Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (5 page)

Sexual assaults

In 1976, he attacked a younger man at knifepoint and sexually molested him. Convicted of indecent assault, he was sent to prison for four years. The police were privately convinced that he’d sexually assaulted other young men but that the victims had been too afraid or ashamed to report the molestation or rape. (Most sexual offenders are only convicted for one out of every five assaults.)

In jail, Victor Miller was segregated from the mainstream population and served his time with other sex offenders. Like most sadists, he was an exemplary prisoner and earned parole after two and a half years. Sadists, who have suffered repeatedly in their chaotic childhood homes, often do well in a structured environment such as prison where the authorities are watching them and giving guidance. But, left to their own devices in the outside world, their rage builds, their cruel fantasies take over and they look for a victim to hurt and dominate.

A few weeks after Victor Miller’s release, he attacked a 16-year-old boy but evaded justice by moving to Wolverhampton, where he attacked two youths at knifepoint, stabbing one of them. This time he was sentenced to seven years.

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Victor Miller

A sort of love

Victor now met a paedophile called Trevor Norman Peacher and for the next few years they were prison lovers. (Trevor Peacher had brutally attacked a paper boy and imprisoned him in his flat for several hours.)

When their sentences ended, they bought a small flat together in Wolverhampton but their love affair was frequently argumentative, particularly as Trevor liked to drink and Victor detested alcohol.

Abduction

Victor continued to fantasise about torturing boys. By now he was working as a van driver, a job which gave him time to dream and an opportunity to trawl for prey.

Early one morning in 1985, he grabbed a boy who was delivering Sunday papers in a village on the outskirts of Wolverhampton and bundled the teenager into his white van at knifepoint. He drove to the isolated hamlet of Catstree near Bridgnorth and indecently assaulted him. The boy promised he wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened, and Miller let him go. The child kept quiet for some time but eventually told his mother, who decided to honour his pleas that they not involve the police. (She would inform the authorities later in Miller’s offending career.)

A torture victim escapes

The week leading up to 15 January 1988 was a particularly stressful one for Victor Miller as he had a violent argument with his lover Trevor. As a result, both men took the week off work and Trevor remained in a drunken stupor in the flat, being vaguely aware of Victor coming back occasionally for a change of clothes.

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At teatime on Friday the fifteenth, Victor Miller drove to Hereford in search of a suitable victim. Soon he saw 18-year-old Richard Holden cycling home. A small, slender teenager, he looked younger than his actual years and probably resembled the 14-year-olds that Victor most desired. (It’s likely that Victor himself was sadistically assaulted when he was this age – after all, he had a nervous breakdown at 15. And killers often seek to destroy a younger version of themselves.)

Miller stopped the teenager and asked for directions, then drove around in a circle so that he was waiting for the youth when he cycled downhill. He grabbed Richard’s handlebars, pulled him off the bike and put a knife to his throat. He then dragged the youth to his car where he chloroformed him.

The sadist then drove at speed through the countryside, before parking, blindfolding the youth and carrying him into a field. Richard revived somewhat and was marched through an orchard at knifepoint, then he lost consciousness again.

At some stage he revived and Victor Miller beat his back with a broken stick and possibly with a branch of gorse, implements he’d brought with him for the purposes of flagellation. The boy was so shocked by this deliberate cruelty that he blocked the details out, and would only remember them later under hypnosis. But his flesh showed the marks made by the stick for many days.

As the effects of the chloroform wore off, Richard became aware that he was sitting down and stripped to the waist with his abductor unzipping his flies. Terrified, he tore off the blindfold and kicked out at his attacker, managing to throw him backwards so that he fell. Jumping to his feet, Richard ran and hid in a nearby field waiting for the car to leave, then raced through the countryside until he found help.

A lucky escape

The following day, Victor Miller again went out in search of a boy to torture. This time he stopped a 14-year-old in Broome 42

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Victor Miller

and asked him for directions to Birmingham. But the boy noted that the dark-complexioned young man didn’t follow the instructions he gave – and he became increasingly alarmed when he saw that the man appeared to be circling the area and staring at him in a predatory way. He hid in the garden of a house until he saw the reassuring presence of the local post van and began to cycle alongside it. To his relief, Victor Miller drove swiftly away.

The murder

But Miller was determined to get himself a victim, and on Sunday he went to Hagley and drove around until he saw 14-year-old Stuart Gough who had just finished his Sunday paper round. Miller abducted Stuart at knifepoint, blindfolded him and drove him almost 40 miles to the Herefordshire woods. The details of what he did to the boy have never been disclosed, the police stating that the public and press did not need to know.

After murdering the teenager, Victor Miller drove 80 miles to the Staffordshire moors where he buried the child’s clothing, his newspaper sack and asthma inhaler. He also buried his own knife.

A false alibi

Victor Glenford Miller was a suspect from early on in Stuart Gough’s disappearance as several witnesses had seen a round-faced mixed race man in a silver-coloured car acting suspiciously in the area, and Miller fit the bill with his silver Colt Sapporo.

He lived within easy driving distance of the abduction location and had previous convictions for attacks on young boys.

Miller said he’d been working with Peacher at Manders Paints all week (Miller had a job as a warehouseman there in Wolverhampton) but when the police checked their alibi, they found that neither man had been at the firm for the last seven days.

The evidence against Miller began to mount up. Gorse needles were found in the boot of his car – and gorse branches 43

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had been used in Richard Holden’s torture. Tyre marks in the orchard matched the tyres of his car. And Richard identified the vehicle’s customised loudspeakers.

