Seven young women, all murdered in the most disgusting manner imaginable. Unimaginable, in fact: a first of its kind, and never before explicitly revealed.
All the victims were prostitutes. All were dumped naked after having been stored by their killer as sex toys. Some of them were mothers. Each was someone's daughter. And for more than fifty years the author has lived with the haunting secret that he was once suspected by Scotland Yard of being a serial killer more depraved and dangerous than Jack the Ripper.
In the killing-spree that lasted more than a year, the author had a mole deep inside Scotland Yard's Murder Squad, similar to "Deep Throat" of Watergate scandal, who was drip-feeding him the step-by-step ploys to snare the monster who brought terror to the streets of West London.
Hundreds of police women, posing as prostitutes, flooded the red-light districts, hoping to be selected by the killer - more hopeful, though, that the back-up would swoop to the rescue in time. At one point, Scotland Yard feared that a prostitute, missing for more than a fortnight, had become the eighth victim and appealed to the public for help. It took the author just eleven hours to track her down and hand her alive and well to the Murder Squad.
When the killings stopped, the most senior member of the Murder Squad claimed that the serial killer had committed suicide and an innocent man was named in a deceitful cover-up. The author fingers the real serial killer, a celebrity and national treasure who died in circumstances arguably even more bizarre than the manner in which he murdered his victims.
About the Author
Michael Litchfield is the author of several true-crime and current-affairs books. His background is rooted in investigative journalism. He worked as a crime correspondent for several national newspapers and was contracted to Time/Life magazine to investigate the Mafia's infiltration of the Bahamas government. At one stage, a contract was taken out on his life and he was smuggled out of Nassau on a cruise ship to the US, where he was kept for a time in a safe house before being repatriated. Back in the UK, his books on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie and the biography of the controversial Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Sir James Anderton, coupled with the Northern Ireland terrorist issue, were highly acclaimed, staying for several weeks in the top ten non-fiction bestsellers' lists. His last staff newspaper appointment was as political editor in London with Northcliffe Newspapers. His most recent book for John Blake Publishing is The Murder of Lord Shaftesbury, published in 2016.
