Hookers befriended by the 40-year-old student – accused of three murders – have told detectives he was a regular visitor to the red-light district in Sheffield and others in South Yorkshire.

One, aged 35, said she was stunned when Griffiths gave his name in court as “The Crossbow Cannibal”.

She said: “He was like a brother to me for years.

“He fed me, washed my clothes and took me in when I had nowhere to go.

“He even offered to protect me while I was out on the streets.

“He told me I’d do much better business if I went with him to Sheffield, Barnsley and Doncaster.

“He said he went regularly to red-light districts down there and there was more cash to be made than in Bradford.

“He offered to take me there and keep an eye on me while I was with punters.

“The girls he’s accused of killing were all friends.”

Dawn, 19, who had a son, now 17, was murdered in 1994.

She was stripped, strangled and dumped in a shallow grave in the Peak District.

Griffiths, who disowned his family at 18, was 24 at the time and had just graduated in psychology at Leeds University.

Last night Dawn’s mum Margaret, 58, said: “Since I heard about the arrest I have thought: ‘Could it have been him?’

“All this has brought it rushing back to me.

“It’s like being trapped on a long journey that you never know when it is going to end.”

Michaela, 25, was butchered in a car park used by prostitutes on Bonfire Night 2001 after being picked up by a punter in a blue Ford Sierra.

Another prostitute found her on the ground in Sheffield, where Bradford-based Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, now 64, was finally arrested. Michaela had been stabbed 19 times in the neck and back.

Griffiths was 32 at the time and had just come out of a volatile relationship with an ex-prison warder girlfriend.

Michaela’s mum Jackie, 53, a council worker, said that her daughter looked just like Shelley Armitage, one of Griffiths’ alleged victims.

She said: “When I heard about the arrest my heart started beating.

“You ask yourself, ‘Is this him, is this him?’

“When my husband and I saw the girl Shelley on TV I was so shocked. She is the spitting image of my Michaela and she was a stunning girl.”

A police source said: “Our colleagues in South Yorkshire have been in contact regarding these unsolved crimes.

“We will obviously be liaising with them and other forces with unsolved similar crimes.”

Police who had recovered bones from a river said they were from an animal. They are still probing claims that part of alleged victim Suzanne Blamires, 36, were eaten.

Police are still searching for the remains of Shelley, 31, and Susan Rushworth, 45, another alleged victim of Griffiths.

Griffiiths was arrested last Monday after a caretaker at his block of flats looked back through CCTV and apparently saw footage of Suzanne being shot with a crossbow.

Her dismembered body was recovered from the River Aire four miles away along with a suitcase containing knives and hacksaws.

Forensic experts now plan to tear Griffiths’s flat apart.

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The last time Caroline Pierce, 20, was seen alive was in November 1987 at her bedsit in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Her body was found in a ditch 40 miles away three weeks later. She had been strangled.

Lynne Weedon was 16 when she was bludgeoned to the ground, hurled over a fence into an electric sub-station, raped and left in a coma.
She died in hospital a week after the attack in Hounslow, Middlesex, in September 1975.

Natalie Pearman, a 16 year old drug addict and hooker, was found strangled at a beauty spot on November 2nd, 1992 in Norwich.
All her body hair was shaved off.

Wendy Knell, 26, was found dead in her bedsit in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, on June 23rd, 1987.
She had been sexually assaulted and battered to death.

Schoolgirl Kate Bushell, 14, had her throat cut by a maniac as she walked a neighbours dog in Exwick, Devon, in November 1997.
Her body was found in a field 300 yards from her front door by her horrified father.

Linda Bryant, 41, died from stab wounds to her neck and chest when she was subjected to a horrific attack while walking her dog in Truro, Cornwall, in October 1998.

Claire Tiltman, 16, was stabbed more than 40 times in an alleyway yards from her home in Greenhithe, Kent, as she took a short-cut to visit friends in January 1993.

Dorothy Leyden, 17, was raped and beaten to death in Manchester in April 1971 as she walked home from a concert by soul singer Jimmy Ruffin.
Dorothys battered body was found dumped on a patch of waste ground behind a pub.

Josephine Backshall, 39, was found savagely murdered on November 1st, 1974.
Her fully-clothed body was discovered face down in a pond near the village of Little Hadham, Hertfordshire, more than 30 miles from her home in Maldon, Essex.
Josephines hands had been tied tightly in front of her with a cord before the killer strangled her.

Melanie Road, 17, was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death on June 9th, 1984 as she walked home from a nightclub.
Melanie was only yards from her home when the killer pounced.
Her body was found soon after dawn next day by a milkman.

