Secrets of a Serial Killer

‘Mhmmm,’ Dane replies, clearly still half asleep.

Zoe reaches for her phone, pulling out the charging cable. Abbie’s added loads of Instagram posts overnight, mainly filtered selfies and elaborate poses taken in her bathroom mirror. She looks amazing in all of them, of course, and Zoe raises an eyebrow at Abbie’s attention-seeking hashtags: #doilookfat and #balletdancer. The comments are unbearable.

A Facebook message pops up from Max, Abbie’s boyfriend. As Zoe clicks the notification, Dane rests his chin on her shoulder, peering at her phone. He smells of shampoo, and a faint tang of the outdoors. ‘What’s Max saying?’

Zoe skims the message. ‘Nothing really.’ She locks her phone and puts it on the bedside table, next to her old Simpsons alarm clock.

She feels Dane’s muscles tense.

‘Aw, you jealous?’ She giggles. They’ve only been together four months, so another boy messaging her overnight must make him nervous. She turns over to look at his face. Light filters through her thin curtains, illuminating two tiny frown lines etched on his otherwise smooth forehead. A faint dimple on his left cheek tells her he’s not too worried about Max’s text. ‘It’s only Max. You’ll meet him tonight, in the pub with Abbie. He’s really sweet, crazy in love with Abbie, and obsessed with serial killers. And comics. And trespassing in derelict buildings.’ She shakes her head. ‘Not my thing at all.’

His dimple deepens as a grin spreads across his face. ‘Sounds like we’ll have a lot to talk about.’

She nods, and points at her phone. ‘He sent me another message about weird murder stuff. Freaks me out a bit, but it’s classic 2am Max.’

Dane rubs his face with both hands, then digs his fingers into the corners of his eyes. He shrugs. ‘You could ask him to stop.’

‘I’ll definitely tell him tonight. He’s an insomniac, stays up all night creeping around weird sites. Dark web stuff sometimes, true crime and murder blogs, that sort of thing.’

‘Sounds pretty normal to me.’ Dane sits up, leaning his bare shoulders against the headboard. He lifts his knees and pulls the quilt up to his chest. ‘The dark web’s harmless really. Not much going on.’

Zoe gapes at him. ‘You’ve been on the dark web?’ Even though she’s creeped out by Max’s obsession with true crime, she feels a thrill of excitement thinking about this network of people whose interests are so illegal that they have to make their own illicit underworld to pursue them. ‘What’s it like?’

He shrugs again. ‘Dunno really. There’s a lot of stuff that’s pretty similar to the normal web. And a lot of people who like to think they’re doing something illegal, but they aren’t really. To be honest, I’ve seen worse things on the normal internet.’

‘Places to buy drugs and stuff?’

‘All sorts. Lots of data, like people selling stolen logins and credit card details. That’s what we were there for, me and my friend Niall. You can buy a pre-paid Netflix account for a tenner.’

Zoe’s transfixed. She doesn’t want to visit the dark web, ever, but she also somehow wants to know everything about it. ‘What about the murder stuff that Max finds?’

Dane’s mischievous grin disappears. ‘We didn’t see any of that sick stuff. We weren’t looking for it. But, I mean, it’s probably there. Everyone’s into that kind of thing these days. Murder podcasts and DIY detective stuff.’

‘I just think it’s creepy. Melanie – Dad’s wife – she’s really into it all too. Keeps trying to get me to listen to some podcast about a teenage girl that got murdered. I just don’t want to know.’

‘Fair enough. I think it’s all quite interesting, serial killers, but only when they’ve been caught. What’s interesting about a mystery where you never find out the answer?’

‘Max sent an article he’s written for a creepy website, Urban Dark Reporter. Not on the dark web though.’

Dane smiles. ‘Oh, I’ve heard of that site. It’s pretty good.’

Zoe’s surprised. Dane seems a lot cooler than Max, so she thought he’d just laugh. ‘What is it?’ she asks, picking up her phone again and clicking the link.

‘It’s like cool local weird news; they write articles about mysteries, hoaxes, conspiracies and some urbex stuff too. I’ve heard that most of the contributors are anonymous – they don’t even know who each other are. Even though they’re all from around Lancashire.’

‘That does sound cool.’

‘Yeah, but the comments section is always full of really dark stuff. Those kind of subjects really bring out the weirdos.’

