A Deadly New Year’s Resolution: The Gay Slayer | Born To Kill? | Real Crime

you in the 1990s colin island would terrorize london's gay community it is one of the most horrific and demanding murder inquiries for years over three months five innocent men would die at the hands of this cold and calculating killer he said the man who killed was day colin island would be christened the gay slur and had set himself a unique goal he makes a new year's resolution to himself that he's going to become a serial killer Island would snuff out the lives of his unsuspecting victims in a series of cruel and bizarre crimes seeing that most there was just one of horror never seen anything like that before Orson's so was the gay Slayer made into a monster or was he born to kill it's cold and calculating [Music] this is the confession of Colin Ireland in 1993 he would take the lives of five men in a killing spree that frustrated police and struck fear into London's gay community your advice to the gay community tonight yes quite simple be careful don't pick up a stranger don't go out and one-night stands it's dangerous you could be next the methods and motives for his evil actions would not be revealed until this Frank and disturbing interview Islands life and crimes give us a unique insight into the mind of a serial killer and the 40 year journey that led him to make the cruelest of New Year's resolutions the moment as a Honda started on account very cows and I think in some moves : Ireland was born on March the 16th 1954 and from day one his life would be full of disappointment and failure Colleen Island's father wanted no part in bringing up a child and left before he was even born Ireland never knew his biological father and I think that's quite an important thing to note because we have to remember what England was like in the early 1950s where that kind of birth out of wedlock would be regarded very badly by the local community his 17 year old mother was left with no money and no choice but to move back in with her parents in Myrtle Road Dartford his mother was a very poor person on a number of occasions Ireland's mother would move him in the hope that she would be able to settle with him in other accommodation she appeared to be very much into wanting to give him something that was good wanting to make things good for him but it didn't work out Colleen Islands formative years were an unhappy time filled with extreme hardship upheaval and poverty rent problems would sometimes lead to sudden moves I think he was probably really hurt by it I'm sure any child would be coming home from school and finding that their home is no longer their home and their mother as has moved off somewhere so we've got a young man whose pattern of early life is characterized by movement disruption and an anxiety that somehow he doesn't quite fit in and that there are people talking about it [Music] in 1970 at the age of 16 Ireland fled to London where he began to hang around at an amusement arcade with an unsavory reputation we now know this is a particularly defeatable amusement arcade because it's targeted and frequented by pedophiles who will particularly target young boys what I think we begin to see is Ireland's association with sexual subcultures most serial killers men who killed men are themselves gay most heterosexual serial killers kill women what often happens in a case like this is that Ireland himself may be homosexual or may have a strong aspect of homosexuality to his personality but can't accept it he doesn't want to accept that and so there's a part of him that he hates and by killing others he's sort of reassuring himself that he's not gay that's not part of his personality Islands later teens were also to prove turbulent and he began racking up an impressive criminal record spending many periods in and out of both borstal and prison I think in a list of about fifty or thirty court appearances all relatively minor offenses to begin with TD a burglary deception he wasn't your GBH mansion and he wasn't your rapist he wasn't your armed robber in between stints of incarceration Auden tries his hand at various jobs but none lasted one in particular though would yet again provide Ireland with a vital key to a specific community later on in life believed he was a bouncer on a gay club it's almost impossible to determine whether or not he himself was gay what matters is Ireland's understanding of a number of gay sexual subcultures it was around 1981 when Colleen met his first wife and whilst he was working as a security guard he befriended fellow worker Colin Braun it was a biggest guy he seemed pretty quiet then once we got to know each other then he started chatting and everything and that was when I start going to his flat in Holloway Colin's wife was in a wheelchair Victoria he seemed like he dose over and you know I mean he couldn't do it enough for her when I went there was it was a pleasant home life you know I don't know I think it's quite interesting that his first wife is disabled and he instead can dominate her because he's providing a caring service as he would see it Ireland had seemingly got his life on track and was doing all he could to be a respected member of the community he and another man would patrol the local area where they were living we go out light in the evening and we were never told you that and if