The Devil's Disciple - Serial Killer Patrick Mackay

By Pete Dove

Patrick Mackay had killed at least eleven people in his short life, including a four year old child, a nanny, an elderly priest and an 89 year old woman.  
Today, the killer has been in prison for forty four years. That makes him the longest serving inmate currently serving time in a British jail. He is slightly ahead of the notorious Michael Peters. While, that is not a name which may be familiar to all true crime aficionados, his alternative identity – Charles Bronson – will. (Peters even spent a spell known as Charles Salvador in recognition of the artist, Salvador Dali, whose work he admired). Other long servers include, until he died recently, Moors murderer Ian Brady, and Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.
But given that Mackay killed many more people than either Brady or Bronson – in fact he is one of Britain's most prolific serial killers – how it is possible that he is not better known?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201635459

Book preview

The Devil’s Disciple - Serial Killer Patrick Mackay

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Pete Dove

table of contents

PATRICK MACKAY

MANIAC

SMELLY BOB

THE FOOTPATH MURDERER

ISRAEL KEYES

RAILROAD KILLER

THE CAMDEN RIPPER

SOUTHSIDE STRANGLER

KARL DENKE

PATRICK MACKAY 

The Longest Serving Killer Who May Soon Be Released

Capital Punishment is not an option in the UK.  In practical terms, it has not been since the mid-1960s, however macabre the crime.  And few of those have been as horrific as the ones committed by Patrick Mackay during a killing spree in 1970s London.

A major factor in the removal of the death penalty from the list of punishments available to judges involved the case of Derek Bentley.  Bentley was a minor criminal who became over ambitious and attempted armed robbery. During one escapade, he and his sixteen year old accomplice were caught in the act.  Bentley’s partner threatened the policeman who came across them and Bentley shouted: ‘Let him have it!’

Which, of course, is a phrase open to different interpretations.  He could have meant that the gun should be fired, and the victim killed (which was what happened).  Alternatively, the words might have been an instruction to give the weapon up.  Despite extremely uncertain evidence, and Bentley’s history of learning difficulties, the jury decided it was an instruction to shoot, and found the young lad guilty of murder in the first degree.  He was subsequently hanged. 

Then, doubts about the security of the conviction began to raise their heads.  And the British public began to wonder whether the death penalty was simply too great a risk to hand out.

There are some similarities between Derek Bentley and Patrick Mackay.  Both had difficult childhoods, and each suffered from considerable mental health issues.  Still, it is hard to see quite how, had it been available, a jury would not have recommended the death penalty for Mackay, such was the evil inherent in his crimes. 

Because, based on his (sometimes withdrawn) confessions, Mackay had killed at least eleven people in his short life, including a four year old child, a nanny, an elderly priest and an 89 year old woman. 

Today, the killer has been in prison for forty four years.  That makes him the longest serving inmate currently serving time in a British jail.  He is slightly ahead of the notorious Michael Peters.  While, that is not a name which may be familiar to all true crime aficionados, his alternative identity – Charles Bronson – will.  (Peters even spent a spell known as Charles Salvador in recognition of the artist, Salvador Dali, whose work he admired).  Other long servers include, until he died recently, Moors murderer Ian Brady, and Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.

But given that Mackay killed many more people than either Brady or Bronson – in fact he is one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers – how it is possible that he is not better known?  The answer seems to be that Mackay has kept his head down for the last forty years.  Not for him are starring roles in investigative documentaries, glorifying films or much publicised exchanges of letters.  Equally, how has it slipped under the radar that Mackay has recently changed his name, been moved to an open prison (the lowest security rating in Britain) and succeeded in having his case placed on a list to be reviewed shortly by the parole board?  These are much tougher questions to answer.

There is a serious possibility that Patrick Mackay, mass murderer of at least eleven vulnerable victims, may soon be back on the streets.  At present, he is in his sixties and therefore physically capable of inflicting further suffering, especially when it is considered that many of his victims were elderly people, often women.