Zoe shudders and hands him her phone. ‘I think I’ll give that one a miss, then.’

He glances at the headline and pulls her to his side. ‘Read with me, this one’s not too bad.’

Lancaster’s Predator Professor: Investigating Leonard McVitie

By Urban Dark Reporter

New details reveal insight into the mind of our city’s twisted genius, who ended his days in Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum.

Leonard McVitie was born in 1923 and lived a life of identity theft and serial murder until his incarceration in Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum at age thirty-six.

Until his capture in 1959, McVitie exploited his unique ability to impersonate and assimilate his identity into that of others, who often were accused and convicted of the crimes McVitie himself had committed. It is estimated that he was directly responsible for the incorrect incarceration of at least seven men who were found guilty of McVitie’s crimes, while the criminal walked free to select up to 48 suspected victims.

McVitie is now famous for his meticulous approach and the detailed planning of his crimes. He carefully selected a ‘false suspect’, often a similar height and build to McVitie himself. He would then observe them for months, entering their homes and stealing small personal items he could plant at a crime scene or in a victim’s home to connect the ‘false suspect’ to a killing. He would even disguise himself as the false suspect and introduce himself to people, blending his life into theirs until the two people were virtually indistinguishable. It seems he particularly enjoyed selecting people who worked ‘behind-the-scenes’: porters, caretakers, and cleaners – people with low levels of job responsibility who also hold the master keys.

Some of McVitie’s false suspects include:

 Colin Redpath, aged twenty-five in 1948 at the time of his guilty verdict: Thought to be one of McVitie’s first framings, Redpath was a porter at Cambridge University where McVitie studied. After observing Redpath’s movements for over a term, McVitie began introducing himself to students as Redpath and even managed to take on some of Redpath’s portering tasks without detection. By the time the body of Maureen Blast (eighteen) was found in a University porter’s lodge, McVitie was long gone to another life, and Redpath was hanged.

 Phillip McNeil, aged twenty-five in 1952 at the time of guilty verdict: McNeil was a cleaner at Royal High School, Edinburgh, arrested for the murder of four teenage girls (ages fifteen to seventeen) whose bodies were found on Calton Hill on the morning of 1st May 1951.

After his eventual arrest and imprisonment in the lunatic asylum (later renamed Lancaster Lune Hospital, after the River Lune which flows through the centre of the city), McVitie turned his attentions to study and correspondence. He gained a reputation for his sharp intellect, often contributing to local presses in a similar manner to W.C. Minor’s contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary. He died in the asylum in 1985.

Manchester’s John Rylands Library holds the archives of his correspondence, donated after the Hospital closed in 2010. The archives have now been fully catalogued and are available for registered readers to view by appointment.

Comments:

rogersmith52: Check your facts. I think you’ll find that McVitie was born in 1924, not 1923 as you wrote. I do hope this site gets more careful with accuracy if you’re going to write about historical killers. Please email me if you have any questions; I have a very extensive knowledge of such people.

Phoneguy: I’m intrigued by this approach, with an added twist: why not frame the victim themselves? Make it look like a suicide, or slowly erase all evidence that they ever existed – by the time you’re done, there’s no victim left for the police to find. No victim, no crime. Job done.

When they’ve finished reading, Zoe stands up and picks up some crumpled clothes from the heap on her bedroom floor. She pulls an old t-shirt over her head and smiles at Dane, who’s grinning at her from the bed. ‘Can’t believe that weirdo lived so close to here after he was caught. If he was still alive and stuck in there—’ She points in the direction of the old asylum, just half a mile down the road. ‘—I’d be terrified he would escape and break into my house or something.’

Dane nods and runs a hand through his sleep-tousled hair. ‘What an interesting guy though. I’ve never heard of a serial killer stealing people’s identities before, and getting away with it for so long.’

She loves seeing him from a distance like this, five or six feet away. They’re usually sat next to each other or lying down together, and that close up you can only see individual features: a nose, the eyes, teeth. But from this distance she can see the whole of him, head to toe in detail, and he’s so striking. He looks a bit like Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You: he’s got the same wild curly hair and cheeky smile.

‘You said Max is into urban exploring stuff. You ever been tempted? My Dad’s got an old Canon we could take and get some sick photographs inside some of the old buildings around here.’ He pulls back the quilt to reveal his legs, and swings his feet to the floor.

