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On January 19, 1957, Woodcock was again riding his bike when he approached 4-year-old Carole Voyce and offered her a ride. He then drove her under the Bloor Viaduct and murdered her. When she was found, her clothes had been pulled off. It appeared that she had been choked into unconsciousness and sexually molested, and that her death was caused by a tree branch being forcibly inserted into her vagina.Peter Woodcock was born in Peterborough, Ontario to a 17-year-old factory worker, Waita Woodcock, who gave him up for adoption after breastfeeding him for a month. Adoption agency records report that the newborn, Peter, showed feeding problems and cried constantly. As an infant, he stayed in various foster homes, unable to bond with any of his foster parents. After his first birthday, he became terrified of anybody approaching him, and his speech was incoherent—described as strange whining animal noises. He was also physically abused by at least one of his early foster parents, with a 2-year-old Woodcock having to be given medical treatment for an injured neck after receiving a beating. He was placed into a stable home at the age of 3 with foster parents Frank and Susan Maynard, an upper-middle-class couple with another son. Susan Maynard, who was described as a “forceful woman with an exaggerated sense of propriety”, became strongly attached to the maladjusted child who would still scream when someone approached him. By the age of 5, Woodcock remained socially maladjusted and became the target of neighbourhood bullies.

Witnesses saw a teenager cycling away from Carole Voyce’s crime scene and an accurate composite sketch was created based on those witnesses’ descriptions. This sketch ran on the front page of the Toronto Star and would lead to Woodcock’s arrest on January 21, 1957, and his subsequent confession to all three murders. He recalled upon his arrest: “My fear was that Mother would find out. Mother was my biggest fear. I didn’t know if the police would let her at me.”

On October 6, 1956, Woodcock was riding his bike around Cabbagetown when he picked up 9-year-old Gary Morris. He then drove the boy to Cherry Beach, where he strangled and beat him to death—with a coroner later determining that Morris had died from a ruptured liver. Morris’ body was found with a bite mark on his throat and, this time, paper clips seemed to have been ritualistically sprinkled near the corpse. Again, the clothing had been taken off the victim and then he had been re-dressed.Signs of Woodcock’s violent fantasies were present at this time also, seen when a social worker was walking with him at the Canadian National Exhibition and Woodcock muttered, “I wish a bomb would fall on the Exhibition and kill all the children”. Woodcock was sent to a school for emotionally disturbed children in Kingston, Ontario, and began acting on his strong sexual urges with other children—with Woodcock stating that here he had consensual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl when he was 13. When he turned 15, he was discharged from this school and returned to live with his foster parents, but was soon re-enrolled at his original private school, where he again failed to connect with his peers. At the age of 16, he left the private school again and was sent to a public high school, where children from the neighborhood instantly recognized him and resumed the bullying; he transferred to a private high school six weeks later. While his peers again shunned him, his teachers there remembered him as a very bright student who excelled in science, history, and English, and who frequently scored 100 percent on his tests.

Woodcock was eventually transferred to less-restrictive institutions and ultimately arrived at the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital. Here, staff indulged his passion for trains by taking him to the Smiths Falls Railway Museum, and even took him to see The Silence of the Lambs. During this time, he legally changed his name to David Michael Krueger and rekindled a relationship with Bruce Hamill, an Ottawa killer who had been released from Oak Ridge and was working as a security guard at the Ottawa courthouse. Krueger convinced Hamill an alien brotherhood would solve his problems if he helped kill another Brockville inmate, Dennis Kerr.While imprisoned, Woodcock was diagnosed as a psychopath. He underwent various forms of psychiatric therapy, including LSD treatments when they were popular in the 1960s. He was also given other personality-breaking drugs: scopolamine, sodium amytal, methedrine and dexamyl. He was subjected to “dyads”—a personality-breaking therapy in which inmates challenged each other’s belief systems—which inmates referred to as “The Hundred-Day Hate-In”. Dyads were developed in the late 1950s to early 1960s by a Harvard psychologist and former CIA interrogation and psychological warfare expert, Henry A. Murray. Woodcock did not respond well to these treatments and was not an ideal prisoner. He engaged in coercive sexual acts and exploited his fellow inmates, who were often less intelligent or less sane than he was. He convinced inmates that he had contact with an imaginary gang called The Brotherhood on the outside and that in order to be initiated, inmates had to perform oral sex on him and bring him gifts of cigarettes.Worried about the child’s fragile emotional state, Frank and Susan Maynard would regularly bring him to the Hospital for Sick Children, where Woodcock received extensive treatment. Woodcock was sent to a private school, but again failed to make friends or interact successfully with his peers and remained isolated. By the age of 11, he was described as an “angry little boy”; a Children’s Aid Society report on him from that time read:David Michael Krueger (March 5, 1939 – March 5, 2010), best known by his birth name, Peter Woodcock, was a Canadian serial killer, child rapist and diagnosed psychopath. He gained notoriety for the murders of three young children in Toronto in the late 1950s, as well as for a murder in 1991 on his first day of unsupervised release from the psychiatric institution in which he had been incarcerated for his earlier crimes.