there was anything that we saw that maybe wasn't a wolf we would report it to the local police [Music] as always the sense of a kind of perverted moral hierarchy a desire to be someone in a community and of course performing the role as an informal neighborhood patrol officer would give Ireland that sense of paying something back that sense of having some standing nevertheless the harmonious respectable life Ireland had constructed for himself crumbled just five years later after he was caught having an affair but no one could foresee the tragic and brutal consequences of Collin Island's turbulent youth criminal career and brushes with London's gay community in 1993 Colin Ireland would take the lives of five innocent gay men but what was his motive for murder was the man who became known as the gay Slayer born to kill Ireland had an unstable childhood and a failed marriage then in 1989 on a survival weekend in Devon he meets his second wife to be Janet young I first met Colin Ireland when I owned the globe in pub where I live and he came in as customer and he stood in the doorway dressed in camouflage very impressive figure the conversation just stopped dead in the pub as he came in the door Janet quickly falls for the stranger although not everybody is immediately so keen on him my barmaid at the time she didn't like him at all she warned me off him right from the word go she said no is something not right but I didn't feel that I felt he was ideal for me in my situation so he gradually moved in the customers didn't warm - Colin behind the bar and neither did he feel happy serving them he hated being behind the bar he he wasn't really a very good mixer although he was friendly I think people in the pub found him a little bit scary because he was very tall big man he was with me for about three months before he asked me to marry him I wasn't sure that I wanted to get married but he said if we don't trust one another then what's the point being together we had a small reception and a a really fun day it fitted in really well my children were prepared to accept him being there he liked being with them I think it made him feel accepted and normal however four months into the marriage he proves that everything is far from normal Ireland drives Janet and the kids to her mother's home for the weekend they would never see each other again Ireland conforms to a classic psychopath always taking from somebody what he needs to have so as to continue in the lifestyle that he wants enquire beautiful human being most of the time there's that side of my character that is negative cold calculating Ireland now has Janet and the kids safely out of the way Ireland will go back to the pub and take money from the pub enough to set himself up again I was just shocked I didn't I didn't know what had happened to him I thought he'd been killed run over in hospital arrested with over 10,000 pounds of Janet's cash and their wedding photo album Colleen abandons her and his life behind the bar of the globe in I realized he was probably just a con man all along and I fell for it and he was just looking for his opportunity to get what he could and go traveling to South End on Sea Island once again begins to build a new life for himself in 1991 he applies to be a volunteer at a local homeless shelter the moment Colleen arrived at the night shelter as a volunteer I do remember because he's a very very large man and he stood in the doorway and just advised me that he'd been sent by another agency he was very passionate about the work that he did probably more passionate than any of the other volunteers we had and he genuinely felt that he was paying society back after having behaved in various ways that he himself admitted were we're not very good for almost six months life at the shelter seemed to be providing Island with all he needed to lead a fulfilled existence but true to form it wasn't to last Colin was a very calm person but he was also a person that you felt immediately that you wouldn't want to upset other volunteers don't like his manner find him quite overbearing find him frightening volunteers and Ireland remain at loggerheads over the coming months until one final incident seals his fate the assistant manager came to me and felt that Connie's behavior on occasions wasn't appropriate and she was rather concerned about this that matter was taken to the committee and they decided then that it probably would be a good idea to let Colin go he felt that his dismissal was unfair and unjustified he also felt that he had given back something to society and basically that hadn't been recognized once again he finds himself rejected and on the fringes of society for Colin Ireland it's the final straw I believe getting dismissed from the noise shelter was crucial to his future it was an absolutely crucial part of what happened to him and why he went on to do what he did to become the somebody he's always craved to be Ireland will have to try a different tack he had read a book written by Robert wrestler called whoever fights monsters and therefore Island says he's going to become famous he's going to become a somebody in the community at that point he makes a new year's resolution to himself that he's going to become a serial killer on the 8th of March 1993 Colin Ireland arrives at the Col Hearn pub tonight he will begin his campaign of