And so it is important to examine the case of this quiet but decidedly deranged killer.  It is one that is sordid, violent and also somewhat sad.  And, like many other tragic tales, it is one which could have been averted.  All that would have been needed was for the authorities to talk to each other.  But that was too much to ask in the dark days of England of the 1970s.

Christened Patrick David, Mackay was born in Dartford, Kent on 25th September 1952.  Kent might enjoy the sobriquet ‘The Garden of England’, but every garden has its wild and untamed corner – that a fitting description of Dartford.  Back then, still bomb ridden from the second world war, it was a town of docks and heavy industry.  It would not have been the greatest place in England in which to grow up. 

Looking at a picture of the young Mackay, sitting with his parents and baby sister, nothing seems amiss.  Mum is an attractive woman dressed conservatively in the fashion of the day.  Father is the archetypal post war 1950s’ man.  He looks the part of a World War Two veteran, a man who contributed to saving his country from the evils of Hitler. It seems, in the photo, as though he has dressed for the occasion, his smart tweed suit set off by tie and moustache.  He sits upright, looking like a bank manager or a mid ranking detective.  Or perhaps a science master whose reputation for strictness would ensure his classes were conducted in fearful silence.  He would be a teacher admired by parents for his non nonsense attitude and grudgingly respected, if not actually liked, by his students.

But photographs tell only part of a story.  Especially old ones in black and white. Because Mackay had married a wife of mixed race, a lady technically known as a creole (that is, half European and half of West Indian or African heritage). Such a liaison would be frowned upon in the 1950s.  The mildly offensive nature of the term applied to Patrick Mackay’s mother says as much.

Growing up in a mixed race family in the 1950s and 60s would be a challenge even in the more liberal parts of Britain, to do so in a traditionally working class area such as Dartford would be more difficult still.  This was a time when the Windrush generation were being welcomed by the more enlightened members of society, but ostracised by the majority.  These black people from the West Indies, who had arrived initially on the SS Windrush, were vital to Britain’s economy.  But they were also of a different culture and colour, and that made people wary.  Prejudice reigned widely.

If growing up for young Patrick were not already hard enough he had a number of other disadvantages with which to contend.  Firstly, he struggled hugely with his school work.  Today, he would be in receipt of support from educational psychologists and special needs teachers.  Back then, he was simply labelled as ‘stupid.’

He, along with the family, had upped sticks while he was still small and moved further east to a town similar to Dartford.  Gravesend was only a few miles down the road, but it meant a complete change of environment for the young child.  Such roots as he had laid down were torn up, and it seems as though this may have been another contributory factor in turning the youngster into a troubled boy.

But there were still more problems in that difficult childhood.  Patrick’s father might look like the epitome of British upright reserve, however his stern yet reliable exterior hid a much darker truth.  Mackay senior was an alcoholic.  A violent one. And the people most often on the receiving end of his aggressive nature were his family, including young Patrick.  Like many, his time at war had affected him badly, but understanding of conditions such as PTSD were non-existent back then.

That violence and alcoholism led to the man’s premature death.  He suffered a heart attack, induced by his excessive drinking, when Patrick was just ten years old.  It might be thought that the boy would be relieved that the violence would now stop, and life at home would be safer and calmer.  But families are strange entities.  For Patrick, the opposite was the case.  He could simply not come to terms with his father’s death.  He carried a photo of him everywhere he went, and pretended that his dad was still alive. 

His father’s actions had also left more than just physical marks on the boy.  They had placed an imprint on his mind.  Patrick had observed his father, felt his hands upon him, and learned.  His father had taught him how to behave.  Now Patrick would be the man of the family, and that meant treating his mother and sister in the same way as his father had when he had been alive.  Violently.

It was not just his family who were victims of the boy’s anger.  Bob Brown was a former Detective Sergeant who was based in Gravesend.  He knows more about Patrick Mackay’s early, formative years than most.  ‘From an early age he tortured animals, birds and so on.  He threw the family tortoise on a bonfire,’ he explained.