Toronto Police initially arrested and interrogated another boy, Ron Moffatt. Through relentless questioning they extracted a confession from then 14-year-old Moffatt. Despite witnesses who clearly placed him in a movie theatre before and after the murder of Wayne Mallette, he was found guilty and sentenced to youth detention. Eventually police acknowledged there was a serial predator in Toronto, but Moffatt was not released. However, when notes were shared between forces, Woodcock was arrested. After his conviction, Woodcock was called as a defence witness for Moffatt. The wrongful murder charge was stayed in 1957, and Moffatt was released from custody. Nate Hendley published in 2018 an account of Moffatt’s experience, The Boy on the Bicycle.Peter Woodcock’s prized possession was a red and white Schwinn bicycle on which he satisfied his continuing compulsion to wander. He rode the bike to the far reaches of the city—even during the deep, cold Toronto winters—and evolved a fantasy in which he led a gang of 500 invisible boys on bikes called the ‘Winchester Heights Gang’. His foster parents were aware of this fantasy and his compulsion to wander, but they were unaware that he had begun travelling around Toronto on his bike and sexually assaulting children.

For the murder of Dennis Kerr, Krueger was transferred back to the Oak Ridge division of the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, where he had spent the majority of his 34 preceding years in custody. In the years after Kerr’s murder, he was the focus of a biography and several documentary films and sometimes tried to explain why he killed, but he never came up with rational reasons. He said in a 1993 interview: “I’m accused of having no morality, which is a fair assessment, because my morality is whatever the system allows.” On March 5, 2010, his 71st birthday, Krueger died of natural causes. On July 13, 1991, Bruce Hamill went to a hardware store, bought a plumber’s wrench, hatchet, knives and a sleeping bag, then went to the Brockville hospital and signed out the 52-year-old Krueger on his first publicly escorted day pass. Within the first hour of his first unsupervised release in 34 years, Krueger arranged to meet Dennis Kerr in the woods. When Dennis Kerr arrived, Krueger struck him in the head with the pipe wrench and continued to beat him into unconsciousness. Krueger and Hamill then seized the hatchet and knife they had hidden in the bushes while waiting for Kerr’s arrival and hacked and stabbed Kerr, mutilating his body, nearly severing his head, and sodomized the corpse. Krueger then left the scene, walked to a police station about two miles away, and turned himself in. On September 15, 1956, 17-year-old Woodcock was riding his bike around the grounds of the Exhibition Place when he met 7-year-old Wayne Mallette. He lured the boy out of sight and then proceeded to strangle him to death. Mallette’s body was found in the early hours of September 16. It appeared that his clothing had been removed and he had then been re-dressed. His face was pushed into the dirt and two bite marks were found on the body—one on the boy’s calf and the other on his buttock. There was no evidence of rape, however. Pennies were found scattered near the body. Woodcock had defecated next to the victim as well.Woodcock was tried only for the murder of Carole Voyce. On April 11, 1957, after a four-day trial, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was sent to the Oak Ridge division of the maximum-security Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre in Penetanguishene, Ontario.An adopted child, Krueger lived in numerous foster homes as an infant, and showed signs of severe emotional trauma when he found a permanent foster home at the age of 3. Unable to adjust to social situations, he was bullied by his peers. He would often wander from his home by foot, bicycle or train to parts of Toronto, where he would molest dozens of children, and ultimately murder three. Found not guilty by reason of insanity for his crimes, he was sent to a psychiatric facility. Psychiatrists placed him in experimental treatment programs for psychopathy, but those treatments proved ineffective when he murdered a fellow psychiatric patient in 1991; after his death in 2010, he was described in the Toronto Star as “the serial killer they couldn’t cure.”

