A serial killer on the loose … ‘One of the most dangerous men I’ve ever come across’ … ‘He’s a charismatic psychopath’ … A man who murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler, and went on to kill again and again. A city in fear, in fear of Levi Bellfield.’ Levi Bellfield: 5 Mistakes that Caught a Killer, Channel 5 2020
The Thames in south-west London, a part of the capital noted for prosperity, comfort and above all safety. But over a period of two years the residents here lived in fear because somewhere out there a serial killer was prowling the streets. A serial killer attacking young blonde women at random. ibid.
Eighteen months earlier a nineteen-year-old woman was travelling on the 111 bus late at night. Someone was following her. After she got off here in Hampton, she was found dead, battered around the head. Her name was Marsha McDonnell. ibid.
The police discovered that there had been other victims over the previous eighteen months where mercifully the victims had survived. ibid.
Walton-on-Thames, Surrey March 21, 2002: A teenage girl gets off a train at the station. Minutes after these pictures are taken she’s abducted. Very soon the whole country would know her name. Milly Dowler. ibid.
Bellfield was the first man in British legal history to be given two ‘whole-life’ terms at two separate trials. ibid.
One of Britain’s most notorious serial killers: Levi Bellfield. By day a wheel-clamper; by night a savage predator. Four different interrogations: four very different performances. And clues to his guilt every time. Faking It: Tears of a Crime s3e1: Levi Bellfield, DiscoveryPlus 2020
Aged 13, days before she became one of the most famous missing persons in the world, her name: Milly Dowler. At this time few knew his name. Milly’s disappearance in 2002 remained unsolved for seven years, years when Bellfield murdered and attacked again and again. ibid.
The police didn’t know he was already a serial rapist. ibid.
21 months later in December 2003 Bellfield was arrested for violence against a female victim, a vicious attack on a women at a bus stop. ibid.
By 2003 Levi Bellfield had committed a series of rapes and murders. But by fear and cunning he kept under the police radar. Already acquitted of one brutal attack on a woman at a bus stop, Bellfield was free to execute his hatred towards women whenever the urge took him. But in 2004 he was to be interviewed again for the murder of Amélie Delagrange. ibid.
He chooses not to speak but his body gives an affirmative nod. ibid. Cliff Lansley, body language expert
Twickenham Green: The body was discovered around about 10.15 in the evening by a man who lived locally … The severity of her injury was such that she couldn’t have been lying there very long: she survived minutes rather than hours. The Real Manhunter s1e2: Levi Bellfield, Sutton investigating rozzer Sutton, Sky Documentaries 2021
There had been other attacks where women had been hit over the back of the head by a stranger. ibid.
Jo Collins gave some information about her ex-partner: said his name was Levi. She’d come across certain things: blonde women being [sic] photographs stamped out. ibid. rozzer
Levi Bellfield remains Britain’s only serial killer to be sentenced to two life tariffs and will spend the rest of his life in prison as a result of the investigation led by Colin Sutton. ibid. caption
In Britain 76,000 children go missing every year. By the end of this programme, 13 more will have disappeared. Most will have been found within a few days. But not all. In March 2002 the disappearance of one teenage girl shocked the nation. But it was to no avail. From missing person to murder, the hunt for Milly Dowler’s killer was the biggest in the history of the investigating force. The Abduction of Milly Dowler, Channel 5 2021
In the short time it takes Milly’s friend to board the bus and look out of the window to where Milly should be, from this very stretch of a busy main road, Milly has vanished into thin air. ibid.
I’ve suffered for it mentally and I just want to get some closure. The Russell Murders: Who Killed Lin & Megan? I: Horrific Crime, No Suspect, rozzer revisits scene, Sky Documentaries 2023
Police investigating the murder of a mother and daughter in Kent say they were victims of a brutal frenzied attack. ibid. BBC new
We have now received a full confession from Levi Bellfield. ibid. rozzers’ press conference
A mother and her two daughters bludgeoned by a hammer was just horrendous. ibid. woman
The motive at the moment is incomprehensible. The Russell Murders: Who Killed Lin & Megan? II: The Media vs Michael Stone, rozzer
It Wasn’t Me. I Wasn’t There. ibid. Michael Stone
Police will be very reluctant to admit they made a mistake. ibid. journalist
They [rozzers] were set on me like a pack of hounds. ibid. Michael Stone
They [rozzers] always assured me there was DNA found at the scene. ibid. Michael Stone’s sister
The first muttering of doubt over the [Stone] conviction were beginning to emerge. The Russell Murders: Who Killed Lin & Megan III: Confessions & Serial Killers, journalist
The appeal judges insisted on a retrial. ibid.