Eve Stratford, 22, was raped and killed at her home in Leyton, East London, in March 1975.
Eves bloodstained body was found by her boyfriend who shared the flat with her.
A nylon stocking was tied around one of her ankles, her hands were bound behind her back with a scarf and her throat had been slashed up to a dozen times.

Technorati Tags: fantasypi, unsolved murders, unsolved rapes

He had been beaten over the head with his own stick; his throat had been slashed with the billhook, then the pitchfork driven through his neck at an acute angle. That wound appeared to have been the one that killed him; it had bled far more copiously than the other. The tines of the fork were driven so far into the ground, moreover, that it took two constables to remove it when the body was taken from the crime scene. Worse yet, the billhook had been used to carve a cross into his neck and chest.

Warwickshire is, as one chronicler describes it, Shakespeareland; the great Tudor playwright was born in Stratford-on-Avon. It was also, in 1945, still quite rural, small farming villages being the norm. Charles Walton lived and died in the village where he was born, Lower Quinton, which in 1945 had a population of 493.

Old Charlie Walton was well-liked by his neighbors, although they regarded him as strange. He had an almost uncanny rapport with horses, wild birds would eat from his hands, and rumor had it that he kept an odd kind of toadnatterjacks, which run instead of hopfor pets. He was a widower with no children, although he and his wife had adopted his niece, Edith Walton, when the girl was three. His wife had died in 1927, and Edith stayed on to keep house for him; she also worked days at a local factory. Charlie had always been a hard worker, although rheumatism compelled him to walk with a stick for support, and he still performed odd jobs for the villagers. On February 14, 1945, he had been hired to cut brush on Meon Hill for a farmer named Alfred (or Albert; both names have been given for this man) Potter, whose farm was called The Firs. He left early that morning, taking his toolsa pitchfork and a device variously called a billhook or a trouncing fork, with which he actually cut the brush, his lunch and his walking stick with him. Potter apparently was the last person to report seeing him alive, around lunchtime.

Ordinarily, Walton would have been home by 4 PM, as the advancing February darkness made working difficult and temperatures dropped. Edith, therefore, was alarmed when she arrived home at six oclock to find the cottage they shared deserted. Had it been anyone else but her uncle, she might have thought he had stopped in at the local pub, but Charlie Walton was not a pub type of man. She finally summoned a next-door neighbor named Harry Beasley, and they set out looking for Walton. They first stopped in at Potters, since Charlie had been working for him that day. Potter led them to the place where he had last seen Charlie.

Charlie was still at that spot, but he was dead. He had been beaten over the head with his own stick; his throat had been slashed with the billhook, then the pitchfork driven through his neck at an acute angle. That wound appeared to have been the one that killed him; it had bled far more copiously than the other. The tines of the fork were driven so far into the ground, moreover, that it took two constables to remove it when the body was taken from the crime scene. Worse yet, the billhook had been used to carve a cross into his neck and chest.

Granted, the story is strange enough to this point, but it got stranger.

Warwickshire hadmay to some degree still havea long tradition of witchcraft and ghost stories. Some of Charlie Waltons neighbors seem to have regarded him as a witch, because of his uncanny way with animals. Certainly that aspect was in the mind of the first man in charge of the investigation, Superintendent Alex Spooner of Warwickshire CID. Joined shortly by Robert Fabian and Albert Webb of Scotland Yard, Spooner pointed out a number of oddly coincidental occult links. The first one was a mention, in a 1929 book about Warwickshire folklore, of a story about an adolescent boy named Charles Walton who had seen, in 1885, a ghostly black dog for nine days straight, after which the boys sister died. Spooner was of the opinion that the 1885 Charles Walton was the dead man of 1945, grown up.

Then the tale was raised that the murder was an exact duplicate of one committed in the nearby village of Long Compton in 1875. The perpetrator, one John Haywood, is described as simple; he was also drunk on hard cider the day he attacked an old woman named Ann Tennant, who died of her wounds later that night. Heywood was convinced his victim was a witch and had put a hex on him. Spooner wondered if perhaps Charlie Waltons killer had committed the murder in the same fashion because Charlie Walton was a witch, a supposition not easily shaken off when some neighbors mentioned a poor harvest the previous year and left the inference dangling that it might have been the result of witchcraft.

