Maniac killer at the YWCA

Christmas is the season of goodwill. But in Birmingham in 1959 it was marked by a gruesome attack on a helpless girl by a homicidal maniac. On 23 December 1959, 20-year-old Margaret Brown's thoughts were of Christmas, which she was spending at her parent’s home in Edinburgh. It was late afternoon and she was getting the last bits of her washing and ironing done in the laundry room before leaving on Christmas Eve.

Her lodgings were at the YWCA Hostel known as 'Edencroft', a large Georgian-style house in Wheeley Road, Edgbaston, one of Birmingham's more select districts. In common with the other girls there she had her own room with the annex off the main building, but ironing and washing facilities were shared. This annex was a single storey block, so each room was on the ground floor.

Most of her fellow lodgers had left the hostel and gone their various ways for the Christmas holidays, but a few were still in the common room watching television. Margaret's priorities were to finish her chores. She was looking forward to seeing family and friends again and didn't want a mad rush in the morning.

The weather was very cold and damp, so Margaret could not help but feel a sudden cold draught coming from the adjoining washhouse. The chill air was coming through the outside door, which for some reason was open. She shut it and returned to her ironing.

The door opens

A short time later Margaret heard the sound of the outside door latch, followed again by a cold draught. She returned to the washhouse and noticed that the door was open again. She probably thought that she had not closed it properly the first time and the wind had pushed it open. Again she closed both it and the inner glass-panelled door that separated the two inner rooms, and continued with her ironing. After a few more minutes she heard the door click again. This time the light also went out.

She cautiously made her way towards the closed inner door but stopped short when she saw, silhouetted through the glass in the top half of the door, the outline of a figure. She called out: “Who's there?” but received no reply. She opened the door wider and saw, slightly to her right, a man. In a matter of seconds, the man had struck her over the head with something heavy.

The assault had not been bad enough to cause her to collapse on the floor and lose consciousness – luckily for her. But, together with the shock, it was enough to make her scream loudly, so much so that her assailant ran off into the darkness of the courtyard outside. Margaret Brown staggered along the corridor, burst into the common room and raised the alarm.

Police arrived at 'Edencroft' within minutes. As officers attended to Margaret's injuries before arrival of an ambulance she gave a brief account of what had happened. She had only caught a fleeing glimpse of her assailant before she was struck. She put his age at about 28 years and thought he was about five foot eight inches tall with a rugged complexion and well-defined chin. Police meanwhile had been searching the grounds, but could find no trace of her assailant.

On a ledge in the washhouse an officer found a large stone, weighing about six-and-a-half pounds. It had obviously been taken from the rockery outside and had been used by the assailant to hit Margaret over the head. Luckily Margaret had had her hair up in a bun, and the depth and density of this bun had no doubt cushioned the blow slightly.

Police check

Police decided to check with the other girls in the hostel to find out whether they had seen or heard anything suspicious and to make sure the assailant was not still in the building. All the rooms were checked with the exception of Room Four, which was occupied by Stephanie Baird. Her door was locked form the inside, so it seemed logical to assume that Stephanie was still in her room. However, she failed to respond to the officers' banging and shouting. One of the policemen decided to try looking into her room from the outside. The curtains were drawn, but there was a slight chink in the middle. As he peered inside, all he could make out was a pair of motionless legs.

Immediately the door of Stephanie's room was broken open. The officers were not prepared for the scene which greeted them. Stephanie's body lay on the floor, parallel with her bed. Not only had she been brutally mutilated, but also beheaded.

Detective Chief Superintendent James Haughton of the Birmingham CID was put in charge of the investigation. In view of the mutilation, whoever had committed the murder had to be covered in blood. He immediately threw roadblocks around the city. CID and forensic experts were then organised to search the murder scene and surrounding area.

Haughton looked at his immediate evidence. Near to the body was found a household knife, the blood-stained blade of which had been broken off. Footprints were found on a blanket in Room Six. The girl whose room the blanket was in had left it on the windowsill to keep out the rain. Obviously someone had gained entry to the building by climbing in through that window. Also, outside the window of Stephanie's room was another footprint in the soil. Haughton gave instructions for a plaster cast to be made of it. Looking at the prints, he noticed they had distinctive transverse bars on them. No fingerprints were found around the windows.

Killer's note

A diary was found in Stephanie's room, but it had not been regularly written in and provided no useful information. Haughton did find, however, a note placed in a prominent position on the dressing-table. Written on the note, in biro, were the words: “This is the thing I thought would never come.” Haughton presumed this had been written by the murderer, and he decided to not tell the media anything about it.

As a result of the initial roadblocks a bus conductor named Bill Humphries told police that, earlier that evening, a man answering the description of the assailant had boarded his bus near the YWCA. The passenger had blood on his hands and sleeves and down the front of his jacket. The blood had dripped on to the seat.