violence back in the early 90s the coal Hearn was hugely popular with the gay community and in particular the center of a thriving S&M scene colvin back in the early 1990s every evening would be absolutely heaving and you'd have people in here clientele who would identify each other sexual activity was was there to their taste which made targeting by Pollan Island extremely easy there were a whole series of signals if you were into this you'd wear this color handkerchief if you were into that you'd wear another one if you had it in one pocket or another most heterosexual men would feel uncomfortable going into a gay bar and speaking to someone who is gay getting them to come with you you would have to have some degree of comfort or experience in doing that and so it's his understanding of that subculture which gives him the passport to enter areas in London which were quite secret and it's his understanding of that having that passport which allows him to kill repeatedly time after time in a unique insight into a serial killers mind Colin Ireland explains during his police confession how the horrific events unfolded that evening when he killed and tortured his innocent victim like of them that evening I felt I was approached by one thing as group type that tended to trigger these things in little masochistic men I felt that it's not long before Ireland is approached by theatre director Peter Walker they strike up a conversation and travel back to Walker's flat together [Music] before killing Peter Walker island demands money from his now helpless victim forcing Walker to reveal his bank card and PIN number by burning his testicles with a lighter [Music] as dawn approached Colin island left Walker's flat withdrew 200 pounds from a cash machine and returned to his life in Southend Ireland was looking forward I imagine to reading about the death of Peter Walker in the in the papers for it to be on the news whether than it was the local news or the national news and of course when his murder isn't when Peters murder doesn't make front-page news in fact isn't even reported upon Ireland takes it upon himself to do two things first he phones the Samaritans and secondly he phones the Sun newspaper I've personally taken thousand four thousand phone calls I've never taken a phone call like that the guy sounded very normal very ordinary and was just started talking about two dogs locked in a flat and I kept politely saying I'm really sorry but it's not a story for the son and then he just suddenly dropped this bombshell that the reason he was actually phoning us was that he wanted the dogs to be free because he'd killed their owner he didn't know it at the time but the calm Olinsky had just received marked the beginning of a vicious killing spree by one of Britain's coldest and most calculating serial killers he said the man he killed was gay and that he was he was interested in kinky sex was the way he put it I tried to keep him talking to get as much information as I could the police were alerted and detective Martin Finnegan rushed to the scene the door had been opened by the caretaker so he got in without having to break me doors down the dog sir in the lounge and the bedroom was in disarray as if it been ransacked the sort of thing you'd expect my burglary it soon becomes apparent the phone call is no hoax before them lies the dead body of Peter Walker the body was discovered in the bed and we knew that he had died at another person's hand the one other thing that the the murderer had mentioned to me on the phone he said he trusts him up like a chicken is what he said to me on the phone you had a condom on his nose condom in his mouth he had two teddy bears placed on his chest in what was 69 position from the post mortem we found out he died asphyxia inhaling zone vomits have been suffocated at some point and we knew that leakages have been removed after he was dead so a deem of somebody who is a call customer there the mysterious caller may have wanted to alert police to his crimes but that didn't mean he wanted to be caught he had left no clues and seemingly had committed the perfect murder with the media finally reporting on Peter Walker's death and an investigation underway Ireland lies low during the following weeks in most serial killing sprees that is usually a wider gap between the first and the second murder usually the serial killer in that first murder gains psychologically what it is that he wants to gain out of that murder and therefore doesn't feel the need to kill again particularly quickly the police struggled to find conclusive evidence to catch Walker's murderer and for the time being the investigation stalls so satisfied he has got away with it Ireland returns to London to continue on his horrifying quest to become a serial killer having made a new year's resolution to become a serial killer Colin island had already brutally murdered his first victim and was now ready to kill again moving one step closer to his goal on May the 28th 1993 Christopher Dunn a 37 year old librarian approached Colin Island at the bar of the coal Hearn Christopher Dunn is also somebody who is gay interested in sadomasochism is also somebody who frequents the coal herring pub the pub where Island is going to have a passport to because he understands the codes the subculture in his confession Ireland would reveal