And then the witchcraft expert Margaret Murrayshe of the theory that a witch-cult had survived intact, running parallel but secret to Christianity, for many millenia in Europeweighed in. According to Murray, it was a case of blood sacrifice; she argued that February 14 was, on the old Julian calendar abandoned in 1752, February 2, Candlemas Day, a day when a blood sacrifice was made by witches for the sake of the coming crops. Her argument was promptly contradicted by Gerald Gardner, founder of one branch of the modern practice of Wicca, who said that Charles Walton was far too old to make a suitable blood sacrifice; a sacrifice had to be a person at the peak of youth and strength.

Fabian and Webb of the Yard found all this highly diverting but impractical; they were convinced that Walton had been murdered by a maniac, but came up frustratingly short on evidence. Another motive they tried diligently to follow up was raised when it was learned that Charles Waltons wife had, on her death in 1927, left Walton nearly three hundred pounds, which he had banked and had never been known to draw fromyet it was discovered that at his death barely three pounds of the money was still in the account. Edith, who had her own job and account, knew of the money but had no idea where it had gone, leading to another dead end.

By the time the investigation was closed, all four hundred ninety three residents of Lower Quinton had been interviewed. Not one of them gave Fabian and Webb any usable information. In part this could be laid to the clannishness of small communities and the pairs outsider status; in part, it may have been fear. It may have been they knew who committed the crimeand covered up for that individual or individuals.

The only arrest ever made in the case was of an Italian POW from a nearby camp who was in the habit of sneaking out of the camp to supplement his diet by poaching rabbits; found hiding in a ditch shortly after the murder, covered in blood, he was released when the blood proved to be rabbit.

The case was officially closed when a coroners jury brought back a verdict of murder by a person or persons unknown. Charlie Walton was buried at St. Swithins, the parish church directly across the road from his cottage. He had a headstone which is no longer extant; it was apparently lost when the churchyard underwent renovation some fifty years after his burial, and his gravesite cannot be pointed out with any precision.

Some of the wilder tales have been disproven in the sixty-four years since his death. The Charles Walton mentioned in the 1929 book as having seen a ghost dog, the sighting followed closely by the boys sisters death, can be proven genealogically not to have been the murder victim of 1945; the victim had two sisters, both of whom married in 1891 and lived into the twentieth century.

The murder was not identical to the Ann Tennant murder at Long Compton; Heywoods attack on the old woman was witnessed by several people who testified that he used only a pitchfork, with which he stabbed her several times; there was no billhook involved, nor, apparently, was a cross carved into her chest, although legend insisted that it was, based on Heywoods own rather incoherent testimony.

The most prevalent theory nowadays is that Alfred Potter, the man who hired Charles Walton to cut brush that February day, was the murderer; this one posits that Waltons bank account was drained because he had loaned money to Potter to cover his gambling debts, and Potter murdered him to avoid repayment he was unable to make. The overkill aspect of Waltons death could be explained by Potter having panicked when the old man put up a more vigorous struggle than expected; the cross carved into the chest likewise might have been inspired by the legend of Ann Tennants death.

But well never know for certain; all the major characters are long in their graves.

One last legendary aspect of the case insists that Fabian of the Yard, on his last day in Lower Quinton, actually saw the black dog who runs like a shadow through the whole story. Fabian wrote of the case in his autobiography, melodramatically describing it as having happened in the shadow of a druidical circle called the Whispering Knights; Gerald Gardner, upon reading this description, drily pointed out that the Whispering Knights is a Stone Age construction, was never the site of druidical rites, and moreover was located some twelve miles from Lower Quinton and did not cast quite that long a shadow, but Fabian never changed that part of the story.

The one most haunted by the case was, however, Superintendent Spooner of Warwickshire CID. He made a pilgrimage to the site on Meon Hill every February 14 for nineteen years, dying shortly after the last one. It galled him till the end of his days that he never caught Charlie Waltons killer.

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Human history is filled with events that simply cannot be explained. Lost civilizations, unexplained disappearances and gruesome murders; every culture has their own tales. There are simply too many to list. But some mysteries are so intriguing that they transcend cultural differences and spark the interest of people from all across the globe. These are the most enduring mysteries of all time.

-The Top Unsolved Mysteries of All Time-

1. Atlantis – Nearly everyone has heard of the legendary lost island of Atlantis. The Greek scholar Plato first mentioned the island in his dialogues, written sometime in the fourth century B.C. Plato referred to Atlantis as a center of commerce and technology, stating that it existed some nine thousand years before his time. According to Plato, the Atlantean people angered the gods, who then destroyed the great island by sinking it beneath the sea in one day and one night. Many theories exist as to the location of the lost continent, placing it anywhere from Greece to the Bahamas. Others insist that there is no hard evidence that Atlantis ever existed at all, and that Plato merely made it up as a parable. Still, the idea of Atlantis continues to fascinate people even today.