Mr Humphries told police that the man appeared to be “in a daze”. He had offered the conductor sixpence for his fare, and although he was asked for his destination he had not spoken. He sat in the fourth seat from the front on the near side of the top deck. Some of the other passengers – and their were about 60 on the bus – had spoken to the man about the blood but he avoided them. The bus was traced and the blood-stained seat taken away for forensic tests. The blood group was found to be group 'O', which was the same as that of the victim; but 'O' is also the commonest blood group.

Unfortunately, due to the Christmas holidays there were delays in publishing a request for information from the public in the newspapers.

When requests for information were eventually published, they failed to bring anything of use. Also, the police had little success in tracing the passengers who had spoken to the blood-stained man on the bus.

In the end Detective Chief Superintendent Haughton made what was thought to be the first TV appeal to the public for information following a major crime. A popular ATV holiday programme called Let's Go was interrupted while the officers appealed for all those who had been on the No 8 Inner Circle Birmingham corporation bus to come forward.

Only 10 of the passengers were traced or went to the police, and eventually police decided to eliminate the blood-stained man from their enquiries as they thought he was too blood-stained. They felt that someone dripping with blood would have left a trail from the murder scene to the bus stop, but no such trail was found, and police deduced that Stephanie's murderer must have removed his clothing before mutilating the body.

At the same time, police were carrying out house-to-house questioning of all males in the vicinity of the hostel. Over 20,000 were questioned from the carefully prepared questionnaire. Their answers were checked and rechecked. Again delays occurred because of the number of people away from their homes for the Christmas period, and police had to wait until they returned. But no useful information was gathered.

Police hunch

Haughton, however, was still of the opinion that the man they were looking for was a local man. He checked up on previously known peeping toms, those who had convictions for indecency or assault etc., but all were eventually eliminated from enquiries, including two men who falsely confessed to the murder. Five thousand Midlands butchers were also checked up on; the murderer had so skilfully decapitated the body that it was considered that he (or she) might have been used to handling a knife.

On 5 January 1960 Detective Inspector Stan Arnott, Head of the Midlands police criminal records office, spent over a week checking though the crime files at New Scotland Yard. He returned with information on 25 men whom he considered police should look at.

Just before the murder, a new book called The Identity of Jack the Ripper had been published. The local library had eight copies of the book, and enquiries were made to establish the identity of those who had borrowed it. At the same time, local cinemas were showing a film on the same subject. Could the murderer have for the idea of slaying Stephanie from the book or film? There was little chance, however, of police tracing all who had attended the many film performances.

Some time had now passed since Stephanie had been murdered, and still police were no further forward with their enquiries. DCS Haughton ordered all statements to be checked and re-checked. He then realised that about 300 men had been reported as not having returned either to work or their lodgings following the Christmas break. Could the killer be one of these?

Among the names on this list was one Patrick Byrne. Byrne, who had been in lodgings in Islington Row, very near the murder hostel, had given his landlady notice of leaving. He was not expected back, and was free from suspicion because he had left a forwarding address with his mother in Warrington. He was contacted on 9 February and asked to call in at Warrington police station.

Detective Sergeant George Welborn told Byrne about the enquiries being made into Stephanie' Baird's murder and asked him to account for his movements on the night in question. The sergeant went through the questionnaire and noticed that although he appeared rational most of the time, Byrne did occasionally become slightly upset by some of the questions. At the end of the interview Sergeant Welborn added one more question of his own. “Would you have any objection to having your fingerprints taken?”

There was a few seconds' silence. Then Byrne said: “I want to tell you about the YWCA. I had something to do with that. I cannot sleep. It has been on my mind. I was coming down to see the police. These last seven weeks have been no good to me.” Byrne was then cautioned by Sergeant Welborn and he made a statement admitting attacking Stephanie Baird.

DCS Haughton was immediately informed, and arrangements were made for Byrne to be taken to Birmingham. Byrne told Haughton: “I want to tell you all I can. I can draw you the room and everything in it, even how I got into the cubicle. I suppose you found the note I left?”

Haughton was now satisfied that this was the murderer. When charged, Byrne told police: “I must tell you everything and get it off my mind. I don't know why I did not come to see you before. This had been worrying me tremendously.”

Byrne appeared at Birmingham Assizes on 23 March 1960, where be pleaded not guilty to the murder indictment read out in court. The all-make jury was told by Mr John Hobson, QC, opening the case for the Crown, that: “The story that you will hear is one of horror and bestiality such as one would hope never to dream about in one's worst nightmare.”

Byrne had made a statement to police saying he remembered being near the YWCA in Wheeley Road that night. He told police how he thought he would “like to have a peep through a window. I've done this before a few times.”

In the statement he went on: “The night I killed the girl I went in through the front drive and into the grounds. There was only one light on in the bedroom in the block of cubicles. I looked through the curtain of the bedroom which had the light on and I saw a girl wearing a red pullover and underskirt. She was combing her hair.”

