There are killers in prison who will never get out.
The fact I need to state this may come as a surprise to those who assume that all killers will never get out of prison; in fact, it’s unusual for them to serve more than their minium sentences due to overcrowding and the way the justice system works.
Trevor Hardy, the Beast of Manchester, never got out of prison. He served 35 years and died at the age of 67 in HM Prison Wakefield after getting a sentence of life imprisonment.
This is why.
Killer: Trevor Hardy
Victims: Janet Lesley Stewart, 15; Wanda Skala, 17; Sharon Mosoph, 17
Dates: 31 December 1974 – 8 March 1976
Location: Manchester
Method of Murder: Strangulation, stabbing, bludgeoning
Timeline 11.06.1945 | Hardy born in Manchester 31.12.1974 | Murder of Janet Lesley Stewart 19.07.1975 | Murder of Wanda Skala Sept. 1976 | Hardy arrested and freed 08.03.1976 | Murder of Sharon Mosoph Aug. 1976 | Hardy arrested and confesses 02.05.1978 | Hardy given 3 life sentences 25.09.2012 | Hardy dies in prison
Janet Lesley Stewart should not have died in 1974.
It was New Year’s Eve and she was walking home. She was a Rose Queen at the church in Harpurhey that she attended1, a 15-year-old with her whole life still ahead of her.
When Trevor Hardy saw her, he mistakenly thought she was someone else - a schoolgirl he had become infatuated with2, despite the fact that he was 29 years old at the time. Beverley Driver was only 14, but she'd written to Hardy and told him she couldn't talk with him anymore on orders of her parents - a fact which made him so angry he vowed to kill her for it3.
He stabbed Janet to death.
He ripped a ring from her finger and gave it to another girl as a token of his love4. As for her body, it was discarded in a shallow grave in Newton Heath.
He didn’t let her rest. Over the course of the next weeks, he would return to her body and rip it apart with his bare hands, scattering it around the city to try to obfuscate the evidence. Her head was thrown into a lake.
Not only was she a case of mistaken identity, but Hardy had wounded a man with a pick-axe and been sentenced to 5 years in 1972. His early release in November 19745 directly led to Janet’s death.
Wanda Skala should not have died.
Wanda was a barmaid innocently walking home from work. She was from Moston and worked at the Lightbowne Hotel6; walking alone, she was a clear target for robbery when Trevor Hardy set eyes on her. She was only four hundred yards from her home.
He hit her over the head with a brick. He robbed and then strangled her with her own tights - and that wasn’t enough for him. He stripped her and mutilated her body, biting off one of her nipples7 as he sexually assaulted her. By now, he had a taste for it. He took her blood-stained clothes and her handbag as trophies of the awful thing that he had done.
Sharon Mosoph should not have died.
Hardy bragged to his brother about the murder that he had committed. He then beat him unconscious8. Horrified, his brother went straight to the police to hand Trevor in9.
But Trevor had a plan.
He arranged for a fake alibi with his girlfriend, Shelagh Farrow10, who also handed him a file while he was in custody. He used this file on his teeth to make sure they would not match the bite marks he had left on Wanda’s body11.
The evidence didn’t match.
He was freed.
Six months later, Sharon Mosoph was coming home from a staff party, probably buzzing with the excitement of the night, when Trevor Hardy caught up with her.
She passed by Marlborough Mill12, where she saw Hardy trying to break and enter the premises. He was trying to steal from it. But she had seen him - she even shouted at him to stop13.
He couldn’t let her go on to give evidence, and he’d killed before.
He stabbed and then strangled her. He stripped her and mutilated her body, just as he had done before, again biting off one of her nipples.
Then he dumped her in the Rochdale Canal.
He soon realised his new tooth impressions would be on her body - so he jumped into the icy water and used a metal rivet to scratch her skin, to hide his telltale marks.
Hardy ended up going on the run after the third of his murders. He lived in quarries, railway tunnels, and canal banks. He committed a violent sexual assault against another woman in the toilets of a pub14 (this author notes that he did not need to dress up as a woman himself to do so). His compulsion for theft did not decrease.
When he was caught, his eventual confession spanned 30 pages.
He was given three life sentences with a minimum of 30 years; after serving those, he was told by a judge he would not be released in his lifetime.
"I still think about my sister and I still have to drive over the bridge where it happened,” said Maxine Mosoph, the sister of Sharon, 40 at the time of the ruling. "I was 10 and on the day she was found, we went to school and there we heard a girl had been found in the canal. When we got home, my uncle sat me and my brother Paul, who was 12, round the kitchen table. He told us a body had been found in the canal... It was horrible growing up without a sister. I hope he rots in there.”15
When he died, Sharon’s father, Ralf Mosoph, made a statement. He said: "Me and my family think this is the best thing that has ever happened to us. It’s like winning the lottery. We’ve had a big party to celebrate his death. We feel as though a burden has been lifted from our shoulders, knowing that he cannot come out and do anything to anybody else. We knew he was inside but you cannot forget something like that. It preys on your mind. What he did was cold-blooded murder. He was an animal."16
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/serial-killer-will-die-in-jail-957237
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/serial-killer-will-die-in-jail-957237
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/britains-forgotten-serial-killer-beast-11791599
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/serial-killer-will-die-in-jail-957237
https://www.manchestersfinest.com/articles/manchesters-vilest-trevor-joseph-hardy/
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/serial-killer-will-die-in-jail-957237
https://www.manchestersfinest.com/articles/manchesters-vilest-trevor-joseph-hardy/
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/pick-me-up/20180118/283334702686383
https://www.nme.com/blogs/britains-forgotten-serial-killer-trevor-hardy-2218709
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/britains-forgotten-serial-killer-beast-11791599
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/serial-killer-will-die-in-jail-957237
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/serial-killer-will-die-in-jail-957237
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/im-glad-he-will-die-in-prison-957260
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/serial-killer-will-die-in-jail-957237
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/im-glad-he-will-die-in-prison-957260
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/britains-forgotten-serial-killer-beast-11791599