The body

Victor Miller was charged with Richard Holden’s abduction and injury, but he still refused to admit that he was responsible for Stuart Gough’s abduction and suspected murder. But Trevor Peacher now admitted that he’d given his lover a false alibi and the police let Miller know that they were aware of the earlier Catstree assault.

Eventually, two weeks after Stuart Gough had disappeared, Miller agreed to take police to the body and directed them to a remote part of the Herefordshire woods. There they saw a foot poking out of the leaves. The killer was too distraught to look at the body and backed away before police could begin unearthing it.

This type of behaviour isn’t unusual in sadistic killers – confronted with their actions after the rage and lust have subsided, they are capable of shame. But it’s a fleeting emotion which doesn’t prevent them from going on to offend again and again.

Returned to the police station, Victor Miller admitted causing the child’s injuries. He also admitted sexually assaulting a total of 29 boys over the previous few years. He asked his solicitor to request that the courts give him the maximum possible sentence for Stuart Gough’s death.

On Thursday 3 November 1988, he got his wish as he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge described him as a

‘sadistic sexual psychopath’ and suggested that he should never be released.

Trevor Peacher said that he still loved Victor but that he couldn’t forgive him for murdering Stuart Gough. He was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison for giving Miller a false alibi.

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CHAPTER FOUR

ANTHONY PAUL

ANDERSON

Most criminal sadists abduct strangers or victimise
their own spouses and children – but Anderson
brutally murdered his violent grandfather,

his grandfather’s common-law wife and two

neighbours, all within five days.

Rejected

Anthony was born in Sheffield in 1967, the third child of Zoe Velt and Richard Anderson. The couple went on to have a total of five children but their relationship was increasingly dysfunctional. Zoe had been left traumatised after being sexually abused by her father and found it hard to show love towards her children, and Richard suffered from clinical levels of depression.

When Anthony was only four his mother deserted the family.

His father couldn’t cope and was admitted to a mental hospital and all of the children were taken into care.

It’s likely that by now Anthony was already an embryonic-stage psychopath, for the staff found him hard to connect with and they noticed that he lied compulsively. He managed to disrupt both the care home and the school environment and 45

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never learned to read or write. No one wanted to foster him and he remained in the orphanage until he was 16.

Shortly after leaving care, Anthony was sent to borstal on an aggravated burglary charge. Released after a year and a half, he was given a job through the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders and went to live with his mother, but after a few months she couldn’t stand his paranoia any longer and he was so agitated that he had to be heavily sedated by his GP. He then went to live with his father, who rented a council house nearby.

The teenager was soon returned to prison for another six months for thieving, after which he again lived with his father.

During this period he was also convicted of arson, which –

when not connected with insurance fraud – can be regarded as a form of sadism. Indeed, there have been documented instances of sadists starting a fire then remaining at the scene to hear the victims’ anguished screams. Some have also been known to orgasm whilst watching the destructive power of a fire.

A belief in demons

Anthony Anderson remained lawless and disturbed as he moved into his late teens, living off the proceeds of his burglaries and supplementing this with casual black-economy work at scrapyards. He also revelled in frightening people, welcoming visitors to his flat then jumping out at them whilst wearing a devil mask. He believed that demons actually existed and that he could make demonic energy work for him, a relatively common way for a powerless young man to feel in control.

But Anthony was determined to make what he saw as powerful gestures so, whilst drinking heavily, he told his fellow pub goers that he had murdered two men at a disco and he threatened to kill more.

He began to terrorise one of his neighbours, former schoolteacher Raymond Faversham. The latter had taught in 46

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Anthony Anderson

Africa but had contracted malaria and returned to England where he found it impossible to find work. Sinking into a deep depression, he’d turned to alcohol for solace and had become something of a recluse.

Raymond also had crippling arthritis in his hands and in his legs which meant that he walked with a limp – he was the perfect victim for an increasingly deranged sadist. Anthony Anderson took to regularly threatening him, burgling him and even throwing a dustbin through his window late one night.

He also jumped out at the older man whilst wearing his devil mask, causing Mr Faversham to lose control of his bowels.

The rst and second murders

On Thursday 25 August 1987, he broke into Raymond Faversham’s house, overpowered the sleeping man and bound him. He pulled down his underpants and probably sexually assaulted him with his penis or with a weapon. The sadist also tortured the former schoolteacher, stabbing him with two knives a total of 500 times. He pulled Mr Faversham’s intestines from his abdominal cavity and draped them over the bed. One of the knives Anderson used was buried so deep into the victim’s body that it remained there until discovered by the pathologist. The other knife was left sticking out of his back. When his victim was dead or dying, Anthony Anderson covered his body with clothes, stole a clock and a microwave and left the house.

The following day or the day after, he broke into neighbour Marcus Lamont’s house. The two men had been enemies for a long time and now Anderson would have his revenge.

Binding the other man with his own clothes, he began to torture him with a knife, making a total of 70 insertions. He cut his victim’s stomach then rammed Lamont’s own genitals into the cut. He also inserted cigarettes into his mouth and his 47

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rectum. During this sadistic onslaught, Marcus Lamont died from shock or loss of blood.

The third and fourth murders

Anthony soon made his way to his domineering grandfather Stasys Petrov’s allotment. (He would kill all four of his victims between 25 and 29 August 1987.) The older man had been born in Lithuania but had eventually moved to Yorkshire where he served a prison sentence for committing incest with his daughter, Anthony’s mother. Having heard about this incest, Anthony thought that his grandfather might actually be his father, though this wasn’t the case.