just what a terrifyingly cold and calculated killer he'd become and I've gone to my ball very inexpensive for handcuffs I was trying to small torch a night light an account and a couple of things a lot knife and abdomen which is like a multi-tool device and I don't book pain and I was going to have him repeat his pin number and I strangled him I'm gonna call on part of those occasions I started with the police until six horses wonderful time because I still had stuff on me as dawn approached : island left the home of the now dead Christopher Dunne on the 28th of May the body of Christopher Dunne was found in his home at whetstone and again this the sea was very staged he was lying in a harness naked except for the harness EADS suffered to the ligature strangulation even though before them lay a corpse at the time police didn't suspect foul play and I understand that that inquiry led the police to believe that was a sex game gone tragically long and was no suggestions believe there's anything other than pure accidents and was treated as such it was not treated as a murder with two separate detective teams investigating the Walker & Dunn murders the similarities between the cases were overlooked six days later and Ireland was back cruising the Calhoun he had seemingly got away with murder for a second time and was looking for a new victim this time it was 33 year-old Perry Bradley who caught his eye Ireland had to persuade Bradley but that he should allow Ireland to tie him up [Music] I don't think you so much insidious I said I had it so it's going to be a long diet I said lost edition get some sleep if you can and I just sank listen to the radio and he actually went to sleep and while he was asleep I told him Island again sat up all night with just a corpse for company I think quite a degree I think maybe kind of securities with him gone I wouldn't be so much but sitting in relief his body's sort of like five or six hours and some patients What's in gradually so much as they do and Carl we wasn't something that I don't in his quest to commit the perfect murder Ireland treated the crime scenes carefully revealing during his police confession how he had emulated a scene out of the TV police drama the bill when Colin Ireland left the crime scene he took with him every single thing that he touched so he doesn't want to leave blood semen hair fibers fingerprints as Ireland travels back to southend-on-sea he disposes of incriminating items he removed from the home of done by throwing them out of the moving train where they would blend in with rubbish on the track below Colleen Islands new year's resolution was coming together he was fast approaching the serial killer status which in his mind would catapult him into a world of infamy and repute Colleen contacted me after he'd left the night shelter and asked if he could pop round for a cup of tea occasionally just to keep in touch he told myself and my wife at the time that he was going on survival technique weekend's we subsequently found out that that wasn't the case he was going to London to murder people on the 7th of June just three days after Christopher Dan's murder Ireland again travelled by train from South End to London where he made his way to a familiar haunt the Kohl her the Colin Islands go back to the coal home again just shows his degree of confidence he had in getting away with it he'd clearly established a formula it identified the secretive lifestyle of the clientele that frequented the coal Hearn and with some confidence could say that his approach worked 33 year-old Andrew Collier faithfully approached Collin Island they struck up a conversation and soon left for Colliers flat their Island would engage in his most shocking behavior yet when he eventually got into the flats at under Colliers place the scene that makes there was just one of horror never seen anything like it before or since Andrew Collier was laying on his back with the cats draped across his chest he was naked in his mouth with two condoms and on the cat's tail was a condom and his penis had been put inside the cat's mouth and closed if you couldn't try and picture that it was just so so strange not until Ireland's eventual confession did investigators truly understand why he had left the scene in such a bizarre way I felt real anger towards him because he thought there was going to be a normal sexual encounter but it wasn't going to be and then had AIDS and Oh time to be warm I was on my sort of almost like a rollercoaster thing and I just I felt you know there was more I was doing while searching Andrew Colliers flat Ireland discovers medical documents that reveal Collier is hiv-positive he therefore as a consequence of that knowledge strangles Andrew Colliers cat and he's going to engage in post-death behaviors in ways which are frankly quite disgusting Ireland is trying to buy the public's sympathy by saying this man was not only gay and interested in sadomasochism he was also hiv-positive colin island had now brutally murdered four gay men but there was still no media outcry he was being denied recognition for his hard work and ireland could keep his silence no longer Ireland began injects himself into the police investigation he's going to phone the police when Colin spoke to my colleague and see how the office had been battersea he wanted to know why we stopped the