He [prison witness] would have sold his grandmother down the pan to get the charges dropped. ibid. Michael Stone
The jury came back with guilty. I nearly had a heart attack on the spot. ibid.
BELORUSOV, KIRILL: Killer at the Crime Scene TV -
Kew, London, 5th March 2019: Police in London make a grim discovery … Officers force entry to her ground-floor flat. 34-year-old Laureline Garcia-Bertaux has been missing for 5 days. Killer at the Crime Scene s3e1, Netflix 2023
Police show the CCTV to Laureline’s friends; they instantly recognise the man, her ex-boyfriend Kirill Belorusov. ibid.
BENGUIT, OMAR: Unsolved TV - R v Benguit online article -
Omar regularly calls from prison where he is serving a life sentence for murdering a young woman in 2002. Unsolved I II: The Man With No Alibi, BBC 2018
‘Convicted on no evidence. Not one piece of evidence can they prove that I done it. Because I didn’t do it. I wasn’t there.’ ibid. Omar
There’s no forensic evidence linking this man to the crime. And it took three trials to get a conviction. ibid.
‘There’s 17 witnesses who came forward.’ ibid. Brian the rozzer
Omar’s sister claimed the police framed him by pushing other drug addicts into backing up parts of BB’s story. ibid.
John’s story shows the police were prepared to put forward unreliable witnesses who changed their accounts. ibid.
Most of the prosecution witnesses were crack and heroin addicts. ibid.
Less than three months after he [Restivo – convicted killer] moves in, Oki is killed here three streets away … Exactly four months to the day after Oki is murdered, there is another murder nearby and we know for sure he [Restivo] did this one. ibid.
The trials were a travesty of justice which allowed the real perpetrator of the crime Danilo Restivo free to kill only a few streets and months away from where Oki Shin had been slain. Heather Barnett paid with her life for the incompetence of Dorset police, while the Court of Appeal declared Mr Benguit’s conviction to be ‘safe’, based wholly on the obvious lies and conflicting testimony of crack addicts.
Danilo Restivo settled in Bournemouth in March 2002 having moved there from Italy. His presence was notified to Dorset police by a telex from the Italian police on 29th August 2002, warning that Restivo was a ‘grave danger to women’ and advising that, ‘he should be investigated for the Oki murder’. Dorset police replied to their Italian counterparts in September 2002 informing them that they need not worry about Restivo, as they had apprehended Benguit.
In November 2002 Heather Barnett was murdered in her own house opposite to where Restivo lived and a few streets away from where Oki-Shin had been slain, but this did not ring any alarm bells with the police or indeed with the CPS even though Restivo was at the scene of the crime offering sympathy to the victim’s children.
The third and final trial of Omar Benguit took place in January 2005 while Danilo Restivo was being kept under 24 hour surveillance and when he had already been cautioned in May 2004 for having in his possession a knife identical in size and shape to the murder weapon used against Jong Ok-Shin and a balaclava (ie ‘mask’).
A fresh clump of human hair was found at the very spot where Oki-Shin was stabbed. Dorset police have attributed this hair as belonging to a local resident, Ms Donna Welstead, from whom the police took a statement only two weeks before Mr Benguit’s appeal. Ms Welstead also had a phenomenal memory: she could recall hiring a mobile hair dresser twelve years earlier in or around 2002, who may have deposited the clump of hair in the street after leaving her home. There is no evidence to suggest however that Ms Welstead ever lived in Malmesbury Park Road and no forensic report has been disclosed which links the hair to her or to anyone else. R v Benguit online article, COA judgment 9th April 2014