In June 2008, Moore was told by the High Court that he would spend the rest of his life in prison. On 3 March 2011, Moore challenged the ruling in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), with a view to having his sentence quashed and such whole life order sentences outlawed throughout Europe. On 17 January 2012, it was announced that his appeal had failed. However, on 9 July 2013, it was announced the ECHR had ruled there had to be both a possibility of release and review to be compatible with human rights.Between September and December 1995, he stabbed to death and mutilated four men “for fun”. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 1996 with a recommendation that he never be released. He also committed 39 sex attacks on men in North Wales and the Merseyside area over a 20-year period.During his trial, Moore told the jury the crimes were committed by a fictitious homosexual lover he nicknamed Jason after the killer in the Friday the 13th horror films. The jury found him guilty on all counts.

During his time in Wakefield Prison, Moore befriended fellow serial killer Harold Shipman (known to acquaintances as Fred Shipman). Shipman died by suicide in his cell in January 2004.In February 2015, the ECHR upheld the lawfulness of whole life orders, on the ground that they can be reviewed in exceptional circumstances, following a fresh challenge by murderer Arthur Hutchinson, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for a triple murder in Sheffield more than 30 years earlier. Another legal challenge to the court by Hutchinson was rejected in January 2017. A fresh challenge by another “whole life” prisoner, Jamie Reynolds, who murdered a teenage girl in Shropshire in 2013, is now reportedly pending with the ECHR. By this stage, there were believed to be more than 70 prisoners in England and Wales serving whole life sentences.

He returned to his criminal ways following his release from prison and was invol
ved in a series of further crimes culminating in the horrific home invasion near Athenry in August 2021.

Gerald Barry had already been involved in a series ofviolent incidents before murdering Manuela. He was just 16 when he was part of a gang who killed innocent Tipperary man Colm Phelan in an unprovoked attack in Eyre Square in Galway in July 1996. She said he turned to drink and drugs, which exacerbated his criminal behaviour, before going on to claim “he’s a gorgeous young man, a lovely young man when he’s not drinking,” He was sentenced to nine years with 18 months suspended, at Galway Circuit Court in December for a home invasion where he held a nine inch knife to the throat of a 69-year-old man at his rural home outside Athenry in August 2021.This is the violent repeat offender recently jailed for a terrifying home invasion who blames his life of crime on being related to one of Ireland’s most notorious killers.

Galway thug Gerard Barry (30), from Glenbaun, Ballybane, is well-known in the county for his involvement in a litany of crimes, including knife-point robberies, burglaries, assault, blackmail and extortion, theft, dangerous driving, stealing cars, damaging property, robbery, and hit-and-run offences.He had already racked up 52 convictions before his court appearance in December and has previously served another nine-year sentence with 18 months suspended for a crime spree in Galway which included knife-point robberies and attempted robberies during which he assaulted some of his victims as well as burglaries, thefts and other offences. Several of the incident occurred while he was out on bail.In one of those incidents, Barry robbed a car during a crime spree before calling a man over to the vehicle and demanding money. The man tried to get away but Barry caught up with him and kicked him before punching him three times in the jaw.​Bizarrely, when he was handed down the sentence in 2016 for that crime spree, he blamed the fact that he was related to Gerald Barry on his involvement in crime.

“I can’t describe the fear I felt as Gerard Barry chased me around my own home with a large knife,” he wrote. “That experience in my own home is forever carved into my brain.”Galway Daily reported that in his victim impact statement, the 69-year-old victim said he thought he was going to die and has lived in the fear since the incident.