‘Wait a second,’ she says. He looks up at her, puzzled. ‘I just want to look at you for a minute.’

He grins. ‘Perve.’

She stares at his legs with their dusting of dark hair, tanned up to the thigh where he wore shorts to work all summer. ‘Have you ever considered getting a statue commissioned?’

Dane looks confused.

She laughs. ‘You know, a naked one like Michelangelo’s David.’ She keeps giggling and crosses the room to wrap her arms around him. She’s standing next to him as he sits on the bed; she pulls his head to her chest and kisses the top of his curly hair. ‘You’re smoking hot, is all I’m saying.’

He raises his face to hers and kisses her on the lips. ‘Come back to bed then?’

She looks in his eyes, and for a moment she’s tempted. She could so easily slip back beneath the covers and into Dane’s arms. It’d be so nice to feel the remains of his touch against her skin during her morning college classes.

This could be the day they go all the way. She’s been waiting for the right time, and everything’s going so great between them. He almost said ‘I love you’ last night. He stopped himself at the last minute and changed it to ‘I like you so much.’ She smiles thinking about it, how nice it feels to have that expectation, and know it’s going to happen soon. She’s about to remove her t-shirt, but then she hears the front door open and close.

‘No luck, Mr D. Mum’s back from her walk.’

Dane doesn’t argue. He never does; he lets her set the pace and just goes with the flow. Not like guys her own age, who’re always push push push.

He stands up and pulls on his trousers. He searches around the room for his shirt, finally finding it under the bed. He pauses with it halfway over his head, arms lifted up. ‘Zoe?’

‘Mmm?’ she looks up from her phone where she’s typing a reply to Max. ‘Your Mum doesn’t know I stayed over, does she?’

Zoe gives him her best wide-eyed, innocent face. ‘Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ she lies, and picks up her hairbrush. Her phone buzzes.

Dane glances at the screen. ‘Max again.’

She groans and sets her hairbrush down. ‘What does this one say?’

Dane opens her phone and reads Max’s message aloud: ‘Please, Zo: I think I’ve found something big. Talk tonight?’

Helen

‘Zoe? You home?’ A dull thud indicates that her daughter is in her room.

Helen steps into the hall, dropping her keys into the basket on the table. She toes off her muddy shoes by the door.

Alfie runs past her, straight into the kitchen to lap at his water bowl. She pauses, listening to the house. There’s no sound except for Alfie’s collar clinking against the bowl.

Five minutes later, Zoe pads into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes, hair sticking out in all directions. Zoe’s a beautiful girl, brown hair down to her waist and blue eyes, with a mouth that turns up at the corners. A mole on her left cheek reminds Helen of the beauty spots that Hollywood silent film starlets would draw onto their faces to look more sophisticated.

‘What are you up to? Don’t you have class?’

‘Hey Mum,’ she mumbles, sitting down at the pine table. ‘Got a free period first thing. Not been up long. I see Alfie enjoyed his walk.’ She looks down at the dog’s muddy paws.

Helen flicks on the kettle. She pulls a couple of teabags from the cupboard, and waves one in Zoe’s direction. Zoe shakes her head.

‘I thought you start at eight on Tuesdays,’ says Helen. ‘Are you skipping class again?’

Zoe grunts, non-committal, and gets up from the table. She opens the fridge and stares inside, the light illuminating her cheekbones.

‘We’ve talked about this so much – now is not the time for messing around.’

Zoe raises her hands like someone with a gun aimed at them. ‘No, Mum. Chill. I’m not a skiver.’

‘Don’t tell me to chill.’

Zoe shrugs. ‘Where did you and Alfie go for a walk?’

‘Up at the old Lune Hospital—’

‘That asylum gives me the creeps. Proper,’ she says through a yawn. ‘I can’t believe you walk up there on your own.’

‘I like it up there. There’s a comforting feel to the place, not scary.’

‘I’d be scared that some crazy person would come running at me, straitjacket flapping behind him …’

‘Not very politically correct, Zo.’

Zoe sniggers, unrepentant. She grabs a yoghurt and closes the fridge.

‘Anyway, some of the patients in there weren’t even mentally ill by today’s standards. Annoying wives, epileptics, promiscuous daughters of disapproving families, even just people being a bit eccentric … Oh! And new mothers with postnatal depression.’

