A hulk of a man is doing his usual bench pressing
routine in the afternoon. 400 pounds (181kg), he thinks, not too bad. He wipes the sweat from his face while looking
up at a TV monitor that’s playing a bare-knuckle boxing match he’s seen eight times already. A couple of hours ago he got a call from the
“Adam’s Family”; not the bunch of spooks from TV but one of the most vicious and powerful
criminal organizations in the UK. They have a job for him. With that in mind, he goes into his garage
and takes stock of his tools. Chainsaw, present; ax, present, meat cleaver,
present; knives, all there and recently sharpened. He flexes his bicep and gives it a reassuring
grab with his hand, all the time wondering where he’ll hide the human remains this
time. It doesn’t really matter, he thinks while
grinning and shaking his head, the cops are useless. His name is Stephen Marshall, a man that will
become known as the Jigsaw Killer. Make no mistake, this man was terrifying. He was violent to the nth degree. He dismembered bodies without so much as breaking
a sweat. He left pieces of people all over the south
of England, a hideous trail of bread crumbs for the police to follow. He was an excellent butcher, too, expertly
removing flesh from faces, adroitly cutting people into little pieces. When pathologists looked at his work they
said it must have been done by someone who’d worked in their profession. Like the infamous Jack the Ripper, he knew
his way around a human body. But who was Marshall, and who finally put
his macabre jigsaw together? We don’t know too much about his childhood,
so we can’t hypothesize about what might have happened during his younger years to
make him the monster he became. We do, however, know how he strayed to the
dark side. In the 90s when he was in his early twenties
he got into bodybuilding. He was what the Brits sometimes call a “hard
man”, and that led to him getting jobs as a bouncer. In the English underworld, being a formidable
bouncer might lead to gang connections. If you are particularly good at breaking noses
and not shying away from a man with a weapon in his hand, it’s possible you could get
hired by a criminal gang as a bit of muscle. That was back in the 90s anyway, the world
of British bouncing isn’t so wild these days. That’s exactly what happened to Marshall
though. He started doing jobs for the Adam’s crime
family, an outfit said to be behind scores of murders and who racked up millions of pounds. This family was heavily involved in drug trafficking,
extortion, hijacking, and of course the odd murder. The problem with killing people is getting
rid of the bodies, and that’s certainly not something criminal millionaires want to
do. It’s not just dirty work, but it can be
difficult to do it right. And it’s not as easy as you might think,
not if you want to leave no trace. That’s why the Adam’s family hired Mr.
Marshall. Body disposal was just a part-time gig for
Marshall, though. Besides working on doors at nightclubs, he
also ran a gym at one point in his life that was apparently very popular with other underworld
figures. Other jobs he had were having his own car-valeting
company, and later, working as a kitchen salesman. It’s said he routinely spent thousands of
pounds on drugs and prostitutes throughout his life, so we’re guessing when he took
the salesman job he’d already failed at his other ventures. This is a good segue for us to introduce a
man named Jeffrey Howe, someone who would become one of Marshall’s jigsaws. Howe wasn’t like Marshall in the least,
not having any connections to the underworld. He was rather unhealthy and obese, so not
a man you’d instantly think was a gym rat. The two met because Howe was also a kitchen
salesman. At first, they got along well. It’s said they were drinking buddies that
became the best of friends, although we doubt Howe knew about his friend’s aptitude for
butchering corpses. In fact, Howe was described by the people
that knew him as a kind of Santa Claus character. He always had a smile on his face and was
said by his brother to have a “heart of gold.” He was so kind in fact that when Marshall
didn’t have a place to stay in 2008, he said you can stay at my place, for free. Marshall was quick to take up the offer but
then asked if his 21-year old prostitute girlfriend, Sarah Bush, could stay, too. Howe obliged. Ok, so it’s 2008 and the two men plus the
young woman are living together. Howe is 49 and Marshall is 38. They all liked to drink heavily and occasionally
consume illegal substances. One of those men had a history of violence
and was described as “highly volatile.” What could possibly go wrong… Well, the couple were a pair of parasites
if ever there was one, and Howe being Howe was impressionable, somewhat lonely after
a couple of failed marriages, so he wanted to help. He also quite liked the fact that he lived
with a friendly and very attractive woman, as well as a hard man who offered friendship
and protection. When you went to the pub with Marshall, you
didn’t get into trouble. Howe enjoyed this feeling of invulnerability. But the pair were rinsing him, to use a British
expression, meaning taking him for all he had. They just asked for more and more, until Howe
became somewhat bothered by this. It might at one point have occurred to him
that he was being used. He even told a friend this. Meanwhile, he had no idea that by forging
his signature the selfish couple was able to claim housing benefits on a place they
pretended to be renting. At the same time, the couple was aware that
the spring of cash they’d been tapping for six months might dry up. What to do? March 9, 2009. The couple has decided they won’t wait for
the cash to dry up and will take what they want. They’ll have the apartment, thank you very
much, and they’ll take the credit cards and whatever else Howe owns. Marshall has already told his partner that
getting rid of the body won’t be a problem. He’s an expert and has done it many times
before, he tells her. He’s going to create a jigsaw, one that
will become a confounding case for the cops. While Howe slept that night, the couple sneaked
into his bedroom. Bush put a pillow over his head to prevent
any screams from waking up the neighbors and Marshall stabbed Howe twice in the neck. They waited until he bled out, and that was
that; job complete. Now there was a missing man. When people that were friends with Howe went
to the apartment, the couple told them that he was renting the place out to them and they
hadn’t seen him in a while. They told others that Howe had packed his
things and taken off someplace, which didn’t seem too unusual given that Howe had been
a chef in Italy in his past. The couple pretty much emptied Howe’s bank
account and they forged checks in his name. They sold just about everything of value he