The very fist time we meet Philip Lombard from And Then There Were None, he passes judgment on a woman sitting next to him. ‘Quite attractive – a bit schoolmistressy perhaps,’ Philip thinks to himself. Lombard’s work is a bit of a mystery to the readers, but we know that he was in the military. In fact, he is invited to Indian Island under the pretense of being hired by someone for a vague but dangerous sounding job. We get another glimpse into his confidence, which borders on arrogance, when he responds to the knowledge that there is a killer on the island. ‘Dangerous? Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? I’ll be dangerous when I get hold of him!’

Like the other guests who were invited to the island, Philip is guilty of committing murder. His crime is described as follows ‘Philip Lombard, that upon a date in February, 1932, you were guilty of the death of twenty-one men, members of an East African tribe.’ While it can be debated whether his crime is the worst (Vera killed a child), he certainly takes the murder-cake for the highest amount of deaths. When Lombard explains what happens, he claims it was self preservation. It was either them or him and his men. He tells the crowd, ‘We were lost in the bush. I and a couple of other fellows took what food there was and cleared out.’ He also justifies this by saying that natives do not mind dying like Europeans do. Lombard does not express much guilt over his murders and looks amused when explaining the story.

As the number of guests on the island starts to dwindle, Lombard becomes more determined to make an escape. He suggests that they signal an airplane by using a mirror and the sun. To create a light signal. Unfortunately for Lombard, all his efforts are in vain. After Dr. Armstrong is killed, only he and Vera Claythorne are left on the island. She assumes he is the killer and shoots him with his very own gun.Philip Lombard is a character with a mysterious past. He was in the military, but we never really learn what he did. He is extremely confident, and his behavior often borders on cocky. Lombard has an eye for the ladies, too. His crime was leaving twenty-one men to die in the wilderness. Lombard works with Dr. Armstrong, Rogers and Blore to find clues about who is responsible for the deaths on the island. In the end, he is shot in the chest and killed by Vera Claythorne.

An interesting fact about Lombard is that he is part of a four-man crew that takes it upon themselves to explore the island and search for clues. Dr. Armstrong organizes the group and seeks out Blore, Rogers and Lombard to discuss the possibilities of what is going on. Lombard offers up as many theories as he think of. He tells Dr. Armstrong ‘I mean – it explains Indian Island. There are crimes that cannot be brought home to their perpetrators.’ In other words, each of the crimes committed went unpunished by the law, so whoever brought everyone together on the island, is planning justice of their own. As we discover in the epilogue, this is spot on.The driver became confused and thought he was going the opposite way and not into a tight corner. The jury decided that system errors were the issue, not the driver. “There’s certain elements for example – that he’d done the journey several thousand times and this day said he had a bad day – but seven people had a worse day.” Ms Wynne added: “I don’t believe that morning [Mr Dorris] set out to kill anyone. But he did kill people. There has to be some kind of accountability.”

The case against Mr Dorris was brought by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), which said it “conducted an extensive, detailed and thorough investigation” into the derailment.Survivors described being flung about as if in a washing machine or a pinball machine, then a moment of silence before people began to scream and shout.

Speaking after the verdict, Joe Collett, whose brother Donald died in the derailment, said he felt the system had let him down and later broke down in tears.

He told the jury he thought he was travelling in the opposite direction, but by the time he realised his mistake the tram was already tipping over and he was thrown from his seat, causing him to hit his head and pass out.”I am truly and deeply sorry – it’s something that I am going to have to live with for the rest of my life, and I would just like to end by saying there are no winners in this case.”

Mr Dorris blamed his confusion on a combination of external factors including poor lighting and signage in the Sandilands tunnel complex, darkness and bad weather.

While giving evidence, Mr Dorris broke down in tears as he described his final journey and told the victims’ families he was “deeply sorry” for the crash.

The ORR also prosecuted TfL and the tram operator Tram Operations Limited under health and safety laws. Both companies previously pleaded guilty to not taking reasonable care and will be sentenced next month.The prosecution claimed Mr Dorris, from Beckenham, south-east London, may have had a “micro-sleep” while at the controls of the tram. He denied this, saying: “It just went horribly wrong for me.”