2. Bermuda Triangle – With many strange disappearances, equipment malfunctions and odd sightings, the area between Florida, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico has long been a center of controversy. Over the years, many sea and air vessels have gone missing while traveling through the area, never to be heard from again. Even those who’ve braved the treacherous area and returned tell strange tales of equipment failure, seemingly due to magnetic interference. The question is, what’s causing the interference?

3. Shroud of Turin – Long reported to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ, the Shroud of Turin is one of history’s most enduring mysteries. The fourteen-foot long piece of linen bears a strikingly clear image of a man with injuries that are consistent with crucifixion, leading many to believe that it is the cloth used to wrap the body of Jesus Christ. Many scholars have attempted to explain the image on the shroud, with theories ranging from painting to chemical reactions to paranormal energy discharges. Though much research has been conducted and many recreations attempted, no satisfactory scientific explanation exists for the image on the shroud.

4. Jack the Ripper – During the fall of 1888, five women were brutally murdered by a terrifying killer who stalked the back alleys of London’s Whitechapel district. From August to November, the killer took five victims, all women, slitting their throats and cutting open their abdomens. At the time, the murderer was referred to as “The Whitechapel Murderer” but we know him today as Jack the Ripper. Jack’s reign of terror eventually ended with the gruesome murder of Mary Jane Kelly. Several suspects were detained and questioned, but all were eventually released for lack of evidence.

5. Stonehenge – The prehistoric monuments known as Stonehenge have baffled researchers for centuries. Long-thought to be some sort of ancient ritual site, recent evidence suggests that Stonehenge may actually have served as a burial ground as early as 3000 B.C. Still, the stone blocks that make up the megalithic structure weigh many tons, leading researchers to question how ancient workers could have moved and lifted them. There have been many theories including everything from lost ancient technologies to extraterrestrial involvement.

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The murders have not been solved to this day

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Overview: Her genitals were excised with a knife, but the injury did not prevent police from finding unspecified evidence of sexual intercourse. Five more slayings followed. And this “out there” serial murderer is still on the loose.

GUANGZHOU Ripper Serial Murders

Servant Girl Annihilator

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One of the coldest cases in Bergen County came to a close Thursday when a judge sentenced Angelo Speziale to 25 years in prison for the rape and murder of his neighbor in Ridgefield Park 28 years ago.

I am very sorry for what I did, Speziale said in Superior Court in Hackensack, sobbing as he admitted to taking the life of 19-year-old Michele Mika in 1982.

Minutes later, Mikas father, Thomas Mika, tearfully talked about his familys ordeal since his daughters bloodied body was found at her home.

He got married. Hes got a daughter, he said of Speziale. Just imagine if that were your daughter.

Defense attorney Ian Silvera said Speziale was much younger when Mika was killed and has changed a lot since.

I dont think the person who committed that act is the person sitting in court today, he said.

Silvera also said Speziale had led a life of drug addiction and crime, and was probably using drugs the day Michele Mika was killed.

He didnt enjoy living this way, Silvera said. But he kept relapsing.

Mika, an aspiring beautician, was found on Jan. 31, 1982, bleeding from five stab wounds, an 8-inch knife stuck in her back. Investigators questioned her neighbor, Speziale, at the time but did not make any arrests.

Unsolved murder cases are never closed in Bergen County, and detectives pursued several leads over the years, interviewing more than 700 people.

It was Speziales shoplifting conviction in 2005 that ultimately offered a breakthrough. Under a 2003 state law that requires convicted felons to submit DNA for a national database, Speziale submitted a swab that later matched a sample obtained from the crime scene.

He was arrested in 2007 and charged with the murder. He pleaded guilty in January to felony murder, in a complicated guilty plea in which he said he did not remember raping or stabbing Mika, but remembered washing his bloodied clothes and throwing them away.

The most tragic part of this case is that Michele was always kind to Angelo Speziale, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Catherine Fantuzzi said. How and why her neighbor, her friendwould commit such an act is beyond comprehension.

She said Speziale still did not take full responsibility for his actions.

He still wants to hide behind that veil of drugs and alcohol, she said.

Speziale, 49, must serve at least half of his sentence before being considered for parole. He would have been required under current law to serve up to 85 percent of his term, but the sentencing law that applies to his case is the one from 1982, which had less stringent requirements for parole eligibility.

From NorthJersey.com

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Grand Rapids Serial Slayings

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