm.

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