owned, including a nice Saab car that they put on eBay. They basically lived a life of booze and drugs
on tap while eating where they wanted. Ok, but what about the body of a man that
was to say the least on the large side? Well, Marshall spent 12 hours working on that
body, hence the commendable workmanship that the pathologists would later comment on. He used the whole gamut of his tools, his
chainsaw for the larger cuts, his meat cleaver for the medium cuts, and a hacksaw and knife
for the fiddly bits. He likely used a knife when he removed the
flesh from Howe’s face. Once the body was dismembered into manageable
pieces, Marshall set about leaving bits at various places in some of the most picturesque
spots in the south of England. You could say his actions were defiling nature,
but what did he care, he’d done this before and had gotten away with it. Still, Marshall may have been a dab hand at
dismemberment, but his hiding skills it seems were below par. On March 22, just a couple of weeks after
the murder, someone came upon a blue bag ditched in a hedgerow near a farm in the county of
Hertfordshire. Inside the bag was a left leg with the foot
still attached. The farmer who found it said, “It was all
wrapped up in plastic. I didn’t open the plastic but it was then
I realized it was either a joint of meat or something a lot worse.” It was soon discovered that whoever that leg
belonged to hadn’t been dead long. It was also assumed that it belonged to someone
Asian or Caucasian. This was just one piece of the jigsaw, and
for cops, not much more meaningful than getting a piece of Adam’s leg in a jigsaw of Michelangelo’s
“Creation of Adam.” They were a long way from seeing the full
picture. Then on March 29 cops were called out to see
another piece of the puzzle. This was a forearm without the hand. It was actually found in the same county as
the last piece, although in a different village. It was soon understood that this body part
belonged to the same person as the leg. It hadn’t even been buried and was just
lying in some grass, so it seemed to the police that someone might be playing a game with
them. Just two days later, cops were alerted to
a grizzlier find. This was a head with the flesh shorn off. The eyes, tongue, ears, as well as the neck,
had also been removed. The killer hadn’t tried very hard to hide
it since a farmer found it in a cattle pen, although it was discovered in a different
county from the previous two pieces. Then on April 7, the fourth part of the puzzle
was found. This was a right leg that was recovered from
a layby on a busy road in yet another county in the south of England. The guy that found it had been driving for
a pest control firm and had decided to stop his van to take a break. The police were almost certain the body parts
were all from the same person. Going to the public for help solving the case,
they announced that the man had two front teeth missing and that whoever it was had
had a fungal infection in one of his toenails. As for that jigsaw of the Creation of Adam,
the cops now had bits of Adam, bits of God, lots of cloud, but they were still missing
the main pieces. On April 11, they hit the big time. A hiker had been out walking in one of the
nicest areas of England’s green and pleasant land and had come across a suitcase. Inside it was Howe’s torso and the other
missing body parts. The only bits of his body missing now were
the hands, but hey, isn’t there always a darned missing piece in every jigsaw. They were never found, although Marshall later
said he’d ditched them in woodland in the county of Essex. The cops still didn’t know who the dead
man was, but at least they had a picture to look at. They said he was overweight, had a problem
with eczema, and had bleached skin pigmentation on both of his legs. At the time, though, they didn’t tell the
public the body wasn’t all in one piece. They thought that might worry folks a bit
too much. On April 21, Howe’s mother called the cops
and reported a missing person. This wasn’t because she thought her son
had been killed, only that she was concerned. Still, when the police heard her description
of Howe things added up. They went around to his apartment and busted
in since there wasn’t anyone home. They didn’t find any evidence of the murder
and dismemberment that had taken place there, but they found Howe’s passport. Marshall and his girlfriend later told the
cops that Howe was alive and had just taken off someplace, but after the police got Howe’s
dental records the game was pretty much up. This is what the cop who arrested them said,
“Marshall was very, very nervous, jittery, his leg was shaking. Sarah Bush was uncomfortable, and at that
point, I knew that Jeffrey Howe was going to be our victim.” Once forensics got to work, traces of Howe’s
blood were found all over the apartment. T-shirt fibers found on duct tape that was
used to wrap one of the body parts also matched a t-shirt of Marshall’s. If that wasn’t enough, CCTV showed Marshall’s
car traveling to all the spots where the body parts were found. The game was certainly up now, although at
first, the couple denied the murder. Marshall pleaded guilty to perverting the
cause of justice by lying about Howe being alive and well, and he also admitted to cutting
up the body, but he denied the murder. Bush denied everything but said she was only
with Marshall because she was scared to leave him. Then witnesses came forward who said they’d
heard Marshall brag about his dismemberment skills. It was also revealed that Howe had told someone
that Marshall had threatened to kill him if he didn’t leave the apartment. At the time, Howe thought Marshall was just
kidding. Marshall then shocked everyone when he did
an about-turn. He changed his plea to guilty and then even
owned up to cutting up bodies on four occasions for the notorious Adam’s family. Such an admission meant he would have to watch
his back for the rest of the 36 years he spent in prison. Such a powerful family could make sure someone
died between prison walls. Maybe the only reason he’s alive today is
that he never said whose bodies he’d disposed of. That, or he’s kept away from the prison
general population. Bush tried to say that she had only acted
out of fear of Marshall, although the judge didn’t buy it. He said to her, “You were well aware of
what Stephen Marshall had done. You took advantage of Mr. Howe in life and
then after his death you used his money.” Still, she was given a lenient sentence and
was out in just under four years. Marshall is in prison now and could get out
in 2046, but that will be up to the parole board. If you want to hear more about British killers
watch, “The Most Evil Serial Killer Couple of All Time - Fred and Rose.” Or, watch this, “Most Evil Prisoner Kept
in Glass Box.”