Zoe’s eyes are wide. ‘What?’

‘Yep. I’ve been reading about it lately, since this new project started. Some really interesting cases up at the Lune.’ Helen watches as Zoe peels open the yoghurt and spoons it into her mouth. ‘And I bumped into one of the guards this morning. Appeared completely out of nowhere. Alfie wouldn’t stop growling at him.’

‘Ha! Good old Alfie, cramping your style.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that. But we talked about the building, it’s history. He’s worried about his job once the work starts, I think.’

Zoe slowly licks the last traces from her spoon, thinking. ‘Was he good-looking?’

Helen puckers her lips sideways, pretending to think about it. ‘I suppose he was quite handsome.’ She ignores Zoe’s raised eyebrows. ‘But—’

‘You should ask him out for a drink.’ Zoe grins, her eyes twinkling with mischief. She goes through phases like this, when she fixates on matchmaking Helen with a guy. But Helen suspects Zoe would change her tune if Helen did meet someone; both Helen and Zoe like their cosy twosome. The times when it had looked like someone was taking an interest in Helen, Zoe took an immediate dislike to them. Maybe that’s why Dane makes Helen so uncomfortable – his relationship with Zoe threatens to disrupt the last few years of just-the-two-of-us. Or maybe it’s something else, something about Dane himself; even at this stage of life, Helen still has to remind herself not to disregard her instincts.

‘No way. I’m not asking him out for a drink.’ Helen’s perfectly happy on her own. ‘Plus he was closer to your age than mine.’

‘I really don’t get it: you’re lonely, you’re bored, and you’ve got nothing to think about except me and what I’m doing—’

‘Hey.’ Helen’s voice is quiet.

Zoe doesn’t seem to notice her Mum’s cautioning tone. ‘Seriously, though, it’d be great if you got a boyfriend. You’d be less stressy about me and what I’m doing all the time, for one thing.’

Helen opens her mouth to argue. ‘Not everyone wants a—’

‘Hi, Mrs Summerton.’

Helen jumps at the male voice in her house. Dane is, as usual, lurking – this time in the darkened corridor outside the kitchen. He sidles into the room, bringing with him the smell of patchouli, sweat and wood.

‘Dane. Didn’t know you were here.’ She opens the fridge and peers inside. She can’t look at him while she feels invaded like this. A virtual stranger in her house first thing in the morning is not comfortable. She grabs the milk from the fridge door and turns back to the room, trying to arrange a welcoming smile on her face.

He smiles sheepishly and looks at his hands. ‘Yeah, I was just upstairs.’

Even from across the room, Helen can see the dirt on his hands, ingrained in all the creases and under his nails. He’s a carpenter specialising in turning huge fallen tree trunks into beautiful coffee tables, stools and other furniture. According to Zoe, they met when Dane was invited to Zoe’s college to speak about ‘alternative career paths’ – vocational careers which don’t involve going to university. Helen suspects that Zoe met Dane long before that day at her college, and kept his existence secret for a couple of months because she was afraid to tell Helen about their seven-year age gap.

‘You stayed over last night?’ She doesn’t want to think about what they were doing in Zoe’s room before Helen came home.

He leans against the door frame, taking up a lot of space with his six foot four-inch height and wide shoulders. He tucks his hands behind his back, looking strangely military.

‘Dane, I’m afraid you can’t stick around this morning. Zoe’s got to get to college.’

Zoe opens her mouth in protest. She seems happiest when Dane hangs around at their house, taking up too much space in their living room, eating all their food, his giant shoes cluttering their front porch.

‘I’ll see you tonight, though, babe?’ Zoe says to Dane.

Helen cuts her off. ‘Zoe has plans to go over to her Dad’s house tonight.’ She turns to Zoe, who is midway through rolling her eyes again. ‘Remember?’

Zoe scowls, and Dane just looks confused. Zoe’s clearly forgotten that plan. Zoe looks over at Dane and shrugs. Dane shrugs back, looking even more gormless than usual.

‘Plus, don’t you have coursework?’ Helen doesn’t know what it is about Dane’s presence that puts her in this snarky, naggy mood. Something about him turns her into a shrew. Perhaps she’s trying to make up for the negative influence he’s clearly having on Zoe’s college work.

Zoe groans. ‘I don’t have coursework today, Mum.’