He explained that he wanted to get a better look and climbed in through a window and onto a corridor. He stood on a chair and looked through a glass panel above the girl's door. But he became “browned off” when the girl did not take off anymore clothes and he was just going when she stopped and opened the door.

Byrne, in his statement, said: “She came face to face with me and asked what I was doing. I told her I was looking for somebody.” Stephanie had replied: “Let me get the warden.”

Byrne continued: “We were standing quite close together and I was just going to run and as I turned my arm touched her breast. This got me excited and I got hold of her breasts. I said: “Give me a kiss,' and before she could say no' I kissed her.”

He forced Stephanie back into her room, where he brutally assaulted the struggling woman. In the process, he strangled her.

Byrne went on to describe how he started to mutilate the body. It was during this that the knife blade broke. When the head came off he stood up and, holding it by the hair, looked at it through the mirror. It was during the mutilation of the body that he had written the note. He had done this because “I wanted everybody to see my life in one little note.”

Byrne had then got dressed and went to the back of the building. He continued: “I was very excited and thinking that I ought to terrorise all the women. I wanted to get my own back on them for causing my nervous tension through sex.”

He saw another woman in the building but she did not appeal to him. He moved on towards another lighted room. This was the washroom where Margaret Brown was later to be attacked.

“She attracted me and I felt I only wanted to kill beautiful women. I watched her for a while and stood close to the window. I only looked at her face and the urge to kill her was tremendously strong. I thought I would take her quietly and quickly and picked up a big stone from the garden. I think I first for a brassiere from a clothes line and then wrapped it round the stone.”

He had gone into a courtyard but an elderly woman had come into the yard with a bucket. He hid in the shadows and waited until she returned to the house. He went into the washroom, the door of which was slightly open. He switched off the light and heard a girl call out: “Who's there?” As she came to the door he struck her with the stone in his hand. But he dropped it, and as the girl screamed he ran off.

Byrne had then returned to his lodgings in Islington Row which was about 400 yards from the hostel and had a good wash. As he washed he talked to himself in the mirror, looking for signs of his being a madman. He found one. He then wrote to his landlady and the boys living there, saying: “Dear Mum and Boys, I'm very sorry you'll have to receive this horrible letter.

Like Jock had two personalities I must be the same. One very bad and this other one the real me.” He then put the note in his pocket and contemplated suicide. “... I thought of my mother at Christmas. I didn't want to upset anybody at Christmas so I thought that I would put my mind off until after Christmas.”

Doctor Frederick Griffiths a Home Office pathologist, was then called. The court heard him say how when he first examined the body it was lying on its back on the floor. The head was severed at the base of the neck. The blade of a table knife, wrapped in a blood-stained handkerchief, was found under a slip on the body and a knife handle lay on the floor. A small pair of scissors was near the foot of the bed.

Stephanie's death had been caused by manual strangulation. Her skull had been fractured, and there were wounds and abrasions to her body. There was a number of small punctures over the check which could have been caused by the scissors. Griffiths was questioned about the severing of the head. He replied: “I think I must have been extraordinary lucky without any knowledge of the matter. I would expect it to take an ordinary man between 15 minutes and half an hour with luck.”

The prosecution then referred to the footprints found at the scene of the crime. The plaster cast taken of the indentation made by a shoe outside the window had revealed distinctive transverse marks across the sole and heals. The shoes which had made the indentation and the markings on the blanket were later traced to Byrne.

After the prosecution had completed their case, Mr R. K. Brown QC, for Byrne, asked the jury to bring in a manslaughter verdict on the grounds of diminished responsibility as Byrne was suffering from substantial impairment of the mind.

At the end of the case the jury took just 46 minutes to bring in a 'guilty' verdict. Byrne was sentenced to life imprisonment.

On 4 July 1960 three judges of the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the conviction of murder and substituted one of manslaughter. The sentence of life imprisonment remained unchanged. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Parker, said it was “the only possible sentence, having regard to Byrne's tendencies.”

Evil Mind

From his late teens, 28-year-old Patrick Byrne had had an exotic fantasy life in which sadistic sexual violence had played a predominant part. One of his favourite dreams was of cutting a woman in half with a circular saw.

Most of the time his fantasies were satisfied by acting as a peeping tom, but one drunken evening in December 1959 he lost all control, and Stephanie Baird paid with her life.

Was he mad?

There was a considerable difference of opinion as to Byrne's sanity. The senior medical officer at Birmingham Prison, Doctor Percy Coates, believed Byrne to be a sexual psychopath, but he added, “I think he knew what he was doing and that what he was doing was wrong.”

Consultant psychiatrist Clifford Tetlow was not so sure. In his view Byrne was at least partly insane. Believing that women did not want him, he dreamed of revenge, and in his dreams fantasy mixed with reality.

A third viewpoint was expressed by Doctor J. J. Riley, a lecturer in psychological medicine. He said that Byrne had a history of gross sexual abnormality, and was suffering from equally gross abnormality of the mind.

End