investigation into Peter Walker he was losing out on fame and notoriety so he named all of the victims and was quite adamant about the fact that he had killed all four why are you doing this the wine particular homosexuals Collins said I'm gonna keep going to them court or to another one I've always dreamed to doing the perfect murder the impact on police was absolutely immense this was a huge inquiry now the police begin one of the biggest investigations in recent history determined to catch the killer who was not only targeting gay men but also taunting the police as he did so it is one of the most horrific and demanding murder inquiries for years Scotland Yard suddenly went into this dramatic madly absurdly dramatic midnight press conference and this dramatic announcement the serial killer of gay men was at large rise to the gay community tonight yes quite simple be careful don't pick up a stranger don't go out and one-night stands it's dangerous you could be next [Music] by the middle of June 1993 despite the police's best efforts Ireland has already struck again taunting the police with yet another phone call Ireland suggests they look for a corpse at a house fire eventually a phone call came in from the police Dan Ellucian saying that there's a flat with blackened windows and smoke billowing out an insight was the body of a man who turned out to be -4 to his fifth victim is a Maltese chef called Emmanuel Spiteri and Ireland is going to make a mistake because he goes back yet again to the coherent pub to talk to him and also to Tyson or bit lighter got talking to them and he said to me couple times in the color it was interesting physical we went trying journeys to his flat I put a noose around his neck other than at least a point how can this stop myself anyway it was almost like a steamroller again all the same methodology was used the ligatures the handcuffs they were all removed after the murder but this time before he left his stacked clothes all the bedding and clothing in the central drum set fire to again it was to heighten that impact on the investigators I'm sure that's what it was for if you look at the crime scenes from number one the number five when he set fire to the house to spectate his house this was building up so he was he said he was on a roller coaster and I'm sure he wasn't a roller coaster but now the once careful killer was getting sloppy he'd become uncontrollably addicted to murder police hunting the killer of five homosexual men in London have been appealing for help at a big gay rights demonstration in the capital Colin Richardson that then editor of gay times remembers the effect the police investigation had on the gay community I vividly recalled that Pride Festival that year tens of thousands of homosexual stream through central London in their annual gesture of pride and identity but this year it was against a somber background policing Stuart's handed out thousands of leaflets appealing for information about the serial killer who's murdered five times and is terrorizing London's gay community there really was a palpable sense of fear the press of course were making it much worse I don't remember which paper it was but one of them had a headline which was very liquidator another a lot of them latched onto the phrase gay Slayer but I feel good along the hands that's a bottom line there's a we need help to catch him now the gay community was on high alert but despite the massive police hunt underway collin island was still at large at the beginning of 1993 Colin Ireland made a cold and twisted New Year's resolution to become a serial killer six months later he has murdered five men in London and has so far managed to evade the huge police investigation that has been mounted against him [Music] I believe was round about June that year Colin came in he sat down we were watching TV the news was on and there was a report about the the killings in London and Colin turned to me and said you know what do you think of this thing and my reply was oh is another nutter on the loose I had no idea that it was in [Music] with the gay community on high alert and a profile of the killer beginning to emerge the police get a break they so desperately need from a witness via the London gay policing group gallop he gave us vital information around what he saw on the night in question that Spiteri was killed he said he was a training cross that he saw he saw them both together that they sat on a train there was two girls on the train as well so on the train journey down there is arguing from Charing Cross the witnesses on their carriage and the train gave us an X in a foot and give us a good description off Spiteri and and I'm using the witness information the police now know the route Ireland and Spiteri took on their return journey home it's not long before they get a CCTV image of Spiteri accompanied by a large man the footage and e-fit are both immediately made public Richard Higgs Ireland's former colleague remembers his friends odd behavior on what was to be his last visit he came into the house it was an evening I believe it was a Sunday evening he was very anxious he ba he behaved very strangely and we were really quite disconcerted by it made to feel rather uncomfortable and we really just wanted him to leave gave him a lift back to where he was living at the time and he was talking