‘Revision then. Or reading. I’m sure there is something you’re supposed to be doing which will prevent you from failing your A Levels. Plus, your Dad will want to catch up with you.’

Zoe groans and turns to Dane. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ she says, as if Helen is the teenager and Zoe is the adult embarrassed by Helen’s behaviour. ‘Wanna go back up to my room?’

Helen grits her teeth.

‘I think I should head off,’ says Dane.

Helen flashes him a thin smile. Maybe he’s not that bad after all if he can pick up on some social cues.

‘Got work, you know,’ he mumbles.

They wander down the hall to the front door; Helen hears them whispering while Dane prepares to leave. There are whispers about a pub, but Helen chooses not to hear whatever it is. There’s a limit to how much hovering and nagging she can do for one morning.

After a few minutes, the door shuts and Zoe stomps down the hall back into the kitchen, where Helen has poured herself a cup of tea in preparation for the upcoming argument.

‘Why do you have to be like this? I’m actually embarrassed,’ Zoe says, folding her arms and looking remarkably similar to a photograph Helen remembers taking when Zoe was about three years old, mid-tantrum because she could no longer fit her feet into a favourite pair of red shoes.

Helen takes a sip from her mug, delaying the start of the argument for an extra five seconds. ‘This is the most—’

‘Important year of my life,’ interrupts Zoe. ‘I know that. You tell me that all the time. Dad does too. But I still need a life. I’m allowed a social life and a boyfriend, for God’s sake.’

‘Remember last term? You skipped so many History classes that they wrote a letter home. And you got a D on your Spanish exam. You need to pull your socks up if—’

‘What a stupid phrase, pull my socks up.’

‘My choice of phrase is not relevant here.’

‘You got a D in one of your A levels. AND you were dating Dad at the time. You’re such a hypocrite and you think you can somehow fix it all by nagging at me. You won’t fix it, Mum – you won’t fix YOUR bad decisions by obsessing about my life.’

‘That’s enough.’ Helen taps her hand on the worktop. They’ve had this argument so many times, and it’ll just go in circles. There’s no point. Helen remembers being that age: no clue about consequences, no idea that danger might sprout from your decisions like a dandelion through gravel. ‘This has nothing to do with my life or my past choices and everything to do with your future.’

During the argument, Zoe has been edging closer and closer to the door, ready to implement her usual tactic in the end stages of a disagreement: drop the last word like a bomb and then stalk out of the room, stomping upstairs and slamming her bedroom door.

‘My choices are fine. Go on a date or something. It’s not my fault you don’t have a life of your own.’ Her last word is shouted, and sure enough, she then storms out of the kitchen.

Helen tries to chuckle. She remembers similar arguments with her own parents at the same age, but she can’t help feeling stung by Zoe’s final parting shot.

Helen is proud of who she has become, although now Zoe is the same age that Helen was when she met Tony, a new panic has set in. She doesn’t want to see history repeat itself, and there’s something in the self-assured sparkle in Dane’s eye that reminds her of Tony and his cheeky charm, which may have seduced more women than she knew of while they were still married.

She switches on the television and flicks to BBC News, as the coverage flashes to a photograph of a young girl wearing a graduation robe, flanked by two proud parents. Even though the volume is low, the grave expressions on the newsreaders’ faces tell Helen that this girl’s future is not bright, promising or full of potential. There are bigger dangers out there lurking for carefree teenaged girls: much, much worse than a boyfriend with a roving eye.

Helen shivers and takes another sip of tea. As she drinks, something catches her eye in the middle of the corridor just outside the kitchen. A dark shadow, the size and shape of a rat. Her muscles clench with dread. Please, not rats.

She slowly lowers her mug to the countertop, staring at the ominous shape on the floor. It doesn’t move. If it’s a rat, it’s already dead.

She crosses the kitchen slowly and sighs with relief as she moves closer. Not a rat. She bends down to pick it up. It’s a blue ballet flat, stained with mud. The one Alfie found at the hospital; that silly dog must have brought it home. She turns the shoe, examining it from all sides. Something about it doesn’t look right. Under the orange-tinged hall light, the shoe’s stain is metallic and brown, like rusted metal.

Thomas

Thomas pushes down on the handle and nudges the kitchen door inch by inch, wincing at the creaks and clicks. He steps into the still-darkened room.