A common trait among violent adults is a history of torturing animals during their childhood.  In a move with worrying echoes in his later behaviour, he soon advanced from terrorising wildlife to targeting his peers. 

‘He terrorised other children, his family.  Even police officers, he had a go at,’ remembers Bob Brown.

‘On one occasion, he kicked his mother and sister out into the street, and it wasn’t until police arrived that they could regain access to the premises,’ said the former detective.  This was not the behaviour of an adolescent in a late teen rage.  When this incident occurred, Mackay was still a pre-pubescent child, just twelve years of age. 

Then, at the age of thirteen, he was incarcerated for the first time, sentenced to a spell in a psychiatric hospital called Beech House.  He had been caught trying to set light to a Catholic church.  Dr George Turle ran Beech House during the time Patrick was housed there.  ‘He wasn’t able to tolerate frustration,’ the doctor remembers.  ‘He exploded. He wasn’t in charge of himself.’

Next stop in the catalogue of failed attempts to treat his condition came at Moss Side Hospital, in Liverpool.  This was the other side of the country from his home in Gravesend.  It was apparent that the only way to keep the boy under control was to enclose him in a space where he could do no harm.  However, Mackay was in control of himself sufficiently to put on a charm offensive when it served him to do so.  As a result, he was discharged from Moss Side on two separate occasions.

Bernard Fleming is another ex-professional who came across the young Mackay during the course of his work.

‘The older he got, the worse his behaviour got and the more out of control he became,’ he recalls.  ‘His behaviour would change very quickly if he felt he was being provoked in any way. Sometimes even if he wasn’t.  If he felt he was then he would react in an extreme way.  He suffered from a psychopathic disorder.’

As he entered his mid-teens, Mackay began to come into regular contact with the law.  Dr Leonard Carr was a Home Office Psychiatrist who examined the fifteen-year old boy.  His frightening and horrifically accurate conclusion stated that, as he entered adulthood, Mackay would turn into a ‘psychopathic killer, explosive in temper...’

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Even before the first body had been found, police were puzzled and concerned by a series of muggings on mostly wealthy women in the opulent south west London suburbs around Chelsea and Belgravia.  This area, known as SW10 and close to the northern banks of the River Thames, remains one of the most desirable in the whole of the United Kingdom.  Then on February 26th, 1974, a gruesome discovery was made.  In a flat in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, the body of Isabella Griffiths, aged 87, was found.  But as delightful as the leafy streets not far from the West End of London might be, they were also a lonely place.  The idea of a community who kept their eye out for each other, or where neighbours might notice an absence of an elderly resident, was distinctly absent among the BMWs, Mercedes and Jaguars which lined the comfortable roads. 

Indeed, when she was finally found, lying in her kitchen, Isabella had been dead for twelve days.  She had been strangled and a forced entry had been made to her flat.  The killer had stabbed her through the chest with such violence that the poor elderly woman was physically pinned to the floor.  Later, detectives discovered a frightening link to Patrick Mackay’s childhood.  He had been seen, on more than one occasion, torturing birds.  What is even more worrying is that one of his favourite tricks was to seize the frightened animals, and pin them to the road.  He would then watch from a safe distance as cars drove over the imprisoned creatures, killing them. 

A further mystery pointed towards some mental disorder in Isabella’s killer.  He, or she, had forced closed the eyes of their victim.  This was not simply a murder caused by a chance discovery of the burglar by the owner of the property, it had deeper, psychological causes. 

The next body to be discovered was that of Adele Price.  More than a year had passed between the death of Isabella and this event.  By now, it was early March 1975.  89 year old Adele lived in a prestigious apartment in Lowndes Square, SW1 (one of the best – or at least most expensive - postcodes in London).  Lowndes Square is in the sought after district of Knightsbridge, home of Harrods, the Albert Hall and other well known landmarks. 

The killer had forced