James Queally writes about crime and policing in Southern California, where he currently covers Los Angeles County’s criminal courts and the district attorney’s office for the Los Angeles Times.Richard Winton is an investigative crime writer for the Los Angeles Times and part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2011. Known as @lacrimes on Twitter, during almost 30 years at The Times he also has been part of the breaking news staff that won Pulitzers in 1998, 2004 and 2016.

Maynor was 21 and homeless at the time of his first robbery conviction, in which he shoved a woman to the ground and kicked her in the face in Hollywood, according to a probation report.“This crime continues to shock the conscience. Mrs. Avant’s death was a tragic loss felt by our entire community,” Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón said in a statement.

Maynor pleaded guilty to murder, attempted murder, possession of a firearm by a felon and two counts of burglary. He will face more than 100 years in prison at his sentencing hearing on March 30, Gascón said.It remains unclear why Maynor targeted the Avants’ home or if he knew whose residence he’d broken into. Clarence Avant told investigators that he heard an argument before the gunfire began.

Los Angeles police arrested Maynor for robbery a second time in 2018, records show. While in jail, he reported suffering from bipolar disorder among other conditions and said he had been taking medication that treats schizophrenia and depression, according to a medical order filed in court.

Jacqueline Avant was a prolific philanthropist, serving as president of Neighborhood of Watts — a support group for child care in South Los Angeles — and also regularly donated to UCLA’s International Student Center. Police said Aariel Maynor, 30, broke into Avant’s Trousdale Estates home with an AR-15 rifle shortly before 2 a.m. on Dec. 1 and opened fire, fatally wounding the prominent philanthropist. As he fled in a car, Maynor also shot at Avant’s security guard, who was not injured, prosecutors said. Maynor was paroled from state prison just three months before shooting Avant. He had two prior convictions for robbery and causing great bodily injury, state prison records show.

Matthew Ormseth is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Before joining The Times in 2018, he covered city news and state politics at the Hartford Courant.Maynor was captured by Los Angeles police officers a short time later in the backyard of a Hollywood Hills home, where he had shot himself in the foot during another attempted burglary.

Her husband advised or produced a slew of hit-making musicians including Jimmy Smith, Bill Withers, Babyface and Lalo Schifrin. Known as the “Black Godfather,” Clarence Avant received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2016 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year.

Though California law requires most older inmates or those who have served 20 consecutive years in state prison to be eligible for parole, Maynor will not be eligible for early release because he has two prior strike convictions, said Greg Risling, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.Kürten’s trial became a national event, attracting many academic observers as well as the merely curious. He candidly recounted details of his crimes to the celebrated psychologist Karl Berg, whose The Sadist (1932) became a classic of criminological literature. According to Berg, Kürten was a sexual psychopath and his crimes represented a perfect example of Lustmord, or murder for pleasure. At his trial on nine counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder, Kürten was placed in a special cage to prevent his escape. He was sentenced to death and executed by guillotine.

Kürten, the third of 13 children, experienced a violent childhood. His father, an abusive alcoholic, was imprisoned for three years for attempting to molest Kürten’s 13-year-old sister. Before he was 10 years old, Kürten had apparently murdered two schoolmates. During his teenage years he committed numerous petty crimes, and by the time of his last arrest he had been sentenced to prison nearly 30 times. In the Düsseldorf area from February to November 1929, he committed a series of brutal and sadistic murders.

Berg’s biography of Kürten would ultimately influence all subsequent scholarship on serial murder. The case also had an impact on popular culture, serving as the basis of Fritz Lang’s film M (1931), in which a Kürten-like character is memorably portrayed by Peter Lorre.Peter Kürten, byname Düsseldorf Vampire, (born May 26, 1883, Cologne-Mulheim, Ger.—died July 2, 1931, Cologne), German serial killer whose widely analyzed career influenced European society’s understanding of serial murder, sexual violence, and sadism in the first half of the 20th century.