in the third tense talking very strangely he was it was muttering and mumbling and very uncomfortable to be around and we just wanted to get away from him Ireland began to realize that it wouldn't be long before someone identified him from the images in the media and decided he had to take action put in island at this stage perhaps seen the vitamin the wall make contact to the police first Lister he had a prepared statement but it said yes I was the man with Spiteri I did go to his home in evergreen but there was another man in doors I didn't want a threesome so I slept in the local church yard and then came back to South End so what we did is some got some very fast cars down south end so he was actually arrested at the solicitor's office finally the police are confident they have their man in custody but Ireland believes detectives have nothing to go on he never opened his mouth he stared unblinkingly at me the whole time it was very very unnerving the only reaction I got was when I told him we had a fingerprint of his abandoned Colliers during the Andrew Collier murder Ireland had made a massive mistake at some point during the evening of Callias death there had been a disturbance outside the flat Ireland had gone to the window to see what was happening leaving behind a fingerprint you've been out here where the disturbance took place which drew Andrew Collier and Cornell into the window and we're on an island left that fingerprint for police to find when he was confronted with the fingerprint evidence at the Andrew Collison that picture would have told the story of guilt to the jury I've got no doubt whatsoever because he was totally flummoxed he he just couldn't believe that he had made a mistake whilst on remand Colin Ireland has time to assess his situation he thought he'd been so careful not to leave any forensic evidence but the fingerprint at Andrew Colliers flat had been a blow the police are going to charge him with the murders of Andrew Collier and Emmanuel Spiteri but may not have enough evidence to charge him for the other three he was on remand for about four weeks when I think hopefully contemplated on where does he go now because it's falling out of the limelight and he hasn't got the label that he wanted it was a serial killer because he's only been charged with two murders this just wasn't good enough for him so he informed the prison officers that he wanted to talk to police he wanted to admit all five and that's exactly what he did and there he got his label as a serial killer Colin Island begins his full and chillingly honest confession to the murders of five men from London's gay community there's a clear narcissistic quality to Ireland he he wanted to take credit for this and he was very proud of what he did as are many of these serial killers they're very pleased with themselves when this comes to trial any judge worth his salt is gonna find me guilty and he will imprison me and by stoning so allow me to [Music] nothing to give to sometime Islands ultimate confession is simply because he wanted to achieve the goal that he set out to achieve through his December 1992 New Year's resolution he wanted to become famous during interviews I think Colin Ireland had a certain amount of self-satisfaction he was able to tell us you know at that late stage things we didn't know only he could illuminate us into that and he did I think that gave a sense of importance achievement possibly even superiority on the 20th of December 1993 at the Old Bailey Colin island pleads guilty to the murder of all five men a serial killer who preyed on homosexuals has been jailed for life for murdering five men in London earlier this year the judge recommended that he never be released saying to take one human life is an outrage to take five is carnage so what was it that drove Colin Island to kill a man who patrolled the streets of his neighborhood who helped out at a homeless shelter lots of people would say that he was a nice Colin Ireland who who worked at the shelter in Southend and would never think anything often like that it was another person he just slapped me done you know that's all look inside really what I knew most about his mind is that he did like to be in control if you think about serial killers one of the things they have in their sense is that that they are helpful in kind they just are again mimicking what they see the world expecting them to do I often wonder whether : Ireland was born to kill or were there it was result this so the early life now something must have happened a year two years before that to trigger in his mind that here he is I'm going to kill he wanted to achieve a goal that many serial killers want to achieve which is that they want status whatever the reason for Ireland's senseless murders in the end even he agreed he was a danger to the world : odd and had snuffed out the lives of five innocent unsuspecting men on the 21st of February 2012 in prison he would die with the dignity he had denied his victims aged 58 of natural causes [Music]

Channel: Real Crime

Views: 1,745,884

Keywords: real crime, crime documentary, true crime, hate crime, lgbtq, psychopath documentary, serial killer documentary, real stories, documentary movie, colin ireland, new years resolution

Id: 2eKcxDtnQTI

Length: 45